Our new Gilded Age
Corruption today looks like corruption of old
In the past month, two members of Congress have been indicted. Rep. Chris Collins of New York was indicted for allegedly using inside information about a biotechnology company to make stock trades. Duncan Hunter of California was indicted for using campaign funds for personal use. Both are Republicans, but this is a bipartisan problem. Last year, New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, a Democrat, was charged with providing public favors to an opthamologist in exchange for private plane rides, lavish vacations and various luxuries. The trial ended in a hung jury and Mr. Menendez was admonished by the Senate.
Unfortunately, this is not the entire list of congressional miscreants. Republicans Blake Farenthold of Texas, Trent Franks of Arizona and Tim Murphy and Pat Meehan of Pennsylvania all resigned amid ethical scandals. Ditto Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota and Rep. John Conyers of Michigan. Last year, former Democratic Rep. Corrine Brown was found guilty of misusing nonprofit donations for personal use. And Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte of Montana assaulted a reporter right before a special election but managed to get elected to Congress, anyway.
This is a lot of scandal. It makes me wonder if we are living through another Gilded Age.
The original Gilded Age of American history is one of those periods of our past that is not really remembered, and usually only then with a measure of embarrassment. Typically dated from about 1874 until 1913, the period was characterized by widespread political corruption. America was industrializing rapidly, elevating the standard of living for almost everyone while making a small handful fabulously rich. But the wealthy did not merely sit on their earnings. Instead, they spread the wealth around to politicians, who were well compensated to do the business of the rich, rather than of the people who actually elected them.
There are clear parallels between then and now. For starters, there is a lot of money in our politics. Granted, money in politics is always a problem in a republic such as ours, where it is expensive to campaign. Yet despite a century of effort to regulate the flow of money, campaign finance is still quite a bit like the Wild West: The rules are often unclear, and it is hard to track the offending parties down. So we have seen, time and again, the lines get blurred between campaign expenses and personal expenses, friendships between politicians and lobbyists versus outright quid pro quos.
Moreover, there seems to be a pervasive sense among the nation’s governing elite that the rules do not really apply to them. That does not go for everybody in Congress, of course, but one cannot review the long list of current and recent congressional dishonor without concluding that there is some kind of systemic attitude problem in the legislature. We are talking of upwards of 2 percent of members have had some kind of actionable ethical complaint against them in the past two years. Can you imagine if 2 percent of the workforce at a major corporation were enmeshed in some kind of scandal? The stockholders would have a fit!
And remember: The Founders thought representative government should elevate the best among us.
A big difference between the old Gilded Age and today is that there used to be active reform movements working to push back on malfeasance. The Liberal Republicans, the Mugwumps, the Populists, the Progressives — all of them fought corruption, often by bringing in Democrats and Republicans. Today, however, the party and ideological teams are so precisely drawn that it is virtually unimaginable that liberals and conservatives would work together for the shared goal of fair and virtuous governance.
This, to me, is the biggest concern. Corruption is an intrinsic part of politics, for it is rooted in human arrogance and selfishness. The big question is always, what are the decent, honest people doing about it? And, unfortunately, the answer today is, not nearly as much as we should be doing.