On Capitol Hill, shame takes a summer recess

Shame used to be a bigger deal. Who can forget then-South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s weepy apology for ducking work to visit his Argentine paramour in 2009? Or cyclist Lance Armstrong confessing to Oprah Winfrey in 2013 of living “one big lie” about his use of performance-enhancing drugs?

Public figures actually were humiliated when caught red-handed. These days, not so much. Judging from two recent cases on Capitol Hill, if shame isn’t dead, it’s on life support.

Earlier this month, Rep. Chris Col- lins, R-N.Y., was indicted on enough insider trading charges to put him away for 150 years after he allegedly called his son from a congressional picnic at the White House to tip him off on confidential corporate information. Collins has denounced the charges as “meritless” and says he looks forward “to being fully vindicated and exonerated.”

Then there’s the breathtaking brazenness of Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and his wife, Margaret, who are accused of callously using campaign donations like their own personal checking account, according to a 47-page federal indictment returned last week.

Campaign money allegedly went for vacations in Italy and Hawaii; shopping at Costco, Walmart and Target; groceries, theater tickets, greens fees, cosmetics, a garage door, video games, Under Armour shorts, airfare for a pet rabbit and 30 shots of tequila at a bachelor’s party. And that’s just a partial list.

The couple so mismanaged personal finances, overdrawing their bank account 1,100 times in seven years, that they relied on political contributions to keep their water from being turned off. According to the indictment, brought by a U.S. attorney appointed by the Trump administration, the Hunters doubled down on their chutzpah with lies, claiming the money was going to charity or to help wounded veterans.

This wasn’t just big donor bucks flagrantly frittered away. Tens of thousands of dollars poured in from average constituents giving small sums to support Hunter and his fiscally conservative politics.

“I would suspect that many of the people who gave a $20 donation did so ... because they liked what he promised to do in office. They were not sending the $20 so that Congressman Hunter could buy himself a pair of golf shoes,” says Brendan Fischer, with the nonpartisan watchdog group Campaign Legal Center.

Hunter has pleaded not guilty, is still running for re-election, and has started blaming his wife for what went wrong. Charming.

Like all criminal defendants, Collins and Hunter are entitled to a presumption of innocence. But perhaps it’s not a coincidence that they were the first two House members to endorse Donald Trump, who lives by the “always attack, never apologize” credo of one of his mentors, the late lawyer Roy Cohn.

Trump’s brazen approach hasn’t had any significant impact on his standing with his base. Maybe that’s why it has been embraced by other ethically challenged politicians.

And that’s a shame.

DAVID MAUNG/EPA-EFE Protest in San Diego on Thursday.