They’re all alike . . .
The Washington Syndrome
WHEN HE was running for Congress just a couple of years ago, Rick Crawford was quite the reformer. He was going to vote against the federal government’s going ever deeper into debt. He was going to oppose those notorious earmarks that let individual members of Congress short-circuit the budget process—and keep all that juicy pork flowing into their districts.
Mr. Crawford signed on the dotted line when an outfit called Citizens Against Government Waste asked him to endorse its No Pork Pledge.
Yes, he was going to do lots of things, like keep his promises.
Somehow it doesn’t surprise to learn that, now that he’s The Hon. Rick Crawford of the First District of Arkansas, he’s decided that earmarks are a good thing after all. At least for his congressional district.
His reason? The same one every other congressman who ever slipped an earmark into the ever expanding federal budget has: He wanted the money. Or at least credit for getting it.
The congressman says he’s been getting calls from all kinds of interests who want him to get them an earmark. Of course he is. Folks want federal dollars, which are really our dollars, for their highway, for some other project, for this or that or the other thing. So he’s in the process of changing his mind, aka breaking his promise.
It’s a promise he should never have made. There’s always something suspicious about a politician who’s so sure of the future he can pledge never ever to raise taxes. For anything. Anything at all. As if he could be sure there would never ever be an emergency that demanded sacrifice. Like a war, or another Great Depression. But having made this promise, he should have kept it. Once a man breaks faith, he’s not likely to be trusted again. On any subject.
Tim Griffin, the congressman from the Second District, has a better idea. And he’s expressed it. “I want to see legislation that people want to vote for because it’s good legislation, not because they got something for back home.”
But the well-known Washington Syndrome is already affecting congressmen like Rick Crawford. They may talk a good game about getting the federal budget under control when they’re running, but once they’re in office, they turn out to be like all the other taxers-and-spenders. Anything to please the special interests back home.
This kind of backtrack doesn’t just erode fiscal responsibility in Washington, it erodes people’s faith in politicians in general. It’s enough to make folks wonder if all politicians are like that. Or will be after they’re elected.
WE USED to shake our heads and smile indulgently at those letters that urge voters to just vote against incumbents, any and all of them, regardless of party or reason or anything else. Just throw the rascals out. But now, the more Rick Crawfords we see crawdadding, the more we wonder if those folks don’t have a point after all.
The congressmen who argue that supporting earmarks just for their district won’t hurt anything ignore the basic ethical question everyone should ask himself before embarking on any course: Would the world be a better place if everyone did what I’m tempted to do? Kant called it the categorical imperative. (“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”)
The wholesale use of earmarks in Washington may be only one, relatively small reason why the U.S. government is going bust, but it is a reason. The practice should not be encouraged by the example now being set by the Rick Crawfords of American politics.
Once our politicians lose touch with first principles—like being careful with other people’s money and keeping their promises—they only encourage a cynicism about politics that is already entirely too widespread.
And entirely too justified.