Newt is Half Right

It is virtually axiomatic that whenever there's a big scandal, the closer you get to the beltway the smaller the imagination gets when it comes to proposing related reforms.

We saw that with Enron. A very limited set of reforms was passed that focused on the accounting industry and minor corporate governance changes. Although the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable have been screaming in feigned pain ever since, in truth these were tepid reforms that did nothing to address a variety of significant factors that contributed to the epidemic of fraud, including tort reform laws (e.g. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act), deregulation (e.g. of energy, telecoms, banking and derivatives), pension abuses, and the perverse incentives embedded in the executive compensation system.

Now that we're witnessing the "Enron of lobbying," it's safe to predict that Congress will respond with meager attempts at reform, while they position themselves to take partisan advantage of the moment. Sure, there will be some tightening up of lobbying disclosure and revolving door rules. And that would be an improvement. (E.g. right now you can get Senate lobbying reports online, but not from the House.) But that's not going to do much in the long run.

It was Newt Gingrich of all people who told Jeff Birnbaum and Dan Baltz of the Washington Post that the Abramoff scandal should trigger a broader view in Congress of the way politicians finance campaigns and deal with lobbyists:

"I'm going to talk at length about the need for us to rethink not just lobbying but the whole process of elections, incumbency protection and the way in which the system has evolved...I think Abramoff is just part of a large pattern that has got to be rethought."

Whoah! Newt's sounding like a blurb on the back of Hacker and Pierson's superb book, Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy. That tells you how big this thing is.

Nevertheless, despite the dramatic shakeout that we expect will ensue, as far as systemic change, Congress is not where the action will be. And it's important tha we accept that fact and begin to debate how far-reaching change can really come about.

To crack the system open enough to make people outside DC believe real change is occuring, we will have to undo the insurmountable advantages that incumbents have in all but a few districts, get rid of the winner-take-all system of voting (Instant Runoff Voting is beginning to take hold in towns across the country), get corporations out of politics (starting with voting machines, but also involvement in referenda and other areas deemed to be corporate "speech"), and push for the further spread of publicly funded (voter-owned) elections, free air time for candidates, the growth of viable third party candidacies, etc.

These are the kind of reforms that we need to address how the "system has evolved" -- the kind of reforms that groups like Fair Vote and Public Campaign and their allies have been pushing for years.

The energy for these starts at local and state level, not at the top. Although we should raise a ruckus in the wake of Abramoff's fall, we can't expect Congress, esp. those members who will be distracted by partisan sniping and damage control, to lead the way.