Washington's ugly underside

Jack Abramoff's sleazy run comes to an end

Published January 5, 2006 at midnight

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As is frequently observed of the young idealists who flock to the nation's capital, "They came to do good and stayed to do well." Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich applies it to the Republican Revolution he led in 1994.

And, as pundit Andrew Ferguson said in an article reflecting conservatives' dismay that the Republicans who had come to Washington to drain the swamp were instead often seen wallowing in it, "Sometime around 1995, Republicans in Washington stopped using the term 'Beltway Bandits.'"

The culmination of the realization that with victory go spoils was then- House GOP leader Tom DeLay's "K Street Project," in which Congress' most powerful Republican basically told corporations and trade associations, "If you want your legislation passed, your voice heard on Capitol Hill, hire GOP lobbyists and donate to GOP campaigns." Even by Washington standards, this was pretty brazen.

One who responded to that offer was an aggressive and resourceful lobbyist named Jack Abramoff, who hired two of DeLay's top aides and began a cash-fueled campaign of lavish trips, luxury boxes and entertainment for lawmakers on behalf of his clients, mostly casino-owning Indian tribes.

On Tuesday, Abramoff plea bargained to three felonies - fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe Rep. Robert Ney of Ohio, one of the '94 Republican revolutionaries but now comfortably installed as chairman of a House committee.

Earlier, ex-DeLay aide and former Abramoff partner, Michael Scanlon, pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe members of Congress and, like his old boss, he too is cooperating with federal prosecutors.

Across Washington, politicians - including President Bush and GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert - were returning or donating to charity campaign contributions from Abramoff-related donors. And all of Washington, as the saying goes, is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Although some Democrats may have been involved, this scandal is so far largely a Republican one. "Revolution" was always a grandiose term to describe the GOP's congressional takeover, but this week's events do seem to prove the adage that revolutionaries eventually become the people they rebelled against.

The impressive scale of the corruption also points to another unfortunate reality: Ethical vacuums such as Abramoff wouldn't enjoy such opportunity to begin with if the federal government weren't increasingly dictating society's winners and losers through its mindbogglingly complex regulatory and tax systems.

In its essence, though, inluence-peddling of the Abramoff sort is almost as old as the capital itself - as are its tawdry, pedestrian motives. They came to do good. Stayed to do well. And some got indicted.

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