The stink of scandal in Washington is so fierce that charities are reaping a surprise financial windfall

Published January 11, 2006

WASHINGTON -- It is not healthy to blow your favorite evening beverage through your nostrils. But that's how surprised I was to hear Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean deny that any Democrats had taken money from Jack Abramoff, a formerly well-connected Republican who has pleaded guilty to federal charges tied to his lobbying operations. Right-wing bloggers and others pounced on Dean and flailed away, since a number of Democratic senators and representatives had already handed over their Abramoff-associated money to charity. How, then, could Dean say otherwise?

But I checked it out and, guess what? Dean was right. Although Democrats and Republicans did, in fact, receive money from Abramoff's clients, only Republicans received personal donations from Abramoff.

Yet some journalists, particularly in the shorthand of TV news, have given a different impression. Trying excruciatingly hard to sound fair and balanced, they have framed Abramoff's donations as bipartisan.

One example is in the question veteran CNN newsman Wolf Blitzer addressed to Dean: "Should Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff ... give that money to charity or give it back?"

"There are no Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff," Dean answered. "Not one. Not one single Democrat. ...There is no evidence that Jack Abramoff ever gave any Democrat any money, and we've looked through all those [Federal Election Commission] reports to make sure that's true."

He's right, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, which keeps track of such things. The center's analysis of FEC records shows that Democrats received about a third of the $4.2 million donated between 1998 and 2005 by Indian tribes that had hired Abramoff to represent them in Washington.

The problem with such analyses is that they tell you how much money someone gave to a political candidate without telling you why the money was given. By all indications, donations from the Indian tribes were no less legitimate than the political donations any individual, organization or industry with an interest in legislation frequently gives to candidates. If anything, the tribes are the true victims in the Abramoff saga. Federal investigators claim Abramoff used racist slurs when he referred to his Indian clients in his e-mails and represented rival tribes competing for the same casino turf, the mother of all conflicts of interest.

Nevertheless, the stink of scandal is so fierce in Washington these days that numerous Democratic as well as Republican senators and representatives have been giving money to charity equal to the amount they received from tribes linked to Abramoff in order to avoid even the appearance of wrongdoing.

As a result, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), for example, gave up a measly $2,000 donation she received from a tribe and the Bush-Cheney campaign gave up a $6,000 donation. But as Democrats are quick to point out, the Bush campaign kept the $100,000 that Abramoff directly raised, which earned Abramoff the coveted "Pioneer" status among Bush campaign donors.

The Abramoff scandal, like some of the other high-profile dustups in Congress, is fundamentally a Republican scandal, if only because Republicans are so unquestionably in charge of Congress. To the victors go the spoils and the spoilage.

Worse, Republicans came to power in 1994, taking over both houses with a promise to clean out the foul odor of earlier scandals caused by Democrats. Now, as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other thinking conservatives have pointed out, the stench of scandal is made even more foul for the GOP by the whiff of hypocrisy.

Now this scandal is moving through the same phases as other major scandals that have come before it. First comes the finger-pointing, then the contrition and the investigations and proposed legislation to finally--Finally!--clean up the mess in Washington. Yet the reforms that followed the scandals of Watergate or Abscam or former House Speaker Jim Wright and various others have inevitably led to new loopholes that open the way to new scandals.

The good news is that these days, Congress is more trustworthy, contrary to the public's impressions in the polls, precisely because new regulations have made the process of raising and spending money on political candidates and lobbying more transparent. Reform-minded senators like John McCain, (R-Ariz.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and representatives like Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) are introducing legislation that would require even more reporting requirements and restrictions on relations between lobbyists and members of Congress.

That's the right way to go. We'll never eliminate the love of money from politics, but like the love between teenagers who try to sneak around behind their parents' backs, we can try to shine brighter lights on it.