The usefulness of corruption

Listening to a story about William Jefferson on the news today made me think of something. I think it's a no-brainer that there is, and always has been, a bit of a power struggle between the Office of the President and Congress. In that type of environment, and knowing the nature of men, it's also obvious that there will be a temptation for the President to use the means at his disposal, most prominently the FBI, to gather information about various congressmen with the intent of using that information to influence them. It wouldn't surprise me if the President were aware of a lot more of the corruption going on, but just held on to that information until it became useful. In the case of Jefferson, I think the recent allegations against several republicans, namely Tom Delay and Duke Cunningham made him made him think that the democrats needed a little scandal of their own to help balance the tables before the upcoming election.

It also makes me think of other times in which this knowledge might have been used to influence members of Congress. I remember back when Bush was first pushing for a war in Iraq. The republicans supported him in this, but the majority of democrats didn't. Then there was a vote on whether to give the President the power to declare war without Congresses approval. There was some poorly defined clause in there saying that the President had to exhaust all diplomatic means first, but the President had already been arguing that we'd done that, so it was obvious what would happen. The President waited a little while so that it would appear that he was trying some kind of diplomatic solution first, then he went to war.

Congressmen aren't stupid. They knew that if this law passed, Bush would go to war. The phrasing of the law to make it look like they wanted to exhaust diplomatic means first simply allowed them to appear as if they didn't support the war.

I've always felt like this sudden, nearly unanimous, change in direction for the Democrats was a result of either bribes or threats, and the Jefferson situation kind of piece of evidence toward this. Of course, you could just believe everything at face value and believe that Jefferson is one of the few corrupt Congressmen, and that the FBI just happened to catch him at it, and that the democrats really felt that Bush would prudently exhaust all diplomatic means and only go to war reluctantly as a last resort, but that would be a bit like believing that if you only see one cockroach on your kitchen floor, that that's the only one.