Honorable, Every Last One of Them

By Rick Horowitz

Once I was a cynic. A skeptic. I was quick to raise doubts, to peer behind the masks and beneath the surfaces. "Things are seldom what they seem" -- that was my approach to life.

From time to time, I would even apply this approach to politics. It was not a pretty sight.

I would turn my cynicism, my skepticism, on politics and those who were its most celebrated practitioners. Their exalted rank, the esteem in which they were held by others, was no deterrent to me. To the contrary: It was precisely these "players," these giants astride the political landscape, who received my sharpest scrutiny.

It seemed only fitting. After all, these were the men (and occasionally the women) who competed for the highest stakes, whose words and deeds had the greatest impact on the rest of us. Shouldn't they be the first ones to have their deceits and hypocrisies laid bare, their hidden motives poked and probed and exposed to the cool, clear light of day?

But I don't do that anymore.

I've changed my attitude. Now I give everyone, even politicians, the benefit of the doubt. "Take people at their word" -- that's my new approach to life. It makes things so much simpler.

With my old attitude, for instance, I might have found myself troubled by the recent discussions about reforming the way our political campaigns are financed. It would have been hard, for instance, to ignore the prominent role played in those discussions by the President of the United States. Hard to overlook the vigor with which Bill Clinton has been putting Congress on the spot, has been calling on Republicans in Congress to help clean up the system.

I might have noted that the current attention to campaign-finance reform is almost entirely due to the raft of abuses visited on the current system by the President's own re-election campaign. It might have occurred to me that the President's interest in the future of campaign financing seems to increase precisely as various investigators drill more deeply into the past.

And I surely would have noticed, churl that I once was, that at the very moment he was calling for driving big money out of campaigns, the President was busying himself at fundraiser after fundraiser, raking in: the big money.

In light of all of this, could I possibly have resisted the urge to wonder aloud whether the President's passion for cleaning up the system was due to two factors, and two factors alone?

1. They caught him elbow deep in the cookie jar.

2. He never has to run for anything ever again.

To the previous me -- the cynical, skeptical me, that is -- the inconsistencies would have been maddening, the urge to cry out nearly overwhelming. Perhaps I'd have sounded nearly as outraged as Newt Gingrich sounds.

Newt Gingrich sounds perfectly outraged.

The Speaker of the House has been firing ever-louder salvos at the Clinton team's conduct during the last campaign. "A campaign of illegality and illegitimacy," he calls it. Reforming the current system is pointless, he says, as long as the other side is so willing to violate the rules already on the books. If anything, he argues, we need fewer restrictions on campaign funding.

To the previous me, the Speaker's strategy might have seemed transparent. Republicans, I'd remind myself, have always had better access to large donors than Democrats do. The fewer the restrictions on campaign contributions, the bigger the advantage Republicans will continue to enjoy.

As for "illegality and illegitimacy," the cynical, skeptical me would have been hard-pressed to put aside the memory of the Speaker playing footsie with the tax code, forced just months ago to own up (in his fashion) to ethical violations, compelled to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties.

I might have wondered, considering all of that, if Newt Gingrich was truly the most suitable person to be lecturing the President on misbehavior, to be staking a claim to the moral high ground. I might even have suggested that the Speaker stick a sock in it.

But I don't do that anymore.

10/1/97