Overdone

According to her own advisers, Hillary can’t win even by changing the rules:

In a Clinton campaign conference call with reporters on Wednesday, three top advisers acknowledged that even if all the delegates from disputed primaries in Michigan and Florida were seated at the Democratic convention, Mrs. Clinton would still not have enough delegates to claim the nomination.

Phil Singer, a spokesman for the campaign, estimated that in a best-case event, where the Michigan and Florida delegates were apportioned according to each state’s popular vote, Mrs. Clinton would still be about 100 delegates shy of the number needed. Delegates in those states have not been counted, the penalty for holding early primaries.

So it’s difficult to see where she has a case to stay in the race (I’m a rapper) if she can’t even win via a coup d’etat.

Demanding Accountability: Ending the Spitzer-Craig Legacy

Since proposing that the U.S. political parties implement codes of conduct to provide their officials a disincentive for engaging in corrupt and illegal behaviors, I’ve taken the question of politicians’ sense of immunity around Washington. My formulation of the question usually goes sort of like this:

“Recently, we’ve seen a number of U.S. politicians get into trouble – and even ruin their political careers – by having sex with people other than their spouses and getting caught in the cover-up. How can we put an end to this practice? These acts – and I’m talking about the cover-ups – fuel the perception of the power-hungry politician serving his own interests at the expense of his constituents. And yet, the true victims in this game are the political parties and the political system, which become the target of the people’s frustration and despair. Meanwhile, ‘legal’ law has done little to deter politicians from this type of conduct. [This is where the question deviates depending on the intended respondent]. So what can the political parties do to prevent their officials and operatives from engaging in such behaviors? Can they provide a credible disincentive by enacting and enforcing codes of conduct to withdraw party support from those who hurt the party? What is the role of the primary/campaign system in recruiting people who seem time-and-again to make the same mistake? Does our political system attract certain personality types? Where does responsibility lie for the persistence of this phenomenon?”

DNC Chair Howard Dean thought a code of conduct unnecessary. He argued that Nancy Pelosi had established a credible threat by pulling Representative William J. Jefferson from the Ways and Means Committee after he was investigated by the FBI for corruption. I intervened stating that such disciplining may have some effect, but that it did little to institutionalize such standards within the fabric of the party. Moreover, I suggested, there could be an electoral benefit for the party that takes concrete steps toward ending the sense of impunity that characterizes the political culture. Dean retorted that codes of conduct need teeth and that the Republicans’ Contract with America failed because it was unenforceable. My Democracy & Governance colleagues then protested that establishing enforcement would require hurting the party in the process. Indeed, this would be an unfortunate but necessary consequence; although one that could pay off in the long run.

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The Spitzer-Craig Code of Conduct

Monday’s revelation that New York Governor Elliot Spitzer was a customer of a high-class prostitution ring, and his subsequent resignation, has raised once again the issue of politicians’ sense of immunity to law and societal norms.  It is not just in the United States, where politicians solicit sex in public restrooms and harass underage congressional pages, that uncouth and illegal behavior on the part of those responsible for making the laws bedevils the political system.  N.R. Kleinfeld’s article in the New York Times points out that power and sex go hand-in-hand, and that the fickle nature of democratic politics attracts particular personality types that thrive in democracy’s high-risk atmosphere.   So how should the U.S. address this problem? 

The purpose of a democratic political system is to engender conduct that is mutually accepted by political actors within a given society.  This occurs through the provision of incentives and disincentives that limit bad behavior and encourage good behavior.    Where a particular activity is illicit and enforceable (without exception), citizens have a disincentive to perform such an activity. 

In the United States, where adultery is not illegal, the formal rules of the political system offer little help in promoting sexual responsibility among members of congress.  One’s sexual life is typically regarded as a private matter and, indeed, it would have been unconstitutional to impeach President Clinton for having sex with Monica Lewinsky.  While adultery is not illegal per the Constitution, it defies the norms of acceptable behavior and often causes politicians to break the law.  The Lewinsky scandal is instructive of the illegal behaviors (lying under oath) to which politicians will resort in order to save face in the ‘court of public opinion.’    

Adultery, thus, is not illegal because the US Government cannot dictate how one may act in private.  However, it has a negative impact on the political system by causing people to lose faith in their representatives as well as their political parties.   In a recent speech at Duke University, Karl Rove cited the Republican Party’s manifold corruption scandals – and not the Iraq War – as the reason for the Democrats’ success in the 2006 congressional elections.   The revelation of a politician’s extramarital affairs and the corrupt behaviors that may accompany also damage the political parties.  Not all of these scandals had a sexual component, but what they do have in common is the insidious belief of the politicians involved that they would not be held accountable for their actions.  Clearly, the present structure of incentives is not doing the trick.

The Republicans and/or Democrats can combat corrupt behavior by adopting internal codes of conduct that provide real incentives and disincentives to promote good behavior.  Just as both parties penalized states that broke party rules by revoking some or all of these states’ delegates to their national conventions, so too can parties leverage their resources against members who break party rules.  Elected officials who hurt the party image by, for example, having extramarital affairs, can be docked funding from the parties’ campaign committees.  Or, those who engage in corruption while in office or in official party positions can be banned from the party.  There are many options in terms of the shapes that these rules can take and the penalties they can impose.

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