We are so over quid pro quo scandals

Anyone who’s ever been to a public meeting anywhere in the Mat-Su Valley — be it city or borough government, or for that matter, utility co-op meetings — knows who Eugene Haberman is.

He’s the well-dressed, stately gentleman standing in the back with glasses that remain professorially cocked atop his forehead until it’s time for public comments. That’s when it’s go-time. The glasses drop into place and Eugene goes to work, spending his allotted three minutes mercilessly pounding the powers-that-be over the multitudinous infractions of parliamentary procedure they’ve committed just within the hour.

These peccadilloes, he asserts, are violations of open meeting laws, and whether intended or not, are depriving the public of its right to know what its government is doing.

I’m sure that on virtually every occasion, Eugene is — by the letter of the law — dead-bang right. And though he can come off a bit dramatic, you never doubt — unlike the case of the Boy who Cried Wolf — his heart is in the right place, even if the effect is the same.

But neither I, nor the general public, is going to jump at every cry of wolf based on errors in procedure.

While they may be worth pointing out, they don’t prove nefarious intentions. In other words, even if the governing body was intentionally eschewing open meetings laws, that doesn’t prove in any way that it is was trying to pull a fast one.

Reading last weekend’s Alaska Dispatch News story of Congressman Don Young’s failure to disclose interest in a family farm that was sold a year ago in a timely manner, felt a little like listening to a Eugene Haberman rant.

To catch you up real quick: Young’s family sold a farm in California last year, of which he inherited one-third of the value. Young said he forgot to disclose this to Congress, but, the piece infers, this is highly doubtful based upon Young’s long history of ethically questionable behavior that’s earned him the rebuke of even his own party leadership in the House.

After a long retelling of these past sins, comes what would seem to be the smoking gun, the new revelation — the amount in unreported revenue Young received from the oil and gas exploration company that had rights to resources found on the property. This 2001 lease, which, the piece says Young still hasn’t reported, paid him “$4,100 over a three-year period,” according to Young’s spokesman, a figure the piece doesn’t dispute.

My first thought was that this key part was kind of buried, because, after all, how much influence of a congressman with extensive wealth do you really think $4,100 could buy?

Nevertheless, the story was picked up and run with as scandal-bait by the Daily Kos and Huffington Post, left-wing sites eager to see a long-held Republican seat turn blue in November. Here in Alaska, Dems feel good about their House candidate in former public radio executive Steve Lindbeck, who undoubtedly has lots of friends in the Anchorage media.

The problem I had with the story — or at least the way it was presented — was much the problem I have with Eugene’s diatribes. Both make the assumption that an error in procedure, coupled with once-upon-a-time incidents of unethical behavior, cherrypicked from the annals of history, equal a new scandal.

My second thought was that kickback stories just don’t have an affect anymore on a voting populace that thinks the whole governmental process is so broken, it hardly matters at all if any individual palms have been greased.

When people think of corruption these days, they think of the system as a whole. They think of the Citizens United decision or the military industrial complex, or the pharmaceutical industry, or other massive lobbying organizations strong-arming the whole body — not any one person.

They don’t associate scandal anymore with an individual lawmaker getting a few thousand bucks to get a widget factory built in his district, or being lavished with an all-expense paid trip to the Bahamas.

Look no further than the Supreme Court’s decision in June to throw out the conviction of ex-Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, which had based on outdated, small-time contentions of classic quid pro quo corruption. (He was convicted of taking $175,000 in gifts from a guy he had apparently a few too many meetings with).

Even the legal system thinks we’ve evolved beyond bribery and kickbacks — that our corruption runs too deep to be reflected in any ‘gifts’ to any individuals.

And if you still don’t believe me that people don’t care anymore about quid pro quo scandals, take a look at the 2016 presidential race.

Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump ran entire, and wildly successful, campaigns on the contention that the whole system is corrupt. And yet, come November, both will have been beaten by the candidate with perhaps the most personal scandal baggage in the history of American politics.

Sanders said it best in his first debate with Hillary Clinton, though he probably wished he hadn’t a couple months later: “Madam Secretary, I’m tired of hearing about your damn e-mails.”

Whether we want to admit it or not, we agree.