Trump’s Swamp Things

I cannot think of a better time to talk about draining the swamp.

After all, we’ve got swampy weather. Plus a president whose administration is setting records for boggy behavior. ‘Tis the season.

People, what do you think originally inspired Donald Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” if he was elected? Do you think he repressed the whole matter of his tax returns? The hush money payments to Stormy and Company? He did say during his campaign that the swamp was the “entire corrupt Washington establishment,” so maybe he presumed that slimy things occurring in New York or Florida didn’t count.

Ah, well, let’s look ahead. Autumn is coming, temperatures will be falling and the Democrats will be running on a neo-Drainage platform.

“The swamp has never been more foul or more fetid than under this president,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, when he and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi held a press conference on the steps of the Capitol to unveil a good-government agenda called “A Better Deal for Our Democracy.” It’s part of the overall Democratic election theme “A Better Deal.”

OK, the last one was an old quiz show. On the reform front, Better Deal has a lot of pieces, like making it easier for people to register to vote, increasing the political power of small donors and stronger ethics guidelines.

Who could possibly be against any of that? Well, somebody must, since they’ve never become law. Actually, while Republicans have in recent years been the big brake on reform, anything that affects elections makes elected officials nervous. So it’s important to show a lot of enthusiasm when these ideas come up. Even if the words “campaign finance reform” cause your eyes to glaze over, look excited. This is our moment.

Anti-swamp proposals are bubbling up all over. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is pushing for an Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act, known to some friends as ACPIA. (None of these plans seem to have memorable acronyms. What this country needs is a reform package named Stop Weasels And Miserable Politicians.)

Anyhow, Warren’s basic idea is to unravel some of the ties between the federal government and the corporate world that government is supposed to regulate. So you couldn’t just leave your seat in Congress and go to work for a big financial or lobbying firm.

There’s a lot of subsurface hostility to this in Congress. The members, who get around $174,000 a year (plus benefits), frequently convince themselves they’re making a great financial sacrifice that will pay off later when they return to the private sector. Some can’t even wait that long, like Rep. Duncan Hunter of California ...

Yes! We are going to get back to Duncan Hunter, the Republican who just got indicted for spending more than a quarter of a million dollars in campaign funds for personal items that included airplane fare for the family rabbit. That was hardly the most outrageous thing Hunter did with the cash, but it is my experience that when you want to point out something particularly weird about a politician, it’s often useful to examine the way he transports furry pets.

The Trump era makes our normal problems with political ethics explode like spectacular, sleazy fireworks. It’s not unusual for public servants to recycle themselves into lucrative jobs in lobbying or business. But this administration has been distinguished by the number of people who can’t even wait until they leave the government to start getting payback.

For instance, there’s the head of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency who got his staff to help his wife when she was trying to get a Chick-fil-A franchise. We like this story because it’s such a stupendously tawdry case of greed — a lot like good old Congressman Hunter pretending golf clothes he purchased with campaign donations were really sports equipment for wounded warriors.

This fall could make a big difference. If the Democrats win a majority in the House, both parties need to feel that the voters demanded change because they want cleaner government. Not sure all the signals are going that way. Right now, polling in Hunter’s district seems to suggest he can still get re-elected this fall. “A lot of his constituents say either ‘fake news’ or ‘Let’s wait for the trial and conviction,'” said Steven Erie, a professor emeritus of political science at UC San Diego.

Hunter’s district is, as you can probably tell, very conservative. It’s also very safe — he inherited the seat from his father. Pre-scandal, there weren’t a lot of Democrats standing in line to get a chance to run against him, and his opponent, Ammar Campa-Najjar, is a relative political newcomer. Cross your fingers and see if voters in a red district will be willing to take a stand against corruption and elect a Palestinian-Mexican-American millennial to represent them in Washington.