Sarah Chayes comments on American kleptocracy

Chayes and her new book

on corruption

The NYT published a guest opinion by Sarah Chayes (not paywalled), a long time critic of corruption in government:

Democrats Have a Corruption Problem. 

They Can’t Keep Ignoring It.

For the past eight years and across two impeachment trials, the Democratic Party has defined itself in opposition to Donald Trump’s corruption, assailing the ways he abused the presidency for his own financial and political benefit. But with Mayor Eric Adams of New York fighting a federal corruption indictment, former Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey awaiting sentencing for a similar fraud and bribery scheme and numerous California officials sitting in federal prison, it’s hard to deny that corruption is a bipartisan problem.

For a party that wraps itself in the mantle of truth and integrity, pointing across the aisle and saying “they’re worse” is not good enough. For the sake of their electoral fortunes, not to mention the country they purport to serve, Democrats must show voters a serious plan to curb corruption and corporate crime — including within their own ranks.

Mr. Adams is accused of hitting up Turkish executives for campaign contributions and disguising their illegal origins via front donors. .... The betrayal of public trust alleged here is shocking: The mayor of New York may have tampered with fire safety provisions for a Manhattan skyscraper — to please a foreign government.

Since 1987, U.S. Supreme Court justices appointed by Democrats have largely concurred in a series of decisions narrowing what legally qualifies as corruption. One, which raised the requirements for an exchange of gifts for services to be considered a bribe, contributed to the failure of the first corruption prosecution against Mr. Menendez in 2017.

Although liberal justices dissented in the most recent such ruling — which legalized what amounts to bribes, so long as the money is paid after the official renders the service — almost all the previous votes in these cases were unanimous.

Democratic Party leadership supported Mr. Menendez in his 2018 primary race, despite that first corruption prosecution. And it was Democratic lawmakers who stripped the wide-ranging ethics provisions out of a 2021 political reform bill called the For the People Act and joined Republicans in fighting legislation curbing stock trades by members of Congress and their families.

With this kind of track record, Democrats’ effort to contrast themselves with the lawlessness of Mr. Trump’s Republicans can be taken only so seriously. Committed partisans will always look past their own party’s wrongdoing, but in a race this close, Democrats need to make a convincing case to uncommitted voters.

The way corruption is prosecuted and reported on — as one-off scandals committed by these individuals at a specific point in time — camouflages what may be modern corruption’s greatest evil: It is at its heart a system of exclusion, designed to reserve ongoing access to political and monetary gain to a close-knit group of insiders.

Around the world, and increasingly in the United States, networks of public officials, financiers, business executives, philanthropists and even out-and-out criminals have used corrupt practices to monopolize public power. These networks repurpose the levers of government to serve their private interests at the expense of the public and to ensure their own impunity.

Even in the few weeks left before November’s election, forceful and forthright support for measures like these may drive home this key distinction between the two parties that Democrats are trying to draw. Such a campaign, and real follow-through, would put the Democratic Party where its name suggests it ought to be: leading the fight to wrest American democracy away from cliques of elite insiders and giving it back to the people.

Chayes was an NPR reporter before she left to do other things, including fighting political corruption. She wrote a book that was published in 2015, Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security (my book review). Thieves made it easy for me to see the scope, depth and power of America's kleptocratic pay-to-play political system. Our system is inherently significantly (mostly?) anti-democratic and pro-authoritarian.