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The intensity of the furor about Rubbergate
is
difficult to understand. Unlike every other Washington
scandal in recent memory, the House bank didn't cost
taxpayers anything. Check-kiting didn't result in special
favors for campaign contributors or well-connected
lobbyists. It didn't subvert the constitution that they all
swore to protect.
So why are people more upset about this than about the Keating Five, Iranamok, the honorarium circuit and assorted sexual escapades ranging from secretaries who can't type to a male prostitution ring being run out of a representative's house?
The logic appears to be this: representatives, by definition, are supposed to represent normal Americans like us. Not only do our banks get rather testy about short checks, but our attempts at alchemy (turning paper into rubber just by adding ink) may attract attention from the local prosecuting attorney.
Further, we get parking tickets and often waste much time looking for a place to park, a problem that you don't have in Washington if you have a representative's license plates on the car. We must figure out how to pay doctor and hospital and insurance bills; they have free medical care.
If representatives live in a pampered and isolated environment, free of the aggravations and annoyances of normal American life, they forget how their constituents live. Little wonder, for instance, that they see no need for a health plan for the rest of us -- they already have the finest in socialized medicine.
Thus they are no longer representative in one sense of
the word -- the sense that a pollster uses when he says he
has a representative sample
of the population.
But there are two ways to look at representation. Suppose you need an attorney to represent you. Do you want her to be fretting about the balance in her checking account? Or about a parking place or a doctor's bill or getting her best power outfit back from the dry cleaner's in time for an important court appearance? Wouldn't you feel better about the work she does on your behalf if she had no mundane concerns, so that she could focus all her attention on representing you?
If we look at representation in that sense, then we're better off if our representatives ride in stretch limos and never worry about their next meal.
That way, they'll have the time and energy to perform the significant acts we sent them to Washington to do: hustle EPA grants for new sewage-treatment plants, fight against military base closures in their districts, contend with the federal bureaucracy on behalf of a late pension check, converse with citizens exercising their constitutional right to petition the government for redress of their grievances (also known as lobbyists), and so forth.
Even if every incumbent is replaced, the problem won't go away until we figure out how they're supposed to represent us -- as normal folks who just happen to land in Washington, or as skilled agents working on our behalf.
(You read it here first: Some months ago, I predicted that George Bush would find a war if Pat Buchanan got more than 25 percent of the New Hampshire vote. Buchanan did, and Bush has decided to launch an air war against Iraq if it does not meet a March 26 deadline for destroying its weapons of mass destruction.)
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