The Impossible Act of Political Generosity

The other morning, thanks to a maladroitly tuned clock radio, I awoke to the coffee-grinder tones of Don Imus, a talk-show host best understood as the shock jock for the C-Span set. The guest on the segment that jolted me to consciousness was Connecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman, one of a bipartisan group of senators who regularly get to demonstrate their cool-kid street cred by bantering with Imus, whose morning show is simulcast on MSNBC and a national hookup of radio stations. Lieberman, acknowledging the price of admission to this rarified circle, was lavishly praising an Imus-sponsored charity. This one is a privately funded effort by the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund to build a $35-million rehabilitation facility for recent military amputees. As the host brooded on the fund’s $5-million shortfall, Lieberman eagerly volunteered to introduce an appropriations bill to make up the difference, aided by the support of the Imus Caucus in the Senate.

Too groggy to take notes, I cannot say for certain that Imus actually used the word “generous” to describe Lieberman’s charitable pork-barrel ploy. But whatever the precise language, this on-air conversation serves as a shimmering example of the elusive concept of political generosity. There was an implicit quid pro quo – valuable airtime for Lieberman in exchange for an appropriations bill written to Imus’s specifications. And the only cost to Lieberman would be a sliver of his clout as a senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Do-gooders and Imus acolytes may be tempted to argue that since building the amputee center is a laudable cause, it does not matter exactly how Lieberman was goaded into promising to fight for a congressional appropriation. But the factual problem with this potential line of attack is that the web site for the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund states unequivocally: “Since this center will be privately funded, it provides a way for individual Americans to personally support those who have sacrificed so much in service to our nation.”

Individual generosity is easy to identify, but the concept becomes muddled as soon as it is transported into the political arena. When I was originally asked to write about the topic, the only image that came to mind was former British Minister of War John Profumo – forced from office by a steamy early-1960s sex scandal – who devoted the rest of his career to charitable good works. In short, my immediate instinct was that politicians only indulge in truly altruistic behavior after they have been booted out of office.

That was, of course, just a working hypothesis. As a veteran journalist, I have been trained to test such propositions through rigorous scientific analy­sis, which mostly consists of sifting through old newspaper clips. So, like a wildcatter driven half-mad by an unerring tropism toward dry holes, I worked myself into a frenzy typing search terms into the NEXIS newspaper data base. “Politician” and “generous” within three words of each other; “senator” and “generosity” closely linked – even “congressman,” coupled with virtually everything altruistic aside from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Rather than getting the dread system-overload response (“this search has been interrupted because it will return more than 1,000 documents”), I instead could not find enough of a paper trail to light a backyard Weber grill.

Most of the articles that did pop up on my computer screen are unlikely to be cited during testimonial dinners for “Humanitarian of the Year.” Until now, I never regarded “generous” as a particularly snarky adjective. But headlines like “Developer generous to politicians” (Cleveland Plain Dealer) and “MBNA generous to politicians, especially GOP” (Wilmington News Journal) were emblematic of the true eleemosynary side of politics.

Even charitable contributions by public officials come with a read-the-fine-print back story. Connecticut Congressman Rob Simmons, who is locked in a tight reelection race, was in the news (the Norwich Bulletin) last December for donating $9,000 to a worthy local group called “Enfield Cares.” True, it might have tempered my cynicism if the $9,000 had come from Simmons’s personal checking account. Instead, the transaction was more like a money laundry. The funds being donated were originally an intraparty gift to Simmons from Duke Cunningham, a fellow Republican who had recently resigned from the House after pleading guilty to federal bribery charges.

What could be more selfless than a senator with a secure seat, spending long days on the road in a nonelection year helping other members of his party? Of course, this altruistic behavior just possibly might mask a lingering flicker of self-interest. In the spring of 2005, the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call noted that John Kerry had been more “generous with his time and money to this point” helping other Democratic candidates than anyone else in the party. But rather than viewing Kerry’s good works as evidence that the 2004 nominee had moved beyond ambition into a more saintly realm, Roll Call preferred the world-weary interpretation that the Massachusetts senator “has an eye on a return run for president.”

Against this dreary landscape, one politician stands out as a model of big-hearted magnanimity. According to the Connecticut Post, former state senator Ernest E. Newton II regarded himself as “a modern-day Robin Hood – reaching into his campaign fund to help his [Bridgeport] constituents pay their rent, turn on their lights, and buy food.” Newton underscored his State Senator Bountiful philosophy when he told reporters, “I used the money to help other people.” Unfortunately, Newton was speaking just after pleading guilty to three federal charges stemming from the way that the defrocked legislator redeployed $40,682 of his campaign funds for unspecified personal purposes.

To better understand the oxymoronic nature of political generosity, I decided it would be helpful to dissect the psyche of the type of American megalomaniacal or foolhardy enough to seek major public office. The human guinea pig strapped to the specimen table and offered for your at-home psychoanalysis is none other than (drum roll, please) me.

More than three decades ago – while a penniless twenty-five-year-old history graduate student craving an exit strategy from academic life – I declared my candidacy for Congress. My public rationale for impetuously embarking on a political career was my passionate opposition to the Vietnam War. In truth, I was also swayed by the title of a Norman Mailer book, Advertisements for Myself, a collection of miscellany that I had never actually read. Campaigning for public office seemed a socially respectable pretext for engaging in shameless self-promotion – and, better yet, this orgy of hucksterism would be paid for with other people’s campaign checks.

During the six months leading up to the Democratic primary, I played the part of a politician so well that I virtually became one. My new glad-handing persona brought with it the blinding revelation that every social interaction in my daily life held a potential political payoff. The high-minded philosophy of “What’s in it for me?” dominated every breath I took. Friends no longer were boon companions; instead, they were transformed by my personal calculus into would-be headquarters volunteers and campaign donors. A casual street-corner conversation with an acquaintance about his vacation plans segued into a pointed reminder about the need to get an absentee ballot.

If I bantered with the clerk at the dry cleaner that cared for my lone suit, my hidden agenda was to motivate him to go to the polls on primary day. If I smiled at an old lady wearing a jaunty hat despite her eight decades, I was not admiring her indomitable spirit, but cynically trying to woo a voter. By primary day, the odds of my doing a good deed without anyone watching were on par with my chances of personally bringing peace to Vietnam that very day.

Politics, of course, does not hold a monopoly on insincerity. Networking has long been regarded as a strategy for net-worthing. When an insurance agent gives up three nights a week to coach Little League, he may be simultaneously acting as a deeply involved parent and using his child’s athletic career as a way of trolling for clients. But even a divorce lawyer who hands out her business cards at weddings or a real estate broker who hosts welcome-to-the-neighborhood cocktail parties retains a zone of personal life apart from workaholic frenzy.

Successful politicians are different. The adulation and sycophancy that accompany high-level elective office are addictive; the never-ending political season and the quick-react rigors of the 24-hour news cycle are debilitating. A legislator, a governor, or a big-city mayor never gets to turn it off – profession and personality become permanently fused. Take your standard-issue, square-jawed, future-facing, sound-bite-spouting, backbench congressman. About the only relationships he has that are not sullied by insincerity are his “friendships” with lobbyists, since both sides in that equation know the point of golf junkets and campaign swag.

For those obsessed with the next election, even simple human gestures that most people take for granted raise questions about underlying motives. British social scientist Richard Titmuss in his 1971 study, The Gift Relationship, portrayed giving blood to an anonymous recipient as the gold standard in altruistic behavior. This transaction seems a tad less high-minded when the blood donor is a House member who has shaken every hand at the Red Cross facility. Are a legislator’s personal gifts to charity based on some semblance of generosity or just predicated on the fear that he may have to publicly release his tax returns? When he writes a college letter of recommendation for an eighteen-year-old whose family he has known for years, is this a favor to a friend or a quid pro quo for a political contribution? Is penning a note of condolence an acknowledgment of shared grief or a way of ensuring that the widow will still volunteer on election day? Small wonder that the most authentic moments in the public lives of most politicians are temper tantrums directed at hapless, but ever-loyal staffers.

That is why in the taxonomy of altruism, political generosity is akin to a unicorn. There have been fabled sightings, pictures, probably even tapestries. But when you examine the evidence closely, these purportedly generous acts by elected officials turn out to be maneuvers of that old devil self-interest in disguise. Courage is easy to locate in the political firmament, since every president (Bill Clinton landing troops in Haiti, George W. Bush resisting his conservative base on immigration) does something in defiance of his pollster. Bipartisan glimmers of civility can still occasionally be found in the quiet nooks of the Capitol, assuming, of course, that there are no TV cameras within sight. But generosity in the White House or Congress would seem to be a mythological beast.

Whether a liberal or a conservative, a Democrat or a Republican, each politician knows that he must promise the voters something if he does not want to end up bereft and alone in an empty hotel ballroom on election night drinking vodka straight from the bottle. (Legendary political prankster Dick Tuck tried a different approach in a 1966 state-senate race in California, campaigning on the ultimate truth-in-government slogan: “The job needs Tuck. And Tuck needs the job.” He lost.) A Republican might peddle tax cuts and a Democrat might hawk healthcare programs, but in both cases they expect to be rewarded for their policy stances. That is why it is nearly impossible to separate anything a politician does in office from his obvious interest in getting himself reelected.

My own politics are a shade left of center and, yes, I have been known to discreetly carry burnt offerings to the shrine of Big Government. But even from this tax-and-spend perspective, I find it ludicrous to praise a politician for his generosity in lavishing public funds on anything, be it ballet troupes or battalions of troops. As I write these words, I hear in my mind’s ear the current president shouting his ax-the-tax mantra during the 2000 campaign: “It’s your money.” In that narrow sense, Bush was right – taxes do primarily come from individuals. Presidents or legislators who dispense that revenue may rightly be described as farsighted, patriotic, shrewd, inattentive, wasteful, or even corrupt, but never generous because (repeat after me) it’s your money.

So, sadly we must conclude that political gen­erosity is as oxymoronic a concept as the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee or [fill in your own joke here]. Except, of course, when it comes to politicians like Joe Lieberman who are regulars on the Imus show, where they can preen at every fawning reference to their legislative generosity with your money.