RALEIGH – Former House Speaker Jim Black will soon be a felon. He’ll serve time. He’ll give up the southern Mecklenburg House seat he defended by the skin of his teeth back in November. His political career will be remembered primarily for squalid scandal. His aides and allies paid a steep price for participating in a corrupt political machine. His downfall coincided with the passage of new state legislation intended to require more disclosure and brighten ethical lines in the practice of lobbying and lawmaking in the state capital.
It’s all been said or predicted, many times before. Is there, in fact, anything fresh or important left to say about the Jim Black scandals? Let me try my hand at two additional observations.
First, the Jim Black affair demonstrates the temptation to conclude that the ends justify the means. Many, many politicians of all stripes truly believe their policy goals are so important that they must “play the game,” by which they mean break the law or transgress ethical boundaries in order to serve a greater good.
I think Black wasn’t just an arrogant power-tripper. I think he believed that Democratic control of the General Assembly was so important to the interests of the state, and his own position was so important to the interests of the Charlotte region and other urban communities, that it was worth negotiating pay-to-play deals with special-interest lobbies to generate sufficient campaign funds to maintain power. Some Democrats recently converted to the “chase that man out of my party!” team of much-maligned Joe Sinsheimer once marveled at Black’s leadership skills and fundraising prowess, crediting him with keeping power in Raleigh despite contrary electoral trends. Now they are running away from him lickety-split. Perhaps after they finish their sprint, and are doubled over catching their breath, these politicians will be honest enough to admit their own complicity in the Black corruption.
Many state Republicans need to lose the gleeful smile and conduct a similar self-examination. What were they prepared to countenance in an attempt to maintain power on Capitol Hill? How vociferously did they criticize the Republican Congress for wasteful federal spending, largesse to benefit special-interest constituencies, and ethical laxity in dealings with lobbyists and donors? When Republicans briefly held the majority in the North Carolina House, did they cry foul when leaders sought to punish business groups that didn’t pony up? Or did they just shake their head, mumble something about “that’s how the game is played,” and tell themselves that the greater good required their continuance in office?
Government power is inescapably important and dangerous. It is the power to tax, to subsidize, to regulate – it is, in short, the power of organized, domesticated violence. I’m not saying that politics isn’t a serious enterprise, and that politicians and activists will ever be anything but thoroughly convinced that their cause is just, their ideas are valid, and their victory is essential. But the end cannot justify the means. If the “other side” appears poised to win unless you play a dirty trick, bribe an opponent, or sell legislative access for quick cash, then let the other side win. It’s not worth it. Another election will soon come. One salutary feature of the system of government the American Founders set up is that it moves slowly. It takes a long time for ideas to become legislation and then law. Then they can be repealed.
The other point worth considering is that successful politicians, activists, and commentators avoid cocooning. That is, they avoid spending an inordinate amount of time talking only with like-minded people and only with those who have a strong personal or financial interest in flattery and affirmation. For many Democratic officeholders and lobbyists at the General Assembly, Jim Black’s impending federal incarceration comes as a shock. It shouldn’t. He’s been a dead man walking for months. But because they lived in the Black cocoon, they believed his reassuring nonsense and saw the scandal stories as inventions of the conservative media conspiracy. (Nope, not kidding.)
It’s similar to the problem some GOP-leaning politicos and pundits exhibited last fall when they discounted polling and other trends and insisted that the Republican Congress was in no danger. They needed to get out of their cocoon, read and talk with knowledgeable people outside their comfortable political circles, and most importantly resolve to trust the data instead of trying to rationalize them away.
These two temptations – to justify means with ends and to cocoon – share a common element of hubris. It’s no mistake that the great Greek tragedians made so much of hubris as a plot point. It lies underneath many, perhaps most human failings. And it explains why Jim Black, once feted, will now be fettered.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.