That might be flashy, but there’s far worse:
From Dick Meyer at NPR on Blago and Made-off:
As audacious as Blagojevich’s political gluttony is, it is easy to find far worse political corruption, much of it perfectly legal: Distorting intelligence to invade Iraq, torturing prisoners, failure to regulate Wall Street, and systematic pork-barrel boondoggling come quickly to mind. If you’re feeling expansive, how about depriving unemployed and underemployed people of health insurance, rural and poor urban people of decent schools, or veterans of state-of-the-art health care?
As flamboyant as Madoff’s alleged cons are, their consequences pale in comparison with the orgy of predatory lending, the flimflam in the mortgage-backed securities markets, the egregious ostentation of executive compensation, the pervasive lack of competent regulation and the unparalleled inequalities of wealth and income of the early years of the 21st century. To name a few econo-scandals.
Many people over the years chose not to turn Blagojevich and Madoff in. I think they call that phenomenon “casting a blind eye.” You might cast a blind eye in the workplace at abusive or sleazy colleagues or at your kid’s school with bullies, inept teachers or bungling bureaucrats. Collectively, we cast blind eyes toward raunchy and violent entertainment, dysfunctional government and substandard medical care - to pick some almost random examples.
And from Peggy Noonan, of all people, in the Wall Street Journal:
A more sober observation came from a Manhattan woman who spoke, on the night Mr. Madoff was arrested, and as word spread through a Christmas party, of the general air of collapse in America right now, of the sense that our institutions are not and no longer can be trusted. She said, softly, “It’s the age of the empty suit.” Those who were supposed to be watching things, making the whole edifice run, keeping it up and operating, just somehow weren’t there.
That’s the big thing at the heart of the great collapse, a strong sense of absence. Who was in charge? Who was in authority? The biggest swindle in all financial history if the figure of $50 billion is to be believed, and nobody knew about it, supposedly, but the swindler himself. The government didn’t notice, just as it didn’t notice the prevalence of bad debts that would bring down America’s great investment banks.
All this has hastened and added to the real decline in faith-the collapse in faith-the past few years in our institutions. Not only in Wall Street but in our entire economy, and in government. And of course there’s Blago. But the disturbing thing there is that it seems to have inspired more mirth than anger. Did any of your friends say they were truly shocked? Mine either.
The reigning ethos seems to be every man for himself.
We should experience “the current crisis” as “a gigantic wake-up call.” We’ve been living beyond our means, both governmentally and personally. “We have to be willing to face up to our problems. But we have a capacity to roll up our sleeves and get down to work together.”
What a task President-elect Obama has ahead. He ran on a theme of change we can believe in, but already that seems old. Only six weeks after his election he faces a need more consequential and immediate. In January, in his inaugural, he may find himself addressing something bigger, and that is: Belief we can believe in. The return of confidence. The end of absence. The return of the suit inhabited by a person. The return of the person who will take responsibility, and lead.
Maaaan. Well, I would have loved to have seen that earlier this year from her. Take responsibility? Accountability?