Are We All Corrupt?
there's a thin line between coercion and a favor
2008-12-10
By Eric Easter

Years ago –many – I was a teenager in need of a job. My mother sent me to a family friend, informing me that I was to remind said friend that he owed the family a favor. No, my mother is not in the Mob (I don’t think). But I couldn’t do it. I found another job rather than actually say to someone “You owe a favor to my family.” Something about the idea of even mouthing the words felt unseemly and distasteful, if not necessarily illegal.

Did that make my mother corrupt? Did that make me a Boy Scout?

On the other hand, I spent 20 years in politics and had no problem with performing and asking for favors – access here, critical information there, a connection or reference or two – and keeping relative score of whom I owed and who owed me.  These arrangements were never spoken as favors per se, but the rules were understood. The very nature of building political capital is to serve others so they will serve you better when you need them. Does that attitude make me a sell out to corruption?

My guess is that people do this form of favor-trading on a daily basis. I help you move out of your dorm, you have to help me move out of mine. I bought the first round of martinis, you have to buy the second. You get me into an important meeting, I write a letter to the principal at the pre-school you want to get your kid into.

Are we all corrupt? Or is it just the way politics and people work?

It only took a matter of hours into the favor-selling scandal of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich for some political pundits to begin the spin that, while fairly stupid and brazen, what Blagojevich said on the phone (was he paying attention when he watched the Wire?) was political business as usual and not necessarily illegal.

For the sake of their argument, if you take the asking of specific favors out of the Blagojevich situation, then what do you have?  Had any Illinois public official gotten the Senate seat, they would have owed Blagojevich a huge favor for his efforts to enhance their careers. At some point that favor would have been returned in some very beneficial and tangible way to Blagojevich. Not cash, but certainly something close to one of the favors that the Governor was asking for – a job, a board appointment, an important phone call to open a door.

So what’s the difference? In perception and in law, the critical difference between standard operating procedure and a hot mess seems to be the spoken and nakedly ambitious assumption of a returned favor and the negotiation of a transaction.

And a third difference, the threat to hold back a favor if the returned favor isn’t delivered or promised in advance. Expletives –while not illegal – apparently don’t help either.

That’s always where it gets ugly in our personal lives as well. I can take you out to dinner and assume that you have to take me at some point. And that’s OK. But if I call and say, “Hey I’m hungry. You owe me dinner,” then it immediately damages the delicate and unspoken understanding that we both had. I have turned a relationship into a sale. Our bond is broken. It has been corrupted.

That’s what makes what Blagojevich did so wrong. Whether the prosecutor ultimately has a legal case is beside the point.  On the day he was sworn in as the state’s chief executive, Blagojevich no longer had personal relationships, his relationship was with the people. And so any favor he delivered was inherently on behalf of the people, not himself.

Negotiating favors on the people’s behalf would have been fine. “Yes, I will appoint you, but vote for health care. Yes, I will support you, but bring jobs to Northern Illinois.”  Instead he sought personal financial gain and threatened retaliation if his demands were not met. That veers uncomfortably into extortion territory, way beyond the minor back and forths we do on a daily basis.
 
And perhaps that’s the most telling difference between what we do everyday and real corruption. If it begins to feel uncomfortable, we’ve crossed the line.

Eric Easter is Chief of Digital Strategy for Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. He writes about politics, culture and technology for Ebonyjet.com.