What Uncle Sam needs today is another Mr. Sam

Star-Telegram | Jack Z. Smith:

“The corruption scandal is mushrooming at a time when Washington politicians seem excessively influenced by slick, shameless lobbyists who curry favor by doing everything from raising big bucks for congressional re-election campaigns to financing luxury golf trips to Scotland. All this should make us pine for the quaint, old-fashioned honesty and character of the late Sam Rayburn, the longtime U.S. House speaker from the little North Texas town of Bonham who was known affectionately as "Mr. Sam."

In Robert Caro's splendid first volume of his ongoing multivolume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, the author devotes an entire chapter to Rayburn, a mentor to Johnson as the latter's political career ascended in Washington. "It was while he was in Austin, where legislators were bought wholesale, that there was first heard a saying that men would be repeating for fifty years: 'No one can buy Sam Rayburn.' "”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Sam Rayburn's personal integrity is worth remembering. This editorial is timely, not only because of the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal brewing in Washington, but because a latter-day Sam Rayburn recently passed away. Former Senator William Proxmire (D-WI) died on December 15, 2005. He is best known for his Golden Fleece awards highlighting wasteful spending in Washington. Like Sam Rayburn, William Proxmire would be beholden to no lobbyist or campaign contributor. In his last two campaigns for Senate, he accepted no donations. His spent $200 out of his own pocket on his re-elections, some of that to pay for postage to return unsolicited campaign contributions.

Why are such politicians so rare? Why don't more candidates have the personal integrity to just say no? You can split hairs forever trying to convince yourself and the electorate that you are not influenced by the lobbyists and contributors who aid your campaign, or you can just say no and eliminate all doubt, all suspicion, all temptation. Why aren't voters repulsed by candidates who accept outrageous sums of money, who preside at multimillion dollar fundraising dinners, who work the phones soliciting ever more money. Why don't voters elect more Sam Rayburns and William Proxmires and fewer politicians like those on the receiving end of Jack Abramoff's lobbying machine?