Conservatives Without Conscience

played the political game by any means, fair or foul. For example, in 1983, Abramoff launched an attack on Ralph Nader’s efforts to get college campuses to undertake public interest research projects, and to devote part of their activities fee to such purposes. Abramoff sent out materials accusing such public interest groups of promoting leftist political ideals, and of being “instrumental in leading anti-Reagan and anti-free market forces on campuses.” He described these student groups as “a major threat to democracy on American campuses” and as “unethical, undemocratic and unconstitutional.” Nader called Abramoff’s material what it was, “a total smear.”[49] The same year Abramoff formed the purportedly nonpartisan, tax-exempt USA Foundation, obtained funding from leading Republican donors, and then proceeded to violate the law prohibiting such groups from participating in political campaigns. The Washington Post reported that just as the 1984 Reagan reelection campaign was entering its final phase, Abramoff arranged, through his foundation, “more than 100 campus rallies and a possible Rose Garden ceremony on the first anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Grenada.” Abramoff’s letter promoting these events, almost ludicrous because it is so blatantly deceptive, put a facade of legitimacy on what he dubbed “Student Liberation Day.” “I am confident that an impartial study of the contrasts between the Carter/Mondale failure in Iran and the Reagan victory in Grenada will be most enlightening to voters 12 days before the general election,” Abramoff wrote.[50] Earlier that year, Abramoff had “invited his counterpart at the College Democrats, Steve Gersky, to tour the country to debate the issues of the 1984 presidential campaign.” Gersky cordially accepted, and the Republicans even paid for the tour. (One can only imagine where Abramoff found the funds.) But Abramoff chose campuses where he knew he would get a friendly reception, and did not tell Gersky where the debates would be held. When Abramoff spoke, canned applause was piped in. Bill Belk, the outgoing president of the Young Democrats, later mournfully explained Gersky’s failure to win any of these debates: “They set him up.”[51]

Double High authoritarians are, of course, amoral, and Abramoff has consistently displayed this characteristic. For example, in 1985 he served as the executive director of the Citizens for America, a conservative organization headed by drugstore magnate Lewis Lehrman, who had challenged New York governor Mario Cuomo in a close race in 1982 and still had political ambitions. Lehrman, upon returning from a trip out of the country, discovered he was “boxed out of the bookkeeping” of Citizens for America, notwithstanding being head of the organization. He had his personal lawyer investigate, and later reported, “It was one big party,” as Abramoff and those he had hired “had gone hog wild.” According to the Washington Post, Abramoff was charged with mismanaging funds, and he and his staff—including “field director” Grover Norquist, who was off in South Africa—were all fired.[52] Nonetheless, a decade later, Abramoff cited his work with Citizens for America prominently in his resume.[53]

“His greatest strength was his audacity,” remarked Jeff Bell, who has known Abramoff since his days at Citizens for America.[54] But this characterization vastly understates Abramoff, as the two indictments to which he pleaded guilty in 2005 attest. Abramoff’s scam to purchase a fleet of SunCruz Casinos ships by faking a wire transfer of $23 million to close the $147.5 million transaction was more stupid than audacious, for it was inevitable that his cash contribution would be discovered missing. That scam alone resulted in a five-count indictment for fraud, with one count of conspiracy; Abramoff pleaded guilty to everything except conspiracy. Abramoff’s fleecing of his Native American clients also transcended audaciousness. When the Senate Indian Affairs Committee discovered his scheme, its members were at something of a loss to describe it. Senator John McCain observed that people had been stealing from American Indians since the sale of Manhattan Island, but “what set [Abramoff’s] tale apart, what makes it extraordinary, is the extent and degree of the apparent exploitation and deceit.” Straining to find words to describe Abramoff’s activities, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) said that they were representative of “a cesspool of greed, a disgusting pattern, certainly, of moral corruption…a pathetic, disgusting example of greed run amok.”[55]

Abramoff began his relationship with the tribes by getting himself hired as their Washington lobbyist. (His arrangement with each tribe was a little different, but the pattern was the same.) Abramoff handled only tribes that had casinos, because they were making enormous amounts of money. Once the tribes hired him, he told them they also had to retain Michael Scanlon, Tom DeLay’s former press secretary. Scanlon, who was not registered as a lobbyist (and thus not required to report to Congress) but a political and communications consultant, would help tribal members win elections to their tribal councils, and once friendly members ran those councils, both Abramoff and Scanlon began billing them extravagantly for an array of activities. What Abramoff failed to mention to his clients was that he also received 50/50 kickbacks from Scanlon. The New York Times reported that “Abramoff and his sidekick not only bilked Indian tribes of up to $66 million; they also mocked them as ‘monkeys’ and ‘morons.’”[*] But there is nothing kind-hearted about authoritarians, particularly when they are busy manipulating.

Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, and their cohorts are all conservatives and are all authoritarians. One of the more remarkable traits of such individuals is their ability to get away with so much before they are called to task, which can partially be explained by authoritarian followers’ being attracted to such personalities and ready to be led by them with no questions asked. But sooner or later, the Double High authoritarian personality, in particular, seems to more or less self-destruct as a result of endless aggression and a lack of conscience. While possession of an authoritarian personality does not necessarily lead to their downfall, if past is prologue, their insatiable desire for power, combined with remarkable self-righteousness, enables them to easily cross the lines of propriety, and the law.

Authoritarian Conservatism in the U.S. Senate

While most of Abramoff’s relationships were with members of the House, he also worked with senators, but the Senate, so far, is not an authoritarian body, so the problems he created for the House are not likely to be as serious for the Senate. This is not to say that there is no authoritarianism in the Senate, for it is growing there as well, as Republicans, who would like to extend their power in the Senate in a fashion similar to what they have in the House, are oblivious to the fact that by doing so they would make the Senate into a mini–House of Representatives, thereby fundamentally changing the interaction between the inherently cautious Senate and the more impulsive House. Under the Constitution, each house of Congress makes its own rules. With each new Congress, the House reconstitutes itself, adopting new rules with a majority vote. The Senate, however, considers itself a continuing body, because each senator serves for six years and only a third of the Senate stands for election at any given time. A two-thirds vote, or the approval of sixty-seven senators, is therefore required to change its rules.

Because of its smaller size, with only two senators representing each state, the Senate has always allowed for more open and extended debate than the House of Representatives, which serves to protect minority views or, in effect, to prevent a tyranny of the majority. The first recorded occasion when a minority senator used extended debate to defeat a proposal was in 1790; the senator was arguing against moving the location of Congress from New York City to Philadelphia. Between 1820 and 1860, lengthy debate in the Senate became something of a common procedure for protecting the views of the minority party, and by 1856, it became a right when it was formalized in the Senate’s rules.[56]

In 1917, during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, the Senate adopted a rule permitting a “cloture vote,” which provided that a vote of two thirds of the body could end a filibuster. A two-thirds vote on a matter before the Senate typically represents close to a national consensus, and by placing this rule on the books, it was assured that a small minority could not defeat the overwhelming will of the American people. Nonetheless, the Senate did not invoke the provision even once from 1927 until the early 1960s. Senators were reluctant to vote for cloture because they wanted to keep the right for themselves, and did not wish to incur the wrath of a colleague by imposing a cloture vote on another senator or group of senators who felt so strongly about a matter that they were willing to mount a filibuster. Jimmy Stewart’s 1939 portrayal of a heroic use of the filibuster in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington—in which Stewart’s character, Jefferson Smith, takes on corruption in the establishment but is ultimately silenced by cloture—influenced the public’s support of the filibuster and opposition to cloture votes. In the mid-1950s and early 1960s, however, it became problematic when Southern senators used it to block the passage of civil rights legislation addressing basic rights for African Americans to education, voting, housing, and public facilities. When the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act was tied up for seventy-four days, newspaper and television coverage of this bigoted Southern intransigence outraged Americans, and public opinion insisted that it be broken and the act passed. After that episode, the Senate changed its rules. Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield, a mild-mannered Montana Democrat, developed a system to preserve the Senate’s tradition of unlimited debate