Republicans
once fell all over themselves to get his ``moolah,'' the term
used famously by the disgraced super lobbyist, and to get his
advice on dealing with that warm and cuddly entity known as ``the
lobbying community.''
Suddenly,
Abramoff enters two plea bargains, and these former friends ask,
in puzzled tones, ``Jack Who?''
Over the
last few days, politicians -- from President Bush and House Speaker
Dennis Hastert on down -- raced to return Abramoff contributions,
or compassionately sent the moolah off to charity. There's a scramble
to treat him as a wildly defective gene in an otherwise healthy
body politic, and to erase the past. But seeing the record of
the past clearly is essential to fixing the future.
Abramoff,
who palled around with close Bush allies Grover Norquist and Ralph
Reed in College Republicans and has been a central figure in the
rise of Republican dominance in Washington, is not a lone wolf.
He is a particularly egregious example of how the GOP's political-corporate-lobbying
complex has overwhelmed the idealistic wing of the Republican
Party.
Scott McClellan,
the White House press secretary, insisted on Wednesday that Bush
does not know Abramoff personally. But the record makes clear
that Abramoff was a loyal and serious player in Bush's circles.
According
to an Oct. 15, 2003, story in Roll Call, Abramoff was
one of a half- dozen lobbyists who raised $100,000 for Bush's
2000 campaign. When Bush was battling Al Gore's efforts to recount
Florida's votes, Abramoff was there with the maximum $5,000 contribution
Bush was taking for the effort. A September 2003 National
Journal story noted that Abramoff was so confident he would
meet his fundraising goals for the president's 2004 campaign that
he was planning, as the lobbyist generously put it, ``to try to
help some other lobbyists meet their goals.''
The administration,
in turn, was open to Abramoff. As National Journal reported
in its April 20, 2002, issue, ``Last summer, in an effort to raise
the visibility of his Indian clients, Abramoff helped arrange
a White House get-together on tax issues with President Bush for
top Indian leaders, including Lovelin Poncho, the chairman of
the Coushattas,'' one of the tribes Abramoff represented.
When journalists
would raise questions about Abramoff's role as a lobbyist-fundraiser
just a couple of years ago, Bush's lieutenants played down his
influence peddling and proudly claimed Abramoff as one of their
own.
On an Oct.
15, 2003, CNBC broadcast, journalist Alan Murray asked Ed Gillespie,
then the Republican National Committee chairman, about fundraising
by ``people like Jack Abramoff, who represents Indian tribes here''
and another lobbyist whose name I'll leave out because he has
not been implicated in any scandals. ``Are you going to sit here
and tell us that their contributions to your party have nothing
to do with their lobbying efforts in Washington?''
``I know
Jack Abramoff,'' Gillespie replied. He mentioned the other lobbyist
and insisted: ``They are Republicans; they were Republicans before
they were lobbyists. ... I think they want to see a Republican
re-elected in the White House in 2004 more than anything.''
The newspaper
Roll Call reported on March 12, 2001, that ``GOP leaders
on and off Capitol Hill are organizing a new drive to lean on
major corporations and trade associations to hire Republicans
for their top lobbying jobs.'' The article spoke of a ``Who's
Who of Republican lobbyists'' who had held a meeting on the subject
the week before. At the top of the list was Jack Abramoff.
Abramoff
was always there for his party, with sound bites as well as money.
In a May 2, 2001, article in The Hill newspaper (it ran
under the wonderful headline: ``Lobbyists Approve of Bush's Businesslike
Style''), reporter Melanie Fonder noted that ``Abramoff said the
Bush team's careful and deliberate approach to leadership is the
exact opposite of the Clinton team.''
She quoted
Abramoff directly: ``The feeding frenzy which started even before
Clinton was inaugurated, and continued to the final pardon, was
perhaps best exemplified by the reckless and unprofessional handling
of his responsibility to appoint honorable public servants.''
This careful
judge of what it means to be an ``honorable public servant'' had
reason to prefer the Bush administration's taste in appointees.
After the 2000 election, Abramoff was named to the Bush transition
team for the Interior Department, which regulates the Indian casinos
that paid Abramoff his inflated fees.
``What the
Republicans need is 50 Jack Abramoffs,'' his friend Grover Norquist
told National Journal in 1995. ``Then this becomes a
different town.'' Norquist got his different town. It's why the
place so badly needs cleaning up.
