There’s money and then there’s Abramoff money

Last month I prophesized some nausea inside the Beltway if Jack Abramoff cut a deal. And now it appears that has come to pass. Howard Fineman provides a pithy but accurate explanation in MSNBC on why Abramoff will be so damaging: [T]he thing that jumps out at me is the figure $20,194,000. If I read the fed?s plea-agreement papers correctly, that?s the amount of cold cash that the Republican lobbyist siphoned from Indian tribes and stashed in his secret accounts. You may not believe this, but in this city, that is an unheard of amount of money for a lobbyist to haul in ? and the number itself signifies a troubling change in the nature of life in the capital of our country. The denizens of D.C. deal in trillions of dollars. But they are YOUR dollars: tax receipts and federal spending. Lawyers and lobbyists here do well. Still, they haven?t generally been in the same league as money-power types in, say, New York or Los Angeles. This was a city in which official position meant more than a plush vacation home; in which a Ph.D. or J.D. meant more than a BMW. Traditionally, the locals have been more like Vegas blackjack dealers than the greedy people sitting on the other side of the table. Well, Abramoff jumped the table ? and the result will be the biggest influence-peddling scandal to hit Washington in recent times. I don't buy Fineman's thesis that a third party movement will be born, but he's right about the money and the social mores of DC. UPDATE: Brendan Nyhan really doesn't like Fineman's third party suggestion. He's probably right, but I think the term "insipd" is a touch overblown. To play devil's advocate, the current set of conditions -- massive deficits, disenchantment with Congress, official scandals, a Bush in the White House -- do evoke the environment that allowed Ross Perot to make a splash in 1992. That's a long way from a real third party, but it's not nothing either.