It was an historic moment in the nation's history - a year when old barriers fell.
It was a year when one word filled the air - change.
It was a year Democrats came to believe in the audacity of hope.
Or maybe just plain audacity.
One governor was caught with his pants (but not his socks) off, hooking up with an aspiring singer who preferred cash payments and called customers by their numbers. Another was discovered trying to sell a Senate seat in language not allowed on HBO mob shows (and anyway, viewers would have dismissed the plot as too preposterous).
In a year when Republicans were out-spent and out-voted in the election, they were also out-corrupted at every turn. Sure, some valiantly tried to keep the GOP end up - Ted Stevens, former senator from Alaska, insisted the chair given to him as a gift wasn't really his, even if it was sitting in his living room. And Vito Fossella went for that old chestnut, the second family on the side.
But these trifles pale in comparison to Kwame Kilpatrick, mayor of Detroit, who used the city's credit cards for his own pimpin' lifestyle, which included inviting strippers over to his official residence. When his wife unexpectedly arrived home, she proceeded to beat up one of the exotic dancers. Since his term had officially become an episode of "Flavor of Love," Kilpatrick upped the ante - exchanging 14,000 text messages with his chief of staff Christine Beatty. Some were about business, exposing a "Friends and Family plan" of preferential granting of city contracts. Most, however, were about whether they wanted the double suite at the Days Inn. Or the fact that Kilpatrick text messages like a 16-year-old girl: "I need you soooo bad." Can I get a woot woot?
New York's congressional delegation included Charlie Rangel, who brushed away weekly accusations of tax evasion, housing chicanery, bad beach fashions and favors for his favorite donors with a boastful, "go ahead! Investigate me!" Knowing full well that any investigation would declare him innocent, no matter the evidence; Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised him.
Defiance, in fact, is the default mood among the corrupt. This week, Rod Blagojevich said he refuses to resign as governor of Illinois. And why would he? Having lived through decades of scandal, those who are caught seemed shocked to realize that they must pay a price. Didn't my predecessors sell Senate seats, or my peers hand them out as goodwill gestures to new presidents (looking at you, David Paterson)? This is the way the Democratic Party operates - why are they changing the rules on me?
It would be comical to watch if it wasn't so depressing - or so important to our future.
When Eliot Spitzer proved that he couldn't be satisfied with a beautiful wife and the top job in the state, the seat fell to the woeful Paterson, who opened his term by confessing to everything from drug use to adultery. When "Saturday Night Live" claimed his life was an actual Richard Pryor movie, it wasn't comedy, it was documentary. If New Yorkers hadn't been so exhausted with Client No. 9, would they have had the patience for a governor whose chief aide then said he hadn't paid taxes in five years because he didn't feel like it?
Instead we're left with an administration whose imaginative solution to the fiscal crisis is 137 new taxes, forcing us to pay more for everything from beer to music to cabs. The middle class will be driven out of New York, and our city's destiny will have been mortgaged on a hooker from New Jersey.
Some will argue that all politics corrupts all politicians. Maybe so. But this year's avalanche of distractions came primarily from the left side of the aisle. The amount, the breadth and the ridiculousness of the scandals is depressing, all the more so because this is the party to which America just handed all the seats of power.
Barack Obama's victory did make this year a historic one. But he can make 2009 a historic one as well - by bringing "change" to his own house first.
And veteran Chicago politician Obama has not even been sworn in yet!
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