The DeLay Transformation

By Jamie Malanowski, Washington Monthly. Posted November 30, 2004.

It seems more and more possible that the name of Chris Bell will join that of Charles Julius Guiteau on the list of disgruntled office-seekers who helped derail a powerful politician's career. Guiteau, however, merely shot James Garfield, one of our many below-average Buckeye presidents. Chris Bell may end up slaying a dragon.

For those not in the know, Chris Bell is a one-term Texas Democratic congressman who lost his bid for re-election when the Texas legislature gratuitously gerrymandered him into a district where he had to face another (apparently more popular) Democratic incumbent. With his career nipped in the bud, Bell, perhaps humming the “Me and Bobby McGee” lyric about freedom being another word for nothing left to lose, filed a 187-page ethics complaint against Tom DeLay, the powerful House Majority Leader and engineer of the hyper-aggressive redistricting scheme that claimed Bell's seat.

Bell's long-overdue complaint accused DeLay of “bribery, extortion, fraud, money laundering and the abuse of power.” In response, the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct has so far rebuked DeLay twice. The first time was for being insufficiently discreet in his influence-peddling (“Geez, Tom, take the time to maintain a veil of hypocrisy, willya?”) The second time was for using the Federal Aviation Administration to track down furtive Democratic Texas legislators after they had escaped to Oklahoma in an effort to deny the Republican majority a quorum for the redistricting session in which the state Democratic Party would be sliced and diced to death. (The panel had shown a lot of backbone to this point, but in a prime example of state-of-the-art buck passing, deferred action on another of Bell's complaints, this one alleging illegal corporate fundraising. They are going to wait and see what happens to three DeLay cronies who have been charged with felonies in that matter.)

Regardless of what else happens – and there hangs in the air the kind of ominous silence that precedes the dropping of the other shoe – Bell's complaint has already inspired House Speaker Dennis Hastert to deliver what will surely prove to be one of the Ten Most Unintentionally Hilarious Comments of the Year. “The worry I have,” Hastert told The New York Times, “is that you again politicize the process, and it denigrates what ethics is all about.”

And surely the name of Tom DeLay should never be associated with any denigration of ethics.

Tom DeLay is the most odious character in American politics today. He does not lack for competition, of course, but what sets him apart is that all of his perversions have been accomplished under the radar screen. Apart from his colorful name “the Hammer,” DeLay has no public identity, and even that nickname will more likely inspire people outside the Beltway to think of old jocks like Fred Williamson or Dave Schultz than the beady-eyed former exterminator who terrifies Capitol Hill. It's easy to dislike Dick Cheney; he gets lampooned on “Saturday Night Live.” But Darrell Hammond could perform a dead-on impersonation of Tom DeLay, and almost nobody would get the reference. Tom DeLay is a cancer cell, silently metastasizing.

Perhaps "The Hammer: Tom DeLay: God, Money, and the United States Congress" will shine a bright spotlight on the nefarious activities of the majority leader. Lou Dubose and Jan Reid have calmly, clearly and pointedly laid out the story of DeLay's rise from an undistinguished Texas legislature backbencher to his current position of power. They show how DeLay has morphed from a tough whip, admired in the hardball world of Washington politics for his take-no-prisoners approach to party discipline, to a thoroughgoing bully who uses money and capricious, Scarface-like gestures to amass more and more and more power.

The most fun to be had from this book will be the arguments it causes about which of DeLay's antics is most scurrilous. Is it his turning over his office to industry lobbyists to write legislation? Is it his innovation of jamming conference committees with loyalists who will pack bills with choice pieces of pork and industry-pleasing amendments? Will it be the way DeLay crazy-cut the district map of Texas to eliminate the possibility of contested elections? Is it his gluttonous fundraising and his naked commerce in political favors? Maybe it's the way he tried to bribe Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) to vote a certain way in exchange for a $100,000 payment to Smith's son's campaign committee.

Jamie Malanowski is a New York writer.

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