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The recent corruption charge brought against Democratic US Senator Bob Menendez and his wife amounts to a plot worthy of a Hollywood political thriller. Menendez has been accused of accepting bribes, including gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz, which has led to an indictment that Politico likened to a “white-collar crime movie.” This indictment accused Menendez, a powerful figure in shaping American foreign affairs and the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee until the last weekend, of abusing his position to enrich himself and exploit the complex relationship between the United States and Egypt for personal benefit.
The chorus calling for the senator's resignation, which he has thus far declined to do so, is growing. The Menendez indictment scandal has hit the very center of "the fraught sector of American diplomacy" while also exposing a troubling pattern of deeply embedded widespread political corruption infested throughout the American political establishment.
Despite having faced scandalous charges and growing calls to resign from the Senate from both Republican and Democratic politicians, Menendez has refused to step down. This highlights another troubling pattern in American politics that has recently made a rancorous presence in public and media discussions. The recent apparently “freezing incident” of Mitch McConnell, 81-year-old Senate Republican leader, and an announcement by Nancy Pelosi, 83-year-old former House Speaker, to run for reelection in the US House in 2024 have raised questions about the intentions behind American politicians’ adamant tendency to cling to their political careers.
American public perceptions, however, provide a dismal picture different from the ones that those politicians are accustomed to using to justify their motivations behind running for or holding on to power. According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, majorities in both parties believe that self-interest – whether in the form of making a lot of money, potentially running for a higher-level office later, or gaining fame and attention – is the key motivating force for all or most elected officials. 63% who were polled say that all or most elected officials in local, state, and federal government ran because they wanted to make a lot of money, while only 15% of Americans think that elected officials run for office solely to serve the public.
The American political fabric is braided with money and politics like warp and weft. With corruption in all forms- institutional, electoral, corporate, or systemic- on the rise, corrupt government officials, since 2015, have remained the top fear of Americans, eclipsing all others, including global warming, terrorist attacks, and even gun violence including global warming, terrorist attacks, and even gun violence. According to the Chapman University Survey of American Fears (CSAF), in the 2020/2021 year, approximately 79.6% of Americans indicated that they were afraid or very afraid of corrupt government officials, whereas 62.1% of Americans indicated that they were afraid or very afraid in the 2022 survey.
The American electoral process is probably the most widely recognized field where money plays most of its ugly role. Political spending in the 2020 election totaled $14.4 billion, more than double the total expenditure in the historic 2016 presidential election cycle, according to an analysis of Federal Commission records by OpenSecrets. As a result, major political donors and special interests have always wielded unfairly enormous influence on politics. This leads to a crooked and corrupt politico-corporate nexus that greatly undermines the influence of ordinary Americans in state affairs and distorts, even suppresses, public opinions.
For instance, a recent poll revealed that around 83% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believe people who donate a lot of money to campaigns have too much influence on Congress members' decisions. Almost the same percentage, 80%, of Democrats and Democratic leaners share a similar belief. Due to such an ever-evolving politico-corporate state system at the center of which corruption plays a predominant role, the prosecution rate for corporate crimes — in the form of illegal pollution, fraud, reckless endangerment of consumers and workers, cartels, systematic rip-offs, and more — has seen a historic decline. Despite the Biden administration's pledge to toughen up on corporate crime, a new analysis of Justice Department data shows that the prosecution of white-collar offenders in FY 2022 set a new all-time low since monitoring started under the Reagan administration.
The toxic debasement of American politics and widespread political corruption ultimately have a negative impact on regular Americans and society in the form of economic disenfranchisement, rising inequality, political polarization, and an unprecedented escalation of social and political chaos. With regard to economic inequality, according to a recent estimate by the independent Congressional Budget Office, the richest 10% of Americans control 72% of the country's wealth, and the top 1% hold 34% of it, while the poorest half of Americans, or 150 million individuals, hold just 2% of the nation's total wealth.
While structurally pervasive corruption contributes to the maintenance of a dysfunctional political system, it also creates a society that is bitterly divided and dissatisfied, with an increasing proportion of Americans turning against their own government. According to a new poll released by the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics (IOP), more than one in four Americans are so alienated from their government that they believe it may “soon be necessary to take up arms” against it, with a majority of Americans agreeing that the government is “corrupt and rigged.”
The writer is Assistant Professor and Chairman, Department of Criminology and Police Science, Chittagong University
Messenger/Disha
