The explosion of lobbying, campaign finance and networking in Washington that has happened since the 1970s is causing Americans to doubt the integrity of their government with good reason, former Democratic Sen. Gary Hart said Wednesday.
"Members of Congress are walking across the street as they walk out the door and signing on for millions of dollars," the one-time presidential candidate told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program
Wednesday. "There are over 400 of them. That doesn't include committee staffs and others on the Hill, and it's an incestuous system."
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Hart recounted his own "tipping point" over such happenings.
"It was 1979 and I met with Coloradans who came to Washington, their Washington representative brought them into my office," he recalled. "We had a nice conversation and they left. My administrative assistant came in with an envelope and I opened it, it was a check for $2,000. They had been told by their Washington representative that in exchange for meeting with me, they had to leave money. And I sent the check back down the hall as fast as I could. It stunned me and even today, in my mind that was the tipping point."
In his latest book,
"The Republic of Conscience," Hart explains that there is now a "great potential for young people to run for office with the prospect of making money afterwards," reversing a trend in which people said they were going to make money and then run for office.
The book deals with the growing gap between the founding principles of the Constitution and the current political landscape.
"The definition of corruption by the Founders was not bribery, it was putting special personal interests ahead of the common good," said Hart. "By that definition, our government is massively corrupt because it's all special interests now."
But he doesn't think there's a single solution for the next generation of politicians.
"Usually in America we reform the political system after some sort of terrible scandal, to use the word appropriately," said Hart. "And I think two things that would suggest themselves, one is a bar of some years between leaving office and signing on to become a lobbyist, wait a year, wait five years, wait 25 years as far as I'm concerned. Second, voters ought to demand the candidates, not just for president but for other offices, that they take a pledge against taking special interest money. I did that in 1984. I think I was the first."
Hart's own presidential hopes were destroyed in 1988 when he resigned over media allegations of an extramarital affair, a matter that still remains under discussion considering what happened later during former President Bill Clinton's term in office and his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
But Hart doesn't see himself as someone who changed history.
"I've gone on with my life," he said. "I've written books. I've taught at the University of Colorado. I went back to school in my 60s and earned a Ph.D. I'm continuing to try to contribute. I can't live on one weekend 30 years ago."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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