Can This Reputation Be Saved?

The US Congress

The Short Answer: Not likely

The latest development in the on-going and rapidly spreading Abramoff case may become the straw that broke Congress' back. Poll after poll indicates that the American people are disgusted with our elected representatives and it doesn't bode well for either party. Even though far more Republican names have been mentioned in conjunction with the corruption scandals, when it comes to disenchantment, the electorate doesn't seem to make much of a distinction between the two parties.

When it was just DeLay or California Congressman Cunningham, the scandals didn't remain on the front page long enough to really capture the public's imagination. But with the latest developments, it's going to be hard in nine months when the elections roll around to find a voter that isn't aware that corruption has been taking place.

The reality of any crisis is that it is all a matter of reach and frequency. If the bad news is a one-time thing or makes only the local paper, no one may pay any attention. But the more often your target audience has an opportunity to see the bad stuff about you, the higher the likelihood that they'll remember it.

When "Abramoff" was just a name that had something to do with some scandal somewhere in the abstract, as in "the widening Abramoff scandal," no one outside of Washington paid much attention. But when the words "Abramoff scandal" get attached to your local congressmen, as in "Congressman Rey of Ohio" and Congressman xxx of xx," all of a sudden it's making the local papers and local people start to pay attention. And if they start to pay attention in the next couple of months, chances are it will affect the way they vote.

Our advice to Congress? Well, we're not sure anything will help in the short run. Certainly the House Ethics Committee shouldn't bother to waste its breath on words like "reform legislation" and "investigation." Let the Justice Department do its work and meanwhile purge both houses of anyone even mildly tainted by scandal and see if that's enough action to mollify voters.

Both political parties will probably try anything they can think of to keep the scandal from affecting mid-term elections. Lots of luck. Unless (God forbid) another war or Hurricane Katrina kicks Abramoff off page one, and unless Congress takes major action to clean house and fix the corruption, chances are that the voters will do it for them in 2006.

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