House Ethics Committee has New Life, and DeLay's the Target

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

EDITORIAL

House Democrats, used to being pummeled by the majority Republicans, scored a major victory this week in forcing a reversal of Ethics Committee rules changes that had completely defanged that none-too-ferocious legislative panel.

Score one for the loyal opposition, and for Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-Fairport, who is ranking member on the Rules Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Ethics Committee. Now that the House is back in the ethics business, it will set its sights on Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whose trips, hiring of family members and questionable links to lobbyists and political supporters have raised concerns.

DeLay, in accordance with his nature and political persona, will probably fight until the last travel voucher is scrutinized to the final penny. That’s his right. But it’s clear that, however the inquiry turns out, his ability to lead the majority in a way that produces good public policy from President Bush’s agenda has been fatally compromised.

Leadership in the public realm is about perception, and the public perception of DeLay is that he’s a partisan ideologue always running close to the edge of acceptable behavior. It’s in the president’s, and the country’s, interest that DeLay give up his leadership post now, before this turns into a bitter, ugly and distracting fight over whose perks are proper and whose aren’t.

It’s worth noting that a DeLay-centered attack by the Democrats on lobbyist favors can boomerang. There aren’t many in either house who are free of connections to lobbyists and their goodies.

The Ethics Committee must do its job, and the reinstalled rules make that feasible. But one way to defuse what could be a bruising, partisan tit-for-tat is for DeLay to step down and act in the interest of the country he says he wants to serve.