The HUD party, the party of patronage - political aspects of HUD scandal

National Review, Sept 1, 1989

HERE AND THERE, and not just in NR [see "The Problem at HUD," Susan Mandel, NR, Aug. 4], it has been noted that HUD could not have become a patronage honey-pot without the connivance, indeed the participation, of congressional "watchdogs." Representative Barney Frank, defending himself against such talk, has said, "What I did was totally different. . . . One, I wasn't getting paid. Two, members of Congress must intervene on behalf of their constituents."

Mr. Frank's distinctions do not bear scrutiny. If being in Congress gets you off the hook, then why did former Senator David Karnes (R., Neb.) land on the front page of the New York Times for funneling HUD money to his home state before a Republican primary?

If it's all right to get involved on behalf of constituents, then how do constituents make their needs known, except by lobbying? Isn't this what Coloradoan Joe Coors, prominently featured in everyone's exposes, did in trying to steer HUD money to Denver from no motive other than civic loyalty?

Clearly, there is an unstated factor in the allocation of outrage. Just as clearly, this factor is the Republicanism of the alleged wrongdoers. The HUD "scandal" is an assault by congressional liberals designed to establish a monopoly of patronage for the Hill and forbid any competition in pork-barrel politics from that branch of government currently controlled by the Republican Party. We saw the criminalization of policy differences in Iran-Contra; now we see the selective criminalization of patronage in the HUD case-with the media playing assistant prosecutor (despite embarrassed admissions that no laws seem to have been broken, buried in paragraph 27).

Indeed, it is interesting to compare the press's treatment of HUD with its coverage of the ongoing S&L scandal, which mostly implicates Democrats. Alan Cranston, it now turns out, intervened with regulators to protect a California S&L whose chairman was a hefty contributor to Cranston's campaigns, and to a voter-registration group that employed one of Cranston's sons. Here was a flow of actual cash from private pocket to public servant. Yet the tale got buried.

In striking out against patronage, HUD Secretary Jack Kemp shows himself to be a principled conservative (though not principled enough, alas, to criticize the programs that fuel the patronage). The profiteers from the controversy-the Franks and Cranstons of the world, and their journalistic claquershave no principles to stand on at all. They know that in patronage, as in social climbing, the key is to know which is the right party.