Miss Manners: Is It Proper to Tip Public Servants?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 5, 1999 | by John Elvin

The independent-counsel law has come under a lot of criticism, some of it no doubt owing to a "there but for the grace of God' empathy (for those snared) on the part of the lords and ladies to whom it may be applied. The mighty--or at least mighty expensive --Ken Starr appears to have let the big one get away; Don Smaltz was unsuccessful in his pursuit of former agriculture secretary Mike Espy and few cheers can be heard for David Barrett in hi, still-pending case against former housing secretary Henry Cisneros

A decision is expected in June on Smaltz's effort before the Supreme Court to reinstate the conviction he secured against Sun-Diamond Growers of California for giving illegal gifts to Espy. An appeals court overturned that conviction because Smaltz didn't show what particular action the agricultural cooperative was trying to obtain from Espy.

The Supremes indicated which direction the legal wind is blowing in comments such as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's question about whether the law applies to "baking brownies for a senator or knitting a pair of socks for an official" and Justice Stephen Breyer's musing on how the law brings "the blunderbuss of federal law into the prosecutor's arsenal, where they can prosecute trivialities."

Tom Teepen, a columnist who barely can contain his adoration for things Clintonian, speaks for the antispecial-counsel-law lobby in describing "Smaltz's madman pursuit of Espy" and "the similarly overwrought prosecution of Cisneros." Teepen notes that there have been "seven independent counsels sicced on the Clinton administration ... and there would have been more if Attorney General Janet Reno hadn't balked at a few of the endless Republican demands to have still more hounds unleashed."

The law may be on its last legs, though 61 percent of citizens polled recently by CBS believe it should be renewed. What's needed to finish it off is an explanation from the more worldly and sophisticated elected and appointed officials inside the Washington Beltway so that the rustics out in the hinterlands will better understand why as vessels and, in popular mythology, vassals of the public trust, they should accept any favors at all. Folks in the provinces find the quid, and assumed pro quo, puzzling because their experience with gratuities from corporate America is somewhat limited, consisting mainly of coupons in the Sunday papers.