Scandals are juicy peaces of information that many people like to hear. We listen to the gossip column and talk about which celebrity is going into or coming out of rehabs, which celebrities are sleeping with some other celebrity’s wife or husband and if we don’t get enough of a rush from what we hear, many of us turn to the soaps to get even more. Now living vicariously through the lives of others in the media may be exciting to some, it is not so exciting, when it hits the political arena and changes our very lives.
Even though your best friend sleeping with another man other than her husband may affect you, it won’t affects thousands and sometimes millions of people as it would when the scandal is of a political nature. Here the stakes are higher and the amount of people involved, either directly or indirectly, is higher as well. Apart from the numbers involved in this case, a crucial factor is that political scandals make a mockery of the very fabric of a just and moral society.
According to the political historians and other people in the know, we can divide political scandals in four main divisions. We have the private scandals such as The President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky sexual exploits, and then there are the actual political scandals at the community or city, state, and federal level of governmental business.
When we get to the level of political scandals the end results often lead to criminal allegations and criminal charges can be filed against the politician that is at the center of the scandal. However, this is not always the case, sometimes charges are dropped or the allegations never stand up in court.
The thing about political scandals is that the media largely influences much of how America feels about them depending upon, which side of the political camp the political coverage is in. We have both strong republican and liberal camps, and whether the public is tuning into FOX or CNN coverage will make all the difference in the world in terms of what coverage will be featured and how each scandal will be handled. It is a known fact that the media can make or break any politician including the presiding president himself. A politician’s entire career can be ruined with the wrong type of coverage whether the allegations are true or not; people will believe and people will remember.
The public sometimes gets a say in deciding how the scandal is handled through public activism, which will act as an agent for change, or at voting time when the unscrupulous individual is removed from office. Voting is an American right that can make the most powerful impact of all. Voting is the time to have our combined voices heard. Voting is the only real means that make politicians set up and take notice. If they want to remain in power theoretically they must listen to the will of the people. This is the way of the American people in a free and democratic society.
Once again I reiterate that the vote is America’s guarantee to have a fair and just society, not one that is ruled by a tyrant of a dictator. The integrity of the election is at the heart of the democratic model. If election votes are tampered with and ballots are destroyed, the will of the people is not heard. We have seen this very thing happen in America We have lived through the allegations that the votes were tampered with in the Miami-dade country Florida election between George Bush and Al Gore (2000). We lived through it, but it did not set well with the American ideal. It forced many Americans to question the election system and to wonder if our votes are protected or mean anything at all. When votes are tampered people have no say in who will run the federal government and the whole system becomes a joke. Mock elections are seen all over the world, the most recent one is the re-election of the leader of Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad, and everyone hopes and prays this sort of thing will never happen in America. Americans do not want a fascist or dictatorship of any kind.
There are many political scandals in America today but nothing can be more sacred than the scandals that involve the vote. It is the very essence of the American system of freedom, after the vote comes the integrity of the officials who are either elected or appointed to office.
Many of you will remember the recent scandal involving Illinois, governor Rod Blagojevich. He was alleged to have tried to sell the President Obama’s vacated senate seat. Americans often hear of scandals based on nepotism, where government contracts are given out to family and friends, this is the first time to hear about a governor attempting to sell an important government office seat not based on integrity, the will of the people, or merit, but based on hard cold cash. Was the seat being offered to the highest bidder regarding of their political track record?
If these allegations are true, (they are still to be decided in court), and Blagojevich is found not to be guilty even with mounting evidence against him then the entire American way of life is in danger if this precedent of seat selling is allowed to be continued.
I am not so naive as to think that the American government is as pure as the driven snow. All governments have certain levels of corruption; even the most democratic ones of all. However, the examples of tampering with votes or selling government seats to the highest bidder in America gets to the very root of governmental and legal system and pollutes them. The integrity of the American way is destroyed and the system is rotten from the core all the way up.
Rod Blagojevich is not going down easy he is out for the kill, he just signed a six-figure book deal where he maintains he will prove his innocence and he will expose the corruption in politics at the state and federal level. Rod Blagojevich has already gone on TV promoting his book and pleading his case. His stance is he has been victimized by the political foes who are out to get him. Whether true or not Blagojevich’s style is to be lighthearted and act the clown, joking around on the “Early Show.” I am not sure how he feels he can appeal to the hearts of the American public through this stance. According to the Chicago Tribune, Sept 9, 2009, he compares himself to such notables as Martin Luther King Jr. Nelson Mandela President Theodore Roosevelt. All I can say to this is what is going through his mind.
Sources:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-blago-book-tour-09-sep09,0,2583690.story
