Kojo Nnamdi’s Disappointing Turn as an Apologist

Kojo, Kojo, Kojo—how could you?

As you told us in your long essay in the
Washington Post’s Sunday Outlook session, you have been covering the District as a journalist or
talk show host for the past 40 years. You have interviewed every politician and business
figure. You have hosted town hall meetings across the nation’s capital.
Kojo Nnamdi is one of the strongest brands in DC.

Given the opportunity to explain the roots of the current wave of corruption polluting
District politics, you punted. You took the path of least resistance, parroted the
convenient explanation, avoided the painful judgments.

You became an apologist.

What caused the recent downfall of council member
Harry Thomas Jr. and chairman
Kwame Brown? Why have three top aides to Mayor
Vincent Gray’s 2010 campaign accepted guilty pleas for breaking federal laws? How do we get our
heads around the discovery of a an illegal, off-the-books “shadow campaign” that dumped
$653,000 in dirty money into Gray’s campaign?

“We’re still on a learning curve,” you wrote, “so campaigns in this town tend to have
all kinds of openings that invite skulduggery.”

Apology number one: The system did it. Check.

The reason that a few of Gray’s mayoral aides spent the first weeks of the new administration
installing their friends and family into sweet government gigs? “The fact that they
didn’t allow a reasonable amount of time to elapse before undertaking these activities
is another indication of their lack of experience.”

Apology number two: Gray’s inside cronies didn’t know they should have waited a month
or so before doling out plum jobs, including one for
Sulaimon Brown, whose charges of being paid off to harass
Adrian Fenty triggered the current investigation.

And, finally, Kojo’s overarching whitewash goes like this: “We don’t have statehood
or voting rights in Congress, which means there is limited political space in the
District.”

Apology number three: If there were more elective offices—two US Senate seats, for
example—we would get a better crop of potential politicians.

This hasn’t worked too well in Providence. Aspiring politicians can vie for state
or federal office in Rhode Island. Mayor
Buddy Cianci chose to top out in Providence, where he ran afoul of federal law and was forced
to resign twice, the second time for racketeering.

Expanding opportunities didn’t stop former Detroit mayor
Kwame Kilpatrick from overseeing a scandal-plagued administration. Federal prosecutors charged him
with ten felony counts and forced him to resign.

Rod “Blago” Blagojevich could be Kojo’s poster child for climbing the political ladder. He served as a state
legislator in Illinois plus two terms in the US House of Representatives. He parlayed
that into two terms as Illinois governor. But Blago was corrupt. Investigators discovered
he was trying to sell
Barack Obama’s Senate seat. He was impeached in January 2009 and jailed shortly after.

No, Kojo—more elective opportunities do not guarantee clean public officials.

When it comes to getting elected to one of the 13 seats on the DC City Council, the
rewards themselves should be enough to attract decent, uncorrupt citizens and keep
them on the job. The salary for 12 ward and at-large members is $125,000 a year—for
a part-time job. Along with the sweet salary, council members get free office space
on Pennsylvania Avenue, around the corner from the White House. Their jobs come with
staff for their personal office and their committees, amounting to about a dozen aides.
The cost to the council member? Zero. We taxpayers foot the bills for the office space
and the staffers.

Such a sweet deal should be enough to attract good candidates and keep them focused
on the job at hand, rather than higher office.

So, Kojo, to what can we attribute the corrupt acts we are sadly witnessing? The system
is fine. It’s the people who are corrupt. Harry Thomas Jr. stole money from a public
trust fund devoted to training poor kids to play sports. He used the purloined money
to buy fancy cars and a motorcycle.

Vince Gray’s campaign aides slipped cash and money orders to Sulaimon Brown so he
would berate Adrian Fenty in public forums. They broke the law.

Now we are finding out that a whole crowd of DC residents took part in a massive conspiracy
to collect, launder, and apply $653,000 to help Gray beat Fenty—all of it off the
books.

No, Kojo, the system works fine. US Attorney
Ronald Machen and his investigators are gathering evidence and knocking off the corrupt individuals
one by one.

People are corrupt. The system is fine. Once people vulnerable to corrupt acts realize
they will be caught and punished, perhaps they will choose to not break the law. Or
perhaps they won’t.

Apologists gloss over that essential, personal choice.