By Joseph J. Honick
The really naïve may well have been arching their eyebrows at the revelations of powerful Democratic Congressman Charlie Rangel during his recent trial before the House Ethics Committee that found him guilty of 11 out of 13 charges.
Those who believe this doomed the man to the bottomless pits of political hell should think again. He did not dig his grave so deeply he could not re-emerge, and people who know the bipartisan battlefields of Capitol Hill also know that people like Charlie do not forget either friends or foes. The former may well assist him in dealing with the latter.
By now, all the accusations of improper behavior have been publicly broadcast for some weeks. It has cost Rangel plenty, mostly in money and public embarrassment. He asserted it had cost him well over $2 million and left him broke. The spending no doubt is at least the amount that flowed out. Whether the dapper dressing legislator is broke is for another discussion.
It is also important to take note of two things:
The chief legal counsel to the bipartisan ethics committee, when asked if Rangel had done what he did to enrich himself, said quickly he saw no evidence of that. Secondly, Rangel’s biggest angry charge against the Committee was that they inhibited him from obtaining legal counsel after the multi-million dollar blowout referred to earlier.
At no time did he foolishly engage in name calling, alleging racism or doing anything else that would leave him a bitter laughingstock in the public and media workplaces.
Those factors should not be forgotten along with the massive majority he received once again in the recent Congressional elections.
But there are questions that political sophisticates wonder about. And those questions will be dealt with no doubt in the coming weeks…if not by Charlie Rangel personally, then by those “friends” mentioned earlier. Here are just a few to consider:
1. How come Rangel was suddenly swooped down on at this particular time after decades in the Congressional power structure regardless of which majority ruled?
2. What impact did his demand for a reinstatement of the draft if, in his words, “the whole nation is at war”…a loud oratorical effort that failed to get the answers such a demand reasonably called for?
3. Who or what claque actually organized the effort to start the charges rolling and why is this information far down the list of citations by the media?
4. How many other Members of Congress are checking all conceivable files and losing lots of sleep?
These are only a few questions political sophisticates should be raising, and the wonder is that the media hounds have done virtually nothing “side-barring” such information.
The voluble Charlie Rangel has been careful to make clear his profound respect for what the people’s House represents, and his record of leadership in it for so many years. “52 years of public service can’t be tossed aside” has been his battle cry, underlining further the wonder about why all of this has suddenly emerged.
Rangel has also taken careful and emphatic steps to apologize for his trespasses, some of which seemed fairly tame in comparison to those of other long-term Members who sometime get a bit “relaxed” about their operations, campaigns and even their personal lives.
No one is going to put a halo around the head of Charlie Rangel, but his actions don’t come even close to the kind of trash that emerged during the Abramoff lobbying debacle against others…or stuff that may come out from any number of corporate events that got hundreds of billions dealt out in bailouts and stimuli or defense contracts that have totted up to the trillions for two questionable wars.
Had Rangel acted as accuser and ranted about all sorts of possible prejudices and jealousies, he would have been better to resign dramatically and left the scene. All connected to this very powerful man and his tribulations are clearly aware he took his medicine even as his old friend Speaker Nancy Pelosi read aloud the results of his trial by an Ethics Committee equally divided along party lines.
With a newly emboldened Republican House leadership that even now has been unable to address how we must deal with the wars Rangel wants fought, if they must, by all young men eligible to do it.
Charlie Rangel is down, but he is still entitled to walk the Halls of Congress this coming year with his razor sharp command of the elliptical language of politics. His accusers and his supporters alike know that, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out….and it will for sure.
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Joseph J. Honick is an international consultant
to business and government and writes for many publications,
including huntingtonnews.net. Honick can be reached
at [email protected]. |