Pro-market prose market

Weighing in on some old news here — Eamon Javers of BusinessWeek reports that columnist and former senior fellow at the Cato Institute Doug Bandow:

… accepted payments from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff for writing op-ed articles favorable to the positions of some of Abramoff's clients. Doug Bandow, who writes a syndicated column for Copley News Service, told BusinessWeek Online that he had accepted money from Abramoff for writing between 12 and 24 articles over a period of years, beginning in the mid '90s.

Bandow has, for decades, been a prominent voice in evangelical circles. He's been our designated libertarian. As a sometimes assistant to some of evangelicalism's designated progressives I was often called on to respond to or interact with Bandow's take on various issues.

I didn't often agree with Bandow — his truncated view of government responsibility can't be reconciled with any of the major streams of Christian thinking about government and politics — but I grew to respect his ideological consistency. The man himself seemed honest and consistent in applying his magically simplistic ideology. (And sometimes I did agree with him, such as on the futility of the War on Drugs — a stance he never shied away from even though he knew it was unpopular with the evangelical crowd.)

So I was saddened and disappointed to read that BusinessWeek report on Bandow's accepting Abramoff payola for puffing his clients. That payola wound up costing Bandow his post at Cato, and his syndicated column with Copley.

Because of Bandow's prominent role in the evangelical community, I expected some discussion of this in the evangelical press as well. So far, I haven't seen it. Apart from a brief post by Marvin Olasky on Worldblog (the blog of the Southern Gothbyterian World magazine), Bandow's punditry-for-hire has gone unremarked upon in evangelical publications.

I thought I'd remembered that Bandow was some kind of contributing or corresponding editor for Christianity Today, but he's not on their masthead. (A search of CT's site turns up, instead, a mention of Bandow in a 1998 article I wrote opposing evangelicals' flirtation with libertarianism. Most of that piece is behind a subscription wall — I'll have to cross-post it here just to give Scott something new to fume about.)

Bandow has since written an apology, of sorts, "The lesson Jack Abramoff taught me."

In this op-ed piece, Bandow raises some good questions about the realm of punditry:

Virtually everyone I worked with or wrote for had an ax to grind. Even think tanks and opinion journals have explicit ideological perspectives, which they support through fundraising. Certainly politicians, PR firms, companies and associations have explicit agendas. Although none of the people I worked with or for ever asked me to change a commentary I wrote, when you look back at it, conflicts were possible.

Who decides whether such a potential conflict is sufficiently direct to matter? In 1987, I was paid to help a presidential candidate develop a plan to privatize Social Security. Does that mean I can never have a legitimate opinion on the issue or that politician ever again? And what is an aspiring ideologue to do if he believes something in principle and the person or group willing to offer support to write about it has an economic interest in the outcome?

Many supposedly objective thinkers and independent scholar/experts these days have blogs or consulting gigs, or they are starting nonprofit Centers for the Study of Whatever. Who funds their books, speeches or other endeavors? Often it's those with an interest in the outcome of a related debate.

(Bill Berkowitz raises some similar questions, without the self-justifying spin, in a recent piece titled "Bought and paid for lies and propaganda masquerading as news.")

What's most interesting is the following, which Bandow says he doesn't offer as an "excuse" for his accepting payola:

Abramoff said: Look at these issues. If you agree and want to write on them, we'll help. I never took a position contrary to my beliefs. I wouldn't have had the luxury of selling out even had I been so inclined. My biases are too fixed and well known to allow a convenient conversion.

In retrospect, it was stupid because it created an appearance that would bring all of my work into potential disrepute. And the appearance was made worse by Abramoff's other shenanigans. But it's silly to suggest that $1,000 or so would buy my opinion. I'm pro-drug legalization, anti-abortion, pro-market and anti-war. I dislike, rather than love or hate, President Bush. I have repeated these positions in hundreds of articles over the years.

There is a significant distinction between two breeds of selling out. The utter sell-out, the prosti-pundit, will write whatever his employer demands just as long as the check doesn't bounce. That strikes me as a greater sin than doing what Bandow did, accepting additional payment from interested parties with an affinity for — and financial stake in — the opinions you already held.

But this latter activity also seems to me more than just a problem of, as Bandow claims, "appearance." Money changing hands changes things. (If you don't believe that, try this experiment: The next time a friend does something nice for you, tip them a couple bucks. Better yet, the next time you and your spouse/lover/partner have sex, leave $50 on the dresser as a "thank you.")

I don't think the above distinction should matter legally, but it does matter — somehow — morally. I'm just not sure how. If a politician accepts a bribe for supporting legislation he would have supported anyway, it's still bribery. He still ought to be kicked out of the legislature and thrown in jail. But, for what it's worth, he's not as bad as his fellow politician who changed his vote because of a bribe.

Any professional ethicist/hairsplitters out there who could tell me if there's a name for the distinction I'm struggling to make here?