Navigating the obscene, but not illegal, in modern politics

By Christopher Nicholas 
Real Clear Wire

When calling on my more than four decades in the campaign trenches to help decipher it to the outside world, I’ve settled on this basic premise: neither rank-and-file voters nor professionals and activists need or benefit from partisan wishful thinking. Blunt, and to the point, that’s what’s needed – a simple dose of objective reality. And the reality staring at us now is sobering.

It forces us to confront an uncomfortable question plaguing our political system: How are we expected to react when political behavior of both parties is not necessarily illegal, but clearly obscene?

We often treat corruption as something defined exclusively by the criminal code – a quid pro quo, a briefcase full of cash handed over by a fake Arab sheik (a la Abscam). But the real erosion of public trust happens in the vast, gray area where rules are bent, loopholes are exploited, and the taxpayers get stuck with the tab.

In the case of Philadelphia, the Democratic-controlled Sheriff’s Office has essentially operated its own taxpayer-funded narrative machine. Reports detailing how the office utilized its budget for recruitment ads and other alternative spending reveal what’s effectively turned into a bureaucratic slush fund.

Is it a flagrant violation of statutory law? It’s wrapped in the guise of administrative discretion and departmental marketing. But to the average observer, spending public dollars to polish a department’s image while core duties lag and are ignored is beyond questionable.

Move west to the Capital and the playbook looks identical. A recent PennLive investigation revealed a top state senator spent nearly $80,000 of taxpayer funds over several years on invite-only lunches for Democratic members and staff. While those folks got fancy catered lunches with over-flowing dessert options, the report noted that when some kids from his district visited Harrisburg, the state Senator, Vince Hughes, served them cafeteria pizza.

Paperwork is filed, receipts are logged, and institutional boxes are checked, but it reads like an insulated political class treating the state treasury as an open tab.

Even where the law finally steps in, the underlying culture remains rotten. The recent petition fraud scandal involving Lehigh County Controller Mark Pinsley’s 2024 row office campaign, which culminated in his former manager pleading guilty to forging signatures, highlights the desperation of some campaigns. When the basic grunt work of gathering campaign signatures is outsourced to fraudsters, it signals a systemic laziness – and lameness. (Lucky for the Senate GOP, he’s on the ballot again this year as the Democratic nominee for state Senate in the 16th District.)

Meanwhile, this summer Graham Platner scandal in Maine pulled back the curtain to reveal a nasty, institutional knife-fight for control of the Democratic Party. It’s clear in this instance that all the safety switches were ignored.

How many Nazi tattoo guy candidates does it take to blow up the Democratic Party? Apparently just one.

When you look toward the federal level, the numbers get bigger, the stakes get higher, but too often nothing else changes.

Consider Apple CEO Tim Cook’s ongoing courtship of the Trump administration, specifically when he handed the President a custom gold-and-glass commemorative plaque, a literal stand-in for an American-made iPhone. Quite a novel twist on corporate placation.

Coupled with a promised $600 billion investment, this isn’t illegal; it’s standard executive-level lobbying, but the openness about it can often be jarring.

At the same time, the Trump family’s personal ventures into the crypto space and defense contracting, reported in detail across the media spectrum, and the ongoing, highly scrutinized omissions in federal financial disclosures highlight a complete blurring of the lines between public policy and private financial gain.

And of course, the $400 million plane/gift from the Qataris, which apparently isn’t quite ready for prime time.

Even conservative media commentators are beginning to point out that when a president’s family runs private business ventures that directly intersect with federal regulatory decisions, the conflict of interest is staggering. But this isn’t a Billy Beer incident of the 1970s – it’s hundreds of millions of dollars of defense-related contracts.

Some might ask me and my fellow political professionals, what’s new about this? Clearly, the strategy for both sides all too often has shifted away from avoiding such conflicts to simply managing the PR fallout from them. They know that if an action doesn’t trigger an outright indictment, it can be spun, packaged, and filed away as standard political noise.

But for the health of our democracy, “not illegal” is a dangerously low bar. When this sort of behavior by our public officials is casually disregarded, the system degrades. And voters have been sending us this message every day and it’s way past time to heed their call.

We don’t need partisan outrage; we need a sober realization that the rules of the game are currently written to permit the exact behavior that destroys public faith in the process. Until the structural incentives change, the gloss will remain expensive, and the reality will remain, way too often … obscene.

Christopher Nicholas is a veteran GOP political consultant, President of Eagle Consulting Group, Inc., and writes the PA Political Digest newsletter.