The United States government, once the vision of public integrity aspired to around the world, has now been relegated to more of a laughingstock. Mother Jones writes:
Jessica Tillipman, a dean at the George Washington University Law School and an expert on government ethics and compliance, was recently giving an anti-corruption training to a roomful of visiting government officials from Latin America when something odd happened. As she described measures the United States has in place to guard against conflicts of interest, she heard snickering.
"Usually, I would see audiences in the past where they would look on kind of in awe" at the elaborate system the federal government has in place to prevent graft and corruption, Tillipman says. That has changed since the election of Donald Trump. Now, the overseas officials she trains point out that the US can't even get its own president to abide by the nation's ethics standards and traditions. "It was almost a bit of a joke," she says of the recent training. "To have countries with their own distinct corruption issues laughing at our current issues—it's embarrassing."
Gee, what could it be? Kellyanne Conway hawking Ivanka wares from the West Wing? Trump flipping the middle finger to U.S. anti-nepotism laws? The supposed "blind trust" Trump's two sons are running even though he speaks with them daily? The D.C. hotel Trump's leveraging for profits in contravention of the lease? The roll back of anti-corruption rules for the oil and gas industries? The hacksaw Trump took to Obama's anti-lobbying rules? Trump's still-hidden tax returns that prevent U.S. citizens from even knowing what financial entanglements he has?
Whatever it might be, it's clearly sending the wrong signal.
Interviews with more than a dozen US and foreign experts show that the nation is losing its credibility as the world leader in clean government and fighting corruption, which is in turn affecting global efforts to combat government corruption. [...]
"It's hard to put lipstick on the pig: There's a very, very different perceived reputation now than three or four months ago," says Nathaniel Heller, an executive with Results for Development, a non-profit that fights poverty, partly by encouraging government transparency.