Duke Cunningham, a Navy Ace, got eight years today. When he fell, I exulted, and still exult, at the prospect of a Democrat picking up his seat.
But now, my heart cries out for mercy, not justice.
Cunningham has already suffered the greatest humiliation and loss a politician can suffer. And now he must also die of cancer in prison.
He is, as we all are, a human with eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions. He is fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as all of us, Democrats and Republicans, are.
A war hero, he has lost 90 pounds since his arrest, not from the South Beach diet, but from sorrow, regret, and disease.
This man is no longer a threat to society, but his one-time friend, the excreable Denny Hastert, sanctimoniously proclaims that Cunningham needs to sit in a cell to think further about the error of his ways.
To our disgrace, Democrats and jealous Navy colleagues have swift-boated this veteran, attempting to cast niggling doubt on the undeniable fact that this wild young boy shot down five enemy fighters over the Vietnam seas. Do we think there are so many of us with that kind of skill and courage that we can discourage the next generation with calumny of the last?
Cunningham's sentence is not proportionate to his crime, which, except for the letter of the law, is no different than the ordinary daily course of business in Congress today, where the Hasterts and Delays and many Democrats as well trade off the public interest for cash. I don't see how the public is better served when the bribes go, legally, into a campaign fund, or illegally, into someone's pocket. Once the rape--like the repeal inheritance tax or the bankruptcy bill--has been committed, the victim can hardly be comforted by the details of the circumstances.
With his Rolls-Royce gone, Cunningham is just another Vietnam vet, his sacrifice forgotten and ignored by the comfortable and well-off, sitting forlornly on a street corner with a sign, a victim of what Mark Twain correctly called the "goddamned human race."
My heart is not free of festering hatred and desire for revenge. But I'm sure as hell not proud of it.
Our political battles are, and must continue to be, brutal, combative and competitive in the highest degree. Politics, as we like to smirk, is not beanbag. As a campaign consultant, I never asked for or granted quarter, and I hope the current Democratic political brawlers will do the same. But let us for godsake learn to leave our fight in the ring.
None of our reforms will matter if he do not first renounce cruelty.