Wampum

Terry Neal Invokes the Nixon Postulate

In today’s Washington Post, Terry Neal ivokes a form of the Nixon Postulate. The Nixon Postulate has been restated in many forms since I first encountered it in the early 1970s. In its earliest form, the NP states as follows:

Just because Nixon is paranoid does not mean he is without enemies.

Neal finds application of the Postulate in the Tom DeLay scandal:

In response to the criminal charges he now faces, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) has offered up the time-honored defense of Washington politicians: My enemies are out to get me…

It is entirely possible both that your enemies are out to get you and that you did exactly what you are being accused of doing. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive.

The Post expresses doubt that what DeLay did was a crime:

Nonetheless, at least on the evidence presented so far, the indictment of Mr. DeLay by a state prosecutor in Texas gives us pause. The charge concerns the activities of Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC), a political action committee created by Mr. DeLay and his aides to orchestrate the GOP's takeover of the Texas legislature in 2002. The issue is whether Mr. DeLay and his political aides illegally used the group to evade the state's ban on corporate contributions to candidates. The indictment alleges that TRMPAC took $155,000 in corporate contributions and then sent a check for $190,000 to the national Republican Party's "soft money" arm. The national committee then wrote $190,000 in checks from its noncorporate accounts to seven Texas candidates. Perhaps most damning, TRMPAC dictated the precise amount and recipients of those donations.

This was an obvious end run around the corporate contribution rule. The more difficult question is whether it was an illegal end run -- or, to be more precise, one so blatantly illegal that it amounts to a criminal felony rather than a civil violation. For Mr. DeLay to be convicted, prosecutors will have to show not only that he took part in the dodge but also that he knew it amounted to a violation of state law -- rather than the kind of clever money-trade that election lawyers engineer all the time.

If that argument it correct, it invokes Michael Kinsley’s observation that the real scandal in campaign finance is not what is legal but rather what is illegal.

One maxim of equity is that one may not do indirectly what one is prohibited from doing directly. I know next to nothing about Texas campaign finance law other than that it prohibits corporate contributions. Surely that prohibition can not be evaded by such a crude money laundering scheme as is described by the Post.

Update: I see that Mark Leon Goldberg at Tapped notes that at least one judge has already ruled that the indirect method of using corporate campaign contributions is illegal.

Mick leaves the following comment:

I know next to nothing about Texas campaign finance law other than that it prohibi[t]s corporate contributions.

The reason you know nothing other than that is because there is nothing other than that. Molly Ivins pointed out months ago that Tommy had managed to break the ONLY campaign financing law on the Texas books.

Note: This post was orginally published by my son, Bobby, in a draft form. I took it down, edited it, and reposted it in its current form.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at September 29, 2005 03:36 PM