The only reason pitchfork-wielding Canadian taxpayers aren’t charging onto the Hill to string up assorted senators, of course, is this: They’ve seen it all before. It’s an old horror movie and they know how it ends: Badly, for them.
Suggesting that parliamentarians abuse the rules to line their pockets, therefore, isn’t exactly front-page news. Nor is it a uniquely Canadian phenomenon — the current allegations around Canuck senators Pamela Wallin, Mike Duffy, Patrick Brazeau and Mac Harb notwithstanding. It happens everywhere, and it happens all the time.
The Mother of All Expense Account Scandals, we reckon, took place a few years ago, at the Mother of All Parliaments in Britain. Then, dozens of Members of Parliament were caught up in an expense account scandal that makes our honourable members look like mere pikers.
In the Brit scandal, MPs were found to have expensed mortgage payments for mortgages that had been paid off. One expensed nearly $4,000 for a floating duck island for the pond in his garden. Another statesman charged British taxpayers close to $5,000 to clean out his moat.
Another parliamentarian, the “care services” minister, apparently cared quite a bit about his London flat, and expensed about $100,000 to furnish it. A minister of justice, no less, tried to expense a $5,000 flat-screen TV.
Other stuff expensed: Nail polish, panty liners and (my personal favourite) diapers.
Whenever an expense-account scandal happens — and they seemingly happen all the time — they tend to follow a time-worn trajectory. The media go wild, and publish more. The public gets mad, and votes less.
Meanwhile, the politicos always follow the five stages of scandal: Silence, followed by cover up, then denial, followed by acts of contrition, and concluding with resignation. (As in, actual resignations.) All to be followed by born-again religiosity and memoir-writing.
But, for all that, one question remains stubbornly unanswered — why do they do it?
Why do people in high-profile positions spend taxpayer dollars as if it were their own? Don’t they know they will always get caught?
One American psychotherapist, Judith Acosta, tried to answer the question in an essay. She was blunt: Politicians, she says, are sociopaths.
It’s a tempting analysis, but having spent most of my adult life around politicians I am inclined towards a different, admittedly unscientific, assessment.
Politicians are (clearly) goal-driven. They tend to regard the universe as a win-lose proposition. They believe that, upon election or appointment, they have been admitted to another plane of existence, wherein (as Acosta says) the rules do not apply to them so much, or at all.
I’ve also found that they harbour deep resentments. Every day, they meet rich and powerful people who want things from them. Because they work hard, and they don’t have much of a life anymore, they feel — and my heart sank the first time I heard this now-storied phrase — they are entitled to their entitlements. Rules, begone.
That doesn’t make them sociopaths. They are, instead, next-door neighbours.
They see the grass on the other side, they see it is greener, and they want it.
So they go after it, and they don’t give a damn who is paying the bill.