The people entrust the government and those who act as agents for the government with great powers. Successful practical government requires that the people generally accept decisions made by the government on their behalf. As such, the people have a right to expect that the decisions made by their government are made in their best interests. There will always be disagreements over judgments, but if the people are to accept a government judgment, at least for the time up to the next election, they should have a level of assurance that the disagreement was a difference of judgment and not a conflict of interest.

No person may act as an agent for the Government in any decision or action  in which that person has, or reasonably appears to have, a conflict of interest with the people that he or she is elected or appointed to govern.

I believe that the standard of conduct the people should its representatives to is very very high. That’s why it says “reasonably appears to have a conflict of interest”.  If a government official takes an action that benefits an organization that gives his wife a job, there should be no doubt that the action violates this clause.  The level of gullibility that politicians have expected of the American People is amazing. They expect to get away with “Implausible Deniability”, as in, for example, Tom Delay’s denying knowledge of who paid for his plush golf vacation. Someone paid. Delay benefited. If he were not corrupt he would not accepted the bribe.

In general I believe enthusiastic application of this Conflict Of Interest prohibition is the first step in fixing campaign finance issues. As long as a government position is a ticket to self-enrichment or the enrichment of your friends or co-conspirators, someone is going to be willing to buy the job or buy the job for their puppet. As long as there is a return on the investment, democracy will be for sale, and finance reform will be merely a discussion about the price.  We need to make the certainty of being caught and the penalty sufficient great than no one would want “their man” in the job because “their man” will be excluded from any decision that affects them. The best any one could hopeful is that the person who holds a government job is the person best able to make wise decisions on behalf of the people.

This Conflict of Interest prohibition should run from top to bottom of the government. The president should not (as George Bush, Snr, did) be able to sign an executive order that gives billions of dollars of benefits to a mining company, and then join the company as a highly paid executive when he leaves office.  Nor should the county inspector of septic fields be able to deem my neighbors land unsuitable for a regular septic fields, and require the much more expensive equipment that his brother sells.  Defense contractors should not be able to hire the government officials who gave them their contract, nor should their employee be hired by government.

Conflicts of Interest are as endemic and they are destructive. Some would argue that they are productive. After all, who knew better the abilities of Haliburton to support the US war machine than their recently former CEO, Dick Chenney, as the Vice President. Of course he completely dissociated himself from his former company, that had paid him millions of dollars, and he had nothing to do with arranging a war that demanded the services of his former company, so much so that billions of dollars of cost-plus contracts were given to it without considering any alternative.  And how remarkably useful it was that they had hired into their company a former government official who knew exactly what the governments needs – an former Secretary of  Defense, no less: Dick Chenney. And he was of course well equipped to understand how commercial contractor could assist the government because he, as Secretary of Defense, had commissioned a consultancy report on exactly that. And how fortunate it was the the company that provided the report was a subsidiary of … Halliburton.

The American People need to be ashamed of themselves for being so gullible. Except of course, they didn’t know it … that’s to the wonderful efforts of the Free Press, guaranteed by the constitution – but we’ll come to that.

Conflicts of Interest involving the democratic process should be high on our vigilance. What would think if some tin-pot dictator claimed that he had personally overseen the fairness of the election and was completely satisfied that he had been elected fairly. Would you accept that the treasurer of your club had personally audited his own actions and found them to be irreproachable? Surely not. There are certain separations of powers that are so obvious that, I guess, the framers felt too obvious to be written down.  In the 2000 US Presidential Election the person who was legally responsible for ensuring the fairness of the Florida election was also the head of the committee to elect one of the candidates. She was the person responsible for deciding, as it so crucially turned out, whether a recount was required.  “My candidate is currently winning by a few votes, and I decide to stop the count now, but I’m not in any way biased”. And the American People bought it?