Republican Sense of Entitlement

The Randy Cunningham affair is a comedy or tragedy depending on how one looks at it. I don't understand people who want more and more because, well, they feel entitled. Kitty Kelly has written a long article in The New Republic on Mrs. Cunningham that in some respects is very funny and in other respects is tragic. The usual Republican habit of blaming others is in full glory. Here's a couple of excerpts from Kitty Kelly's article as it appears in Truthout:

Nancy Cunningham's lawyer suggested introducing us "girls" in a quiet restaurant at the San Diego Marriott across the street from his office in the Mission Valley neighborhood. From newspaper stories, I had learned of Nancy's impressive credentials. She is bilingual and has two Masters' degrees and a Ph.D. in educational administration. But, when I read that she was suing the government for her "fair share" of equity in the house her husband had bought with bribes, I questioned just how smart this educated woman was. Who in her right mind would take on the federal authorities over that?

When I walked into the restaurant, I half-expected to meet some combination of Ma Barker and Carmela Soprano. Instead, I met a trim, attractive 54-year-old woman with honey blonde hair who looked like the president of the Junior League. Dressed appropriately for a weekday afternoon in Southern California, Nancy was wearing black-and-white checked cotton slacks, black sandals, a black twin set, and simple silver jewelry - but no wedding ring. The only discordant note was a capacious black vinyl bag stuffed with legal files, clipping folders, papers, tissues, and bottles of water.

Since the government raid on the Cunningham estate in Rancho Santa Fe, the forced sale of that property, and the public auction of most of her furnishings, Nancy has been living with her dog and her 87-year-old grandmother in a three-bedroom, one-bathroom bungalow in a downtrodden neighborhood. Her lawyer described the house as "a dump - a real dump."

(snip)

Throughout our interview, Nancy referred to her husband as "Mr. Cunningham." "It's a mental distancing," she explained. "As far as I'm concerned, he no longer really exists." But, in this frosty dismissal and her constant Victorian references to "Mr. Cunningham," there was a sense of disappointment. "I have to tell you, I once idolized him," she later confessed. "He was the most charismatic person I ever met." In her recollections of their early days together, Duke mesmerized men as well as women. Despite his later lies and betrayals, she can still see him as the dashing young Navy ace. In weak moments when she isn't wishing him dead, she wonders why someone with "all the promise he once had" ever married someone like herself. "I identify with women like Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Diana," Nancy said. "They, too, had husbands like that."

(snip)

The $2.55 million purchase of the house in Rancho Santa Fe became the tipping point of Duke's crash into corruption. "It was a fixer-upper. I mean, it doesn't look like that from the aerial views - it looks like an absolute Taj Mahal, and I understand that," Nancy said. But my credulity was strained as she struggled to explain how she and her husband parlayed their house in Del Mar into Rancho Taj. "He convinced me that, when he retired from Congress, he would make big money as a lobbyist, so I relaxed a little about the monthly payments," she said....

(snip)

Although Nancy feels tainted by her husband's criminality, she occasionally defends him and strikes back at his detractors, knowing that she, too, is being judged the same way. Still, the crucial question remains: Did she or didn't she know the extent of her husband's corruption? The answer may be that she shared enough of her husband's Gatsby-like dream to turn a blind eye to the means he used to obtain it. But the real tragedy for Duke Cunningham is that, by the time he arrived in Washington, the prestige and glamour that he imagined he would find there were long gone. The people who had the lifestyle he fantasized about weren't politicians; they were lobbyists. And Duke, the war-hero who felt he had earned a place in the pantheon of Kennedys and Bushes, felt cheated. The psychiatrist who evaluated Duke Cunningham explained his greed in proprietary terms: "It is possible that his extraordinary deeds in the service planted a subconscious sense of entitlement, which fed his rationalization to accept these gifts [bribes] for his sacrifice."

Unbelievable. Most Republicans I have met are honest and hardworking but I have met a handful who are well-groomed men and women who feel entitled (it's not a subconscious sense) and are not shy about bending the rules and in some cases just breaking them. For some reason, quite a few Republicans of the same type have managed to make their way to Washington. And they all pity themselves when things don't go well.