Complying with new ethics restrictions at political conventions leads to some interesting changes; story involving family of vice-presidential candidate stirs debate; Detroit mayor resigns after pleading guilty to criminal charges

VARIOUS DATELINES
A busy week or two in U.S. politics was punctuated by several ethics issues. Among them:

• Kwame Kilpatrick resigned as mayor of Detroit last week after pleading guilty to felony perjury and no-contest to an assault charge. The Detroit Free Press reports that under terms of his plea deal, Kilpatrick will spend four months in jail, surrender his law license, lose his pension, and serve five years of probation. He also has promised to not run for office while on probation. According to a report from the Detroit News, a political action committee that funds GOP campaigns is poised to air a commercial linking Kilpatrick with Barack Obama, showing Obama praising the fellow Democrat at a meeting of the Detroit Economic Club in 2007. Obama’s camp told the News that the remarks were made before any charges were leveled at Kilpatrick, and that Obama recently called on Kilpatrick to resign.
• Both political conventions of the major U.S. political parties aligned their activities with a complex new set of ethics regulations. But according to a report from the Los Angeles Times news service, the changes often were cosmetic. For example, reports the Times’s Cynthia Dizikes, the recently enacted ethics law “prohibits a member from attending a lobbyist’s event that honors the member. But the House ethics committee has interpreted this to mean that lobbyist-hosted parties recognizing a group of members are fine.” Also, Dizikes notes, the liquor flowed freely at both conventions in part because distillers also provided educational presentations promoting responsibility and prevention of underage drinking.
• While claims and counterclaims about ethics were a standard part of the campaign rhetoric during the conventions, one notably uncomfortable dilemma assumed troubling prominence: the pregnancy of the Republican vice-presidential nominee’s unmarried 17-year-old daughter. Some argued that the issue is fair game, as it illustrated sloppy vetting on the part of the McCain camp, the BBC reports. That argument was countered by senior McCain adviser Steve Schmidt, who characterized the “vetting controversy” over Sarah Palin’s daughter as a “faux media scandal designed to destroy the first female Republic nominee for vice present of the United States.” In addition, opines Newark Star-Ledger’s Parental Guidance columnist Carrie Stetler, there is vigorous debate over whether the “vice pregnancy” is an unacceptable intrusion into a family’s privacy, as well as controversy over the fairness of judging someone by the behavior of their children. Loyola University journalism professor Don Wycliff, writing in the Chicago Tribune, argued that the media have a duty to explore “the life and activities and attitudes of a person in Palin’s position and make the results public in a responsible fashion.” But Wycliff contended in his piece that the pregnancy issue should have remained off limits: “I have been appalled and, as a lifelong journalist, embarrassed at some of the explanations that have been offered to legitimate the pregnancy story. Palin’s opposition to robust sex education in public schools and her advocacy of abstinence-only sex ed, for example. Or the fact that Palin presented herself, during the announcement rally in Dayton, Ohio, last week, as a wife and a hockey mom.”

Sources: Detroit Free Press, Sep. 6 — Newark Star-Leger, Sep. 6 — Chicago Tribune, Sep. 5 — BBC, Sep. 3 — Los Angeles Times news service, Aug. 28.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug 25 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 4 — Related Newsline story, July 21 — Related Newsline story, July 7 — Related Newsline story, May 5.