From the comfort of Midtown Manhattan, it’s easy to condescend to the Egyptians over what the Arab Spring has meant for their unhappy land.
Only two years ago, the crowds cheered — “joyful pandemonium,” The Washington Post called it — when the army that had backed Hosni Mubarak for decades finally stepped in and the dictator finally stepped down. That in turn led to the vote that gave us the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi. Now the army has moved him out too, in response to mounting public dissatisfaction.
So here’s the question: What good is a constitution or an election if every time the politicians mess things up you look to the army to move in?
Perhaps we shouldn’t be so superior. New York may not have blood flowing in the streets, but its approach to politics is closer to the Egyptian model than we might care to admit.
Look at Albany. We all say “Albany is broken.”
The governor says it. Business leaders say it. Newspapers say it. Even men and women campaigning for a seat in Albany say it. And every few months, they’re proven right all over again when we wake up to the latest front-page photo of some assemblyman or senator being led from office in a shiny pair of handcuffs.
So what’s the answer? For the Egyptians, it seems to be to call in the Egyptian Army. For New Yorkers, it’s a Moreland Commission.
A Moreland Commission is a special investigative body appointed by the governor under a 1907 act. In the century since, Moreland Commissions have investigated everything from nursing homes and harness racing to the management of workman’s comp and the response of New York utilities to Hurricane Sandy.
Only last month, Gov. Cuomo appointed his own Moreland Commission and sent its members on their way with an ambitious charge: “to address weaknesses in the state’s public-corruption, election and campaign-finance laws, generate transparency and accountability and restore the public trust.”
Of course, that was more or less what the governor’s father, Gov. Mario Cuomo, promised 25 years ago when he appointed his own Moreland Commission to address New York’s “culture of corruption.”
It’s true that a Moreland Commission has real power: It can subpoena witnesses, hold hearings and sometimes help send people off to jail. Then again, the Egyptian Army also has real power.
The question is whether it’s the right power for enforcing political accountability.
Not that it’s ever stopped anyone from asking for more. Right now, the Moreland Commission is investigating whether political donations from big real-estate firms were given to help secure legislation supporting generous tax breaks that benefitted, well, big real-estate firms. (Do we really need to a commission to answer that?) But this is only a fraction of what people are clamoring for our Moreland Commission to address.
Some are calling for it to look into contributions from pro-fracking political donations; others want it to look at the housekeeping accounts of New York’s political parties. Still others say the Westchester Independence Party is worth a Moreland look-see.
A South Bronx candidate for the Assembly is asking the public to send any dirt on his rival to the Moreland Commission. Other calls for Moreland attention include possible abuses of absentee ballots.
And, given the corruption that seems to define this state, it’s likely that anywhere a Moreland Commission turns, it stands a pretty good chance of finding someone who really belongs in prison.
Maybe that’s why “Moreland Commission” seems programmed into the editorial software as the answer to every problem that ails our political system. What never seems to trouble anyone is that the very act of turning to a Moreland Commission overrides the accountability that, in our system at least, is chiefly thought to come from a free people acting through elections.
When we look to a Moreland Commission to sort through and settle the dysfunctions our politicians give us, we’re relying on an unelected body. If that’s the answer — more Moreland Commissions — why hold elections in the first place?
So maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on the Egyptians when they look to their army to clean it all up when their politicians make a mess.