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“I allowed myself to get too comfortable with the way things have been done in Washington, D.C., for too long.”

CNN, reporting on disgraced former Ohio Congressthing Bob Ney, carried this poetically economical confession in their story on Ney’s recent sentencing (30 months, which I believe is probably not enough to deter his former colleagues, given the rewards to be reaped from corruption at that level). In a previous post, I said that Ney’s “But I’m an alcoholic!” defense was thin cover, and that the real root of corruption was hubris — his belief that, as a protected incumbent, he was beyond the reach of the law. The story can now be amended a bit to say that he was within the reach of the law, but the law’s grip was not strong enough to really hurt him.

The astute reader will note that Ney isn’t really confessing to morbid incumbency, but rather offering a new excuse: “Everybody does it!” He shouldn’t be able to get away with not naming names, but of course he will. At least he is displaying some insight about the major driver of corruption in American politics (the near-invincibility of incumbents at the polls); shouldn’t America, taken as a whole, try to benefit from its travails and embarrassments, and implement term limits for Congressthings?