For the past several weeks, the American public has been bombarded with reports on television and in the print media referring to that fine Latin term, “quid pro quo.”
While the legal import of that dry phrase is beyond dispute, its level of emotional impact most probably rises barely above zero. It may be useful, then, to put the issue in terms more familiar to those with even just a passing knowledge of local politics.
As an illustrative example, let’s take a political structure such as is common here on Long Island: there are three towns in Nassau County (Hempstead, North Hempstead, and Oyster Bay) and several in Suffolk.
Each of those towns has its own town council; the council members represent election districts that may be (but aren’t necessarily) generally consistent with identifiable villages contained therein.
Now let’s suppose that council member A, from E.D. 1, seeks an allocation of funds in the coming year’s budget to repair and restore a neighborhood park; the job would clearly benefit the constituents, and the council member can assume that would redound to his/her electoral benefit in the next campaign.
He/she may approach council member B, from E.D. 2, with a proposal: “If you vote in favor of the spending on my park project, I’ll support your road repair project. That will help both of us by bringing home some bacon to our districts.”
Unquestionably, that would be a “quid pro quo” that’s probably highly common in local governance and would be entirely acceptable to voters in both communities.
Now let’s consider a somewhat differently structured example. Council member A approaches Council Member B with a proposal: I’ll vote in favor of the expenditure for the road repair job in your E.D., if you promise to make a donation of $1,000 to my campaign fund for next year’s election campaign.”
I’m certain that, if such an agreement were to be discovered by a whistle-blower and revealed in the media, it would evoke widespread outrage. It might be cited as another “quid pro quo,” but the public would probably call it bribery.
I’ll leave it entirely to the readers of this publication to determine whether, and how, these parables have any relevance to our nation’s current political scene.
Robert I. Adler
Port Washington
