We Need To Stop Waiting For Congress To Hold Themselves Accountable

The sad state of congressional ethics:

After a 14-month investigation, the Senate ethics committee decided it was OK that corrupt Sen. Christopher Dodd took sweetheart mortgages from Countrywide Financial, despite his role as a congressional overseer of the nation’s lenders. The committee accepted his implausible explanations because the ethics code is a massive gray area, intentionally so. The code mostly exists to give the public the impression senators are serious about weeding out corruption. They are not.
Over on the House side of “the most ethical Congress in history,” the ethics committee took Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., on his word that he accepted free Caribbean junkets because, um, er, (cough), ah, his staffers withheld their memos informing him those corporate-funded trips violated Congress’ ban on gifts. While Rep. Rangel claims exoneration, the committee is taking its sweet time investigating charges he failed to declare many thousands in income on his tax returns and hundreds of thousands in personal wealth on financial-disclosure forms. Rep. Rangel, who temporarily has relinquished his chairmanship of the House tax-writing committee, claims these were honest mistakes owing to his ignorance of tax code and unfamiliarity with disclosure rules.

Let’s not forget that Senator Kent Conrad, too, got away with mortgage gifts from Countrywide Mortgage with little more than a slap on the wrist despite aiding Senator Dodd in shepherding legislation worth billions to the company through the Senate.
So what’s the solution? Clearly, Congress can’t hold itself accountable. But is there really a workable way to have an independent body wielding ethics authority over Congress? That probably wouldn’t meet constitutional muster.
The best way, as generic as it sounds, is that we just need to elect better people to office. Sadly, most of the people who run are the sort of people who want desperately to be in Congress. And they’re the very sorts we shouldn’t be electing.