The Republic of Virtue: How We Tried to Ban Corruption, Failed, and What We Can Do About It is a book by Frank H. Buckley, discussed by Buckley with host Bob Zadek on The Bob Zadek Show. Buckley is described in a later episode as a Foundation Professor at George Mason University’s Scalia Law School, where he has taught since 1989. Zadek introduced the book as Buckley’s newest work and noted that Buckley had appeared on the show three times, each time for a book [[episodes/f_h__buckley_on__the_republic_of_virtue|F.H. Buckley on The Republic of Virtue (2017)]].
Virtue in the founding era
Zadek framed the show around the word “virtue,” telling Buckley that the keyword of the book and the episode had a different and more important meaning in the founding era than it does today. Buckley agreed that in the 18th century “virtue” carried a special meaning: it meant what was called “republican virtue,” and it meant something by way of opposition to the kind of public corruption one saw in other countries, notably England. He distinguished this from the theological and cardinal virtues, and from qualities such as courage. In his account, virtue referred to public officials who prefer the public good to their private ends. The virtuous person in the Revolution was a patriot who would fight for General Washington; in Philadelphia in 1787, virtue meant preferring the good of all Americans to local goods, to putting money in your own pocket, or to preferring your state to the country as a whole [[episodes/f_h__buckley_on__the_republic_of_virtue|F.H. Buckley on The Republic of Virtue (2017)]].
Buckley said the framers, who wrote the Constitution in 1787, loved England in many respects and loved the idea of British liberty, but had fought a revolution against England and did not want a king—and, importantly, did not want British-style corruption. He described the king as basically buying off votes in the House of Commons by giving people bribes, positions and money, and called the elections of the period utterly shameless affairs. Americans who visited England at the time, he said, were absolutely shocked. From this he drew the conclusion that what the framers wanted was a Constitution that would be a corruption-free covenant—and, in his words, “we didn’t get it.”
Corruption and the centralization of power
Zadek opened the discussion of corruption by describing Madison’s belief that a big republic could work because factions in a big country would neutralize each other, with no national party but only factions forming around specific issues, putting together coalitions and diluting power. He said power was the one noun the founders feared more than anything else, that any accumulation of power was to be feared, and that the structure of the country was designed to eliminate such accumulation—adding that it probably failed, but that was the goal [[episodes/f_h__buckley_on__the_republic_of_virtue|F.H. Buckley on The Republic of Virtue (2017)]].
Buckley called the title of his book somewhat ironic, saying he did not think what you would want is a corruption-free government: the optimal level of corruption is not zero. He illustrated the point by saying that if you want a totally corruption-free government, you are talking about Robespierre cutting off people’s heads, and that the question is instead what as a matter of prudence would get us in the right direction. Asked for examples of the corruption that disturbed him, he named federalism. He said that when people ask where he is coming from, he asks whether they have heard of Louisiana or Illinois, and that in a corrupt state like Louisiana you pay for corruption through inefficient government, wasteful government and a decline in wealth—paying for the crime of corruption through poverty. The remedy he described is locational: people have locational choices, tend to move to places that are less corrupt, and can go across the state border from Louisiana to Texas. But when most power is centralized in Washington, he said, you cannot escape federal corruption by moving across state borders. Looking across the Potomac at DC, he described the greatest concentration of influence and patronage ever seen in the world, centered on K Street with the lobbyists and Congress, and concluded that the accumulation of power in Washington and the decline of federalism have not been healthy in terms of corruption.
Lobbying: education versus influence
Zadek put the case for lobbyists before asking Buckley what about the occupation rises to the level of corruption: lobbyists are hired representatives employed by interest groups, and their only job is to persuade elected officials to benefit their clientele—and also to educate the legislature, which Zadek said is not a bad thing per se and is in fact necessary [[episodes/f_h__buckley_on__the_republic_of_virtue|F.H. Buckley on The Republic of Virtue (2017)]].
Buckley began by agreeing about the good things lobbyists do. He said most represent industry groups, but some represent public interest groups—the Sierra Club, the NAACP and the National Rifle Association all have lobbyists—and that they are exercising their First Amendment right to petition the government for the redress of grievances. He called that not merely neutral but a positively good thing, because congressmen come to town not exactly well-educated and in many cases deeply ignorant about what is going on, and need to be told about a 1,000-page bill and the little rider in it. The line is overstepped, he said, when lobbyists can essentially purchase influence by giving gifts to congressmen. His classic example was the golf trips Jack Abramoff organized for his congressional friends 10-odd years earlier—pricey junkets that created a sense of obligation—and he noted those kinds of direct gifts were outlawed. What remains, in his view, is that while lobbyists cannot put money in a congressman’s pocket, they can contribute to a political campaign; since corporations are prohibited from contributing to congressmen, a corporation can essentially do it using the lobbyist as a conduit. Lobbyists can also organize receptions and meet-and-greets, with the apparatus of campaigning run through a lobbyist’s office. Buckley said that could properly be curtailed, and that lobbyists should be relegated to their information provision business rather than the special sweetheart gifts business, which he likened to buying influence.
Asked by Zadek to trace the problem to something the founders did wrong or a structural defect, Buckley named two things: technology and size of government. He said the framers were not omniscient and in 1787 were not aware of the later transformation of communications and information, noting that the roads of America at that time were worse than the Roman roads of 2,000 years before, so that the Federalist Papers never really got outside of New York during the ratification debate.
Bundlers, ambassadors and the limits of the remedy
In closing remarks, Zadek asked whether there is another form of corruption besides economic corruption—whether an elected official who votes the wrong way based on personal bias or life experience should concern Buckley more than the motivation behind the vote, so long as the vote was good for the country [[episodes/f_h__buckley_on__the_republic_of_virtue|F.H. Buckley on The Republic of Virtue (2017)]].
Buckley answered that he does not have a problem with that, because everyone has such motivations and there is a remedy for the bad ones: vote the guy out. He said a private bias might derive from an incident with a religious leader at age eight that made an overall very good impression, and that such biases may be good or bad. Zadek then asked whether the same remedy is available for corruption. Buckley said the remedy is available for corruption, but that what he wanted to talk about was how the campaign itself, the election itself, is affected by things that in themselves might be tainted by corruption—for example, money given by a lobbyist. He added that he also discusses in the book bundlers who end up as ambassadors and have absolutely nothing going for them apart from the fact they raised money, calling it an embarrassment to America and saying the country is essentially selling off its embassies to big donors, who are frequently idiots. Money, he said, does not correlate with goodness the way those childhood conversations with a religious leader do.
Across episodes: from diagnosis to program
The excerpts show the same question—what corruption is and what can be done about it—argued in more than one episode, with a change in emphasis between treatments. In the 2017 discussion, Buckley’s remedy is structural and prudential: the optimal level of corruption is not zero, federalism lets people move away from corrupt states, and centralized power in Washington removes that escape [[episodes/f_h__buckley_on__the_republic_of_virtue|F.H. Buckley on The Republic of Virtue (2017)]]. In the 2022 episode, Zadek introduces Buckley as the author of Progressive Conservatism: How Republicans Will Become America’s Natural Governing Party, and Buckley argues that the word “progressive” has been adopted by the left, that the people who call themselves progressives are anti-moderns who want to turn politics into a battle of race against race and ethnic group against ethnic group, and that there is an important history of progressivism in the GOP found in Lincoln’s internal policies, in Teddy Roosevelt and in Eisenhower, who called himself a progressive and said the Republican Party must become progressive or it is going to die Trumpism After Trump (2022). The 2020 episode adds a federalism example of a different kind: Zadek describes California, in the middle of Gavin Newsom declaring nation-statehood, suing Washington after Trump reversed nutrition standards for school lunches and said the states could decide, and Buckley calls it California imperialism—California wanting to impose California standards on the rest of the country Did California Just Declare Itself a Nation-State? (2020).
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the outcome of any case, the name of any bill, or which amendment any dispute turned on. They do not give the publication date of The Republic of Virtue, the full contents of its argument, or Buckley’s account of what specifically should be done beyond the federalism and lobbying points quoted here. The 2022 excerpt breaks off mid-sentence in its second section, and the 2020 excerpt is a closing segment, so neither supplies a complete treatment of its topic.