Here’s some simple wisdom that applies to a congressman with an overactive camera thing, or to anyone thinking up convoluted ways to bribe foreign officials.
It’s from John Harris and Erika Lovley of Politico:
“It was Weiner’s misfortune to be something of an innovator in the realm of sexual scandal. He wasn’t the first congressman to be caught in an online sex scandal. That was former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who resigned after he was caught sending suggestive IMs to male pages in 2006. But Weiner is the first prominent politician to be exposed trading steamy sexual badinage on Twitter, a revelation that clearly bent the minds of many.
“It never helps to be a pathbreaker when it comes to improper behavior. In the 1980s, Appeals Court Judge Douglas Ginsburg had to back out of his Supreme Court nomination after it was revealed he smoked marijuana. A few years later, the same revelation hardly slowed Bill Clinton on the path to the presidency, and President Barack Obama has volunteered that he has used cocaine.”
The lesson? Anyone thinking they’re innovators when it comes to bribery abroad should think again. Innovation in wrongdoing is the problem, not the solution.
Despite that, at every talk we give, someone asks if it’s okay for employees to pay bribes that “the company doesn’t know about.” The innovation, apparently, is a convoluted payment arrangement that let’s the company claim “no knowledge” of what’s going on.
That’s not okay, for reasons we’ll talk about soon.
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