From today’s Political Diary e-mail from the Wall Street Journal:
House Republicans scrambled Wednesday to get ahead of the Abramoff lobbying scandal by passing a change in House rules that will now prohibit former members who are registered lobbyists from strolling onto the House floor or using the House gym.
The change is almost completely cosmetic: Few lobbyists are foolish enough to ply their trade in those locations. But the panic that compelled House Rules Chairman David Dreier to rush the idea on to the floor speaks to a broader problem of House Republicans. In their rush to be seen "doing something" to clean up Washington, they risk leaving a public impression that each piecemeal reform represents the sum total of their efforts.
Ed Rollins, a former Reagan White House political director, says House members tell him they recognize this week’s crackdown on gym use by lobbyists is a hurried pathetic gesture, "but it was the only thing enough people had a consensus on to move forward with." This lowest-common denominator approach to reform carries the danger that Republicans will move to restrict the ability to lobby — which is guaranteed in the Constitution — while failing to look in the mirror and address their own habit of centralizing power over the dispersal of favors in Washington — which is what attracts the lobbyists in the first place.
— John Fund