I’d be remiss if I let Jack Murtha’s (D-PA) passing go unnoticed.
It’s easy to sneer that Murtha represented the worst of Washington business. While it’s true that Murtha had some extraordinarily close ties to the defense industry, focusing on his dealings at the time of his death misses much of his otherwise extraordinary life story. Not only was he the first Vietnam veteran to serve in Congress, but he had the gumption to join the military twice. It’s true — after serving as an enlisted man in Korea, he went to the University of Pittsburgh on the G.I. Bill, and then became an officer before being shipped off to Vietnam.
But to me, the most impressive part of his military career might have been his stint as a drill sergeant in Parris Island, S.C. Parris Island, you see, is the United States Marine Corps’ boot camp, and I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about the place from my father, a former Marine who lived in fear and dread of flunking out of Officer Candidate School and ending up in the South Carolina swamp. Rep. Murtha may have looked like a teddy bear, but I assure you that he’s caused his fair share of 18-year-olds’ bed wetting.
As a congressman, Murtha endorsed the use of force in Iraq in 2002, but then turned on the Bush administration, saying the campaign was “a flawed policy wrapped in an illusion.” He also did the right thing by speaking out against his own USMC’s excessive use of force in the 2005 Haditha killings. It’s probably for these reasons, as much as anything else, that Secretary of Defense Gates called Murtha “a true patriot” upon his death.
Ah yes, and then there were those ties to the defense industry. I couldn’t sum them up better than my friend Brian Wingfield at Forbes.com:
Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who died Monday at age 77, was an old-school, dealmaking politician and a master of the earmark. Some watchdog groups, like Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, called him “corrupt.” Murtha just said he was good at his job, and obtaining government money for the folks back home came with the territory.Obtain he did. According to the annual “Pig Book,” a listing of pork projects, published annually by Citizens Against Government Waste, Murtha had a hand in 50 earmarks totaling $132 million–last year alone. The year before, he was responsible for 73 earmarks worth $159 million. Years prior are similar. …
Murtha will undoubtedly be remembered most for his skill at acquiring earmarks, for good and for bad. During the past several years, his reputation was tarred by his association with the PMA Group, a lobbying firm that was the fifth most generous donor to Murtha’s campaigns since 1989. According to press reports, Murtha helped direct $137 million on federal contracts to PMA’s clients, who helped fill the Pennsylvania congressman’s campaign coffers. The Office of Congressional Ethics last year dropped its investigation of Murtha.
Murtha once said, “I know better than those damn people in the White House what needs to be done in my district.” It’s a valid point, but one that is symptomatic of the problem in today’s politics.
