....© 2000, Kimit A. Muston
I hope no one is feeling sorry for John McCain. Sure he lost in his bid for the Republican Presidential nomination, and sure his fellow Republican Senators think rather unkindly of him, and sure the governor of his own state said some very unpleasant things about him, but as reformers go the Senator from Arizona hasn't had it all that bad: consider what happened to Tibeius Sempronius Gracchus, Tribune of Rome.
When Gracchus was first elected in 133 B.C. he proposed that the Republic should protect the farms of it's citizen soldiers while they were away slaughtering barbarians. The idea sounded reasonable to everybody except the rich who had often gotten rich by stealing land from soldiers away on duty, and many of whom just happened to be members of the Roman Senate. Like today's senators, they also didn't take kindly to the implication they were crooks and leeches on the body politic. They bottled up Gracchus's reforms in committees and made sure the bills went nowhere, much the same treatment campaign finance reform has received from the current Congress.
Like Senator McCain, Tribune Gracchus decided to appeal directly to the people, which made him even more unpopular with the Roman Senate. And in 132 B.C. several enraged members of that revered political organization beat Gracchus to death in public with their bare hands: and any rocks and bricks they could lay bare hands upon. His corpse was then dumped into the Tiber river to float out to sea along with all idea of reform.
Most reformers in history have suffered similar fates. Certainly nobody is suggesting, at least not publicly, that John McCain be dumped into the Potomac: two thousand years of civilization have brought us some meager advances. But although John McCain is not dead, politically he might as well be. George W. Bush will win nomination at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia on the first ballot without McCain's delegates or his endorsement, and the Republican power elite must be thinking they will never have to listen to the Senator's calls for reform ever again. If that indeed is what they are thinking, history hints they may be in for a surprise.
You see, Gracchus had a younger brother, Caius Sempronius, who was elected Tribune in 123 B.C., eight years after his brother's murder. Caius saw many of Gracchus' reforms made law. The Roman Senate had Caius killed of course, but the reforms stuck.
And reports of John McCain's demise appear to have been a bit premature as well. Determined to force an end to "soft" money in politics, he is now preparing to form a Political Action Committee to raise "soft" money to be used in the support of candidates who endorse the elimination of "soft" money. In the Alice-Through-The-Looking-Glass world of National Politics, that actually makes sense.
There is one other aspect of reformers the Republican power structure might want to consider. Gracchus and Caius have remained honored for two thousand years, while very few people even know the names of the Senators who opposed them.