Reflections: On the Power that Corrupts

...Anyone who has observed the phenomenon of fear in politics knows how necessary it is for politicians to bolster their own egos at the expense of others...

...In 1967, The Wall Street Journal reported that Hays "took his twenty-six-year-old secretary to Bermuda for an informal meeting with British parliamentarians...

...It was and still is an environment in which even the honest participant must begin to feel complicity: "The crap around here," says one former Congressman, "is incredibly deadening...

...they had their personal packages wrapped in the Hays-supervised package room...

...He chose the same young lady to join another Hays-headed deleption for twenty days in Europe...

...No matter how outrageous the abuse, there is no grievance procedure for a Congressional employe...

...Politics really gives you something to feel about yourself...

...For those whose interests are protected and advanced on Capitol Hill, a little corruption has its uses...

...role in international relations were in harmony with the system he had built up and maintained within the House...

...In 1974, during committee hearings on the new Federal election law, Hays managed to slip in an amendment reducing the statute of limitations on illegal contributions from five years to three...

...There is no union, no employe rights committee, no contract or job security, no appeal if one is fired...

...than the committees from which he was forced to step aside...

...In 1974 he took two women to Germany, Italy, France, and Spain, supposedly to look at printing plants, and paid for the junket out of House Administration Committee funds...

...For five years he cheerfully obstructed campaign finance reform legislation...

...All these matters are in the domain of the House Administration Committee, over which Wayne Hays presided...

...Harrington, who knows a little about the House's ability to discipline a less influential member, pointed out that the $ 1 billion of State Department appropriations Hays controlled "was far more significant...

...they bought merchandise — from wine glasses to portable typewriters — from the Hays-managed stationery room...

...Members ate in the Hays-managed restaurant...

...As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he allocated the funds to help keep Democratic members in office...

...no turbulence from the outside world should be allowed to enter...

...Cafeteria workers had to go on strike in 1969 simply to receive the minimum wage for restaurant employes...

...they ordered special furniture built and upholstered in the Hays-run carpentry shop...

...Her new book, "Seven Women: Portraits from the American Radical Tradition," will be published by The Viking Press next spring...

...on a voice vote, sixteen voted to have him remain...

...But his replacement is in the wings...

...Former Representative Allard Lowenstein once observed, "Congress is like Calcutta — nothing prepares you for it...

...We should hardly be surprised, then, that female employes are coerced into sleeping with the boss — or with a "friend" of the boss — when they are provided with no other form of job security and are told it is part of the job...

...Moreover, there is a tacit approval of covert discrimination against women who work on Capitol Hill...

...He was a genius in the art of bureaucracy...

...The House International Relations Committee held its first hearing on Vietnam legislation in 1971, years after the Indochina war had become the central issue of American foreign policy and long after billions of dollars had been appropriated and spent...

...The bill was passed — with the Hays amendment — at the height of the Watergate scandal...

...His international travels at the taxpayers' expense (and usually with female traveling companions) were so extensive that he was called Marco Polo...

...Then, having spent $6,589 — enough to make him Congressional travel champ — Mr...

...The working atmosphere for women evokes a turn-of-the-century textile mill — drudge labor is provided by hundreds of women who work long hours, receive little recognition, are only dimly conscious of being exploited, and are treated as personal property by the men who hire them...

...His power, like all bureaucratic power, was rooted in the creation and enforcement of complex rules which defined the environment in which members must work, compete, and find respect...

...As they reduce and diminish those around them, they feel bigger and bigger...

...But the oppression of women is only part of the Congressional work situation...

...I got where I am," he told Washington Post reporter Myra McPherson, "because people feared me...

...Though he has been forced by circumstance to give up his seat, Wayne Hays remains the embodiment of Congress — an institution utterly detached from outside reality...

...Last year he even arranged to increase members' salaries — a controversial piece of legislation vigorously defended by Representatives who usually reserve such energy for denouncing welfare cheats...

...People did fear him, and members did not try to curb his activities — especially since he was in a position to bestow favors...

...His three committee chairmanships gave him a broad base, with power centralized at the top...

...On August 4, 1976, only ten days before he resigned, seventeen Democratic members of the subcommittee on international operations voted on whether Hays should be asked to resign as chairman...

...When House Democrats did try to remove him in 1975, he survived (with the help of other Democrats supposedly in favor of reform) and retaliated with a vigorous new bureaucratic growth spurt: He created new subcommittees on parking and paper conservation, ad hoc committees on computers and restaurant operations, and the eventually notorious Oversight Subcommittee "to keep an accurate check on what committees and subcommittees are doing____" Elizabeth Ray was assigned, appropriately, to the Oversight Subcommittee...

...Wayne Hays was the skillful manager of a corrupt system, and he was eventually done in by his own excess...

...In June, Hays entered a hospital in Barnesville, Ohio, suffering from an overdose of drugs, and shortly thereafter____ — Time, August 23, 1976 The image of Wayne Hays as Samson brought down by Elizabeth Ray as Delilah is simple and, therefore, comforting, but it should not keep us from taking a clear look at the role Wayne Hays played in the House of Representatives...

...they obtained cash refunds on airline tickets, travel allotments, office supply allotments — all through Wayne Hays's office...

...If members cannot even find a way to listen to the grievances of their own employes or to remedy the systematic abuses in their own offices, how can they hear the voices of the poor, the unemployed, minorities, women, students, children, migrant workers, or coal miners...

...They serve solely at the sufferance of the individual member who hires them...

...Yet all of his duties were consistently discharged: His views on the U.S...

...Had there been a real examination of Hays's abuse of public power, maintaining a mistress on the public payroll might have been perceived as one of his more innocent activities...

...Hays came home to head a House subcommittee that investigated and denounced Adam Clayton Powell's female-accompanied private pleasure jaunts at taxpayer expense...

...The tyranny of members of Congress — even those with the best intentions — over their staffs is an inevitable consequence of the fact that Congressional employes have no rights...

...The Delilah in his downfall was, of course, Elizabeth Ray, thirty-three, who disclosed last May that she had been kept on the Congressman's payroll as a clerk but had served mostly as his mistress...

...As chief administrative officer of the House, Hays treated all service employes as his personal staff, and routinely terrorized them...

...Wayne Hays was a man in constant need of an ego fix: He bullied waiters in the House restaurants, carpenters, painters, policemen, office employes, other Congressmen —just about anyone who crossed his path...

...As chairman of the House Administration Committee, he not only attended to all the internal housekeeping chores but was responsible for the writing of election finance laws...

...Hays's power was pyramidal...

...As Mayor of the House, as he was sometimes called, he was the umpire in an endless game of ego and position...

...Judith Nies, a former Congressional staff assistant, is a free-lance writer in Boston...

...Only Michael Harrington, the Massachusetts Democrat whose release of information about CIA involvement in Chile had subjected him to a historic vote of censure from the entire House, voted to remove Hays...

...The working environment on Capitol Hill is so detached and artificial that it becomes almost impossible for any member of Congress to relate to the aspirations of deprived people who seek a voice in the making of the laws that govern their lives...

...Hays had the goods on some and goodies for others...

...Despite the extensive media coverage devoted to Elizabeth Ray's revelation that she had spent two years on the Congressional payroll solely to provide sexual services, the moralizing press never did bring into focus a rather simple reality: All members of Congress hire their staffs and run their offices under conditions they have legislated out of existence for every other business or organization in the United States that employs more than four people...

...One can sympathize with the members of the House who felt they were at Wayne Hays's mercy...

...Members of Congress have exempted themselves from all anti-discrimination laws, such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and Equal Pay Act...

...With a heavy heart," the Ohio Democrat announced his withdrawal from the race for a fifteenth term in the House...

...Like a Congressional Milo Minderbinder, Wayne Hays made sure that members of Congress would not feel the pinch of austerity...

...Right to the end, no member was eager to pass judgment on him...

...As chairman of the subcommittee on international operations of the House International Relations Committee, Hays was responsible for all legislation relating to overseas operations of the State Department...