Art of compromise returns

(PNI) The intensely polar, partisan nature of modern American politics has produced a lot of side effects, few of them positive.

Hostility toward Congress -- now "enjoying" an 80 percent disapproval rate, according to the Real Clear Politics average of top polls -- has reached near-historic levels. It has gotten so bad that many frustrated voters now include their own member of Congress in their "throw the bums out" appraisals. Once upon a time, the local guy got a pass. No more.

The partisan rancor has become so strong, in fact, that even in the face of a very lopsided House vote to pass the first federal budget in four years, the predominant post-vote storyline out of Washington is about conflict -- in this case, between House Republican leaders and their conservative "tea party" wing.

"They're misleading their followers," said House Speaker John Boehner. "I just think they've lost all credibility."

Tea-party conservatives have been a strong influence in the Republican Party since galvanizing against President Barack Obama's health-care reforms in 2010. They had successes in those early days -- including the near-historic turnover in the House in 2010.

But lately, tea-party-backed candidates more often have been snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Democratic senators from Indiana, Delaware and Missouri occupy seats that at one time seemed ripe for Republican taking.

So, yes. There is tumult in Republican politics.

But the lopsided, amazingly bipartisan nature of Thursday's House vote suggests something else important may be going on, too. Perhaps leaders of both parties simply have failed to do a decent job of appealing to the "better angels" of their caucuses -- which is to nudge them into accepting certain compromises based on their own political self-interest.

The numbers of Thursday's vote tell a fascinating story about those self-interests.

The overall vote itself, 332-94, is a stunner. But the deeper numbers are more so. As Politico reported, Republicans had promised Democrats 120 votes in favor of the package. They got 171 GOP votes. The same from the other direction: Dem leaders promised 100 and produced 163.

Those numbers strongly suggest that while congressional Republicans may be conservative and even tea-party-oriented, those ideological influences affect members on a sliding scale. Their leaders did not need the surfeit of compromise votes they collected. But they got them, largely from members whose districts are at least marginally competitive.

The Arizona tally reflects that. All four of Arizona's Republican members -- nearly all from strongly conservative GOP districts -- opposed the deal. So did Democrat Raúl Grijalva, one of the most liberal House members, who (not surprisingly) hails from a safely liberal district.

Among the 32 Democrats opposing the deal were liberal stalwarts like John Conyers of Michigan, Louise Slaughter of New York and Peter DeFazio of Oregon.

But the most stunning "no" vote came from a Democratic House leader: Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the second-ranking Democrat. His explanation was even more notable, in that it could have been uttered by any one of the nay-saying Arizona Republicans:

"This agreement is better than the alternative, but it misses a huge opportunity to do what the American people expect us to do, and that is to put this country on a fiscally sustainable path."

All of those harder-line Republicans and Democrats were afforded the luxury of their "conscience" votes by virtue of the willingness of others to compromise.

That willingness to accept something less than ideological purity is in the nature of American politics. It is nice to welcome it back. We could do with more of it.

Copyright 2013 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Mailbag

(PNI) Child Protective Services was the most popular topic for letters this week, with 12.

Other popular topics were higher education and the Yarnell Hill Fire, eight each; school tax credits, gun violence, President Barack Obama and "Obamacare," seven each; the border series, Steve Benson and the Republican Party, six each.

The holiday is clearly upon us. For the week, we received 233 letters.

Copyright 2013 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Justice catches up to ex-Ariz. lawyer

In 1984, a small-town Arizona lawyer vanished in a blue Corvette with $100,000 of his clients' money. He resurfaced nearly 30 years later as "Mr. X," the mastermind behind a $100million veterans charity fraud that bilked donors across the country.

The bizarre case of John Donald Cody ended in an Ohio courtroom last week when a judge ordered the 66-year-old, Harvard-educated former lawyer to 28 years in prison, effectively giving him a life sentence.

Cody was prosecuted under the name Bobby Thompson, an alias he adopted in Florida as director of a bogus charity called the United States Veterans Association. A jury last month found him guilty of racketeering, money laundering and identity theft.

As Thompson, Cody built a fake, 80-year history for the charity, fabricated an 84-member board of directors and used his financial support of Republican campaigns to circulate among top U.S. lawmakers. He was photographed in different settings with U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, U.S. House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and former President George W. Bush.

Authorities said Cody used his credentials as a former military officer to solicit contributions that rarely went to help veterans and more often went for his personal use. He went on the run in 2010 after an investigation by the Tampa Bay Times, which raised questions about $22million in unaccounted-for annual revenue, among other things.

He led authorities on a nearly two-year chase from Ohio to Arizona, West Virginia, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Oregon. He was featured on the "America's Most Wanted" television show, profiled on a white-collar crime website, and the U.S. Marshals Service posted his face on billboards.

The Ohio attorney general was the first to go after him in 2010. Eight other states subsequently issued warrants for the arrest of Thompson on fraud-related charges.

When U.S. marshals found him in a Portland boardinghouse, he was using another assumed name, carrying six fake identities and had $1 million in cash stashed in a rented storage shed.

Authorities said Thompson was clearly an alias, but he refused to cooperate about his true identity. A state and federal fingerprint search yielded no hits, so they dubbed him Mr. X.

Military fingerprint records ultimately gave authorities Mr. X's name and helped them piece together a 30-year time line of fraud and flight beginning in Sierra Vista, where he had a law practice in the 1980s.

Cody, who was born in Hoboken, N.J., in 1947, served in the Army as a captain in military intelligence. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1969 and earned a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1972. In 1980, Cody moved to Sierra Vista, where he opened a law office and quickly earned a reputation as an aggressive defense attorney willing to take on cases for indigents.

According to records and interviews filed with the Arizona Supreme Court, on the morning of his disappearance, Cody was scheduled to appear before a judge on contempt charges. Instead, he instructed employees to destroy his receipt book, withdrew about $100,000 from a client's trust account and bought traveler's checks from local banks.

He drove to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, ditched his Corvette with the keys still in the ignition and headed to Mexico, where authorities said he tried to withdraw $48,000 from a bank in Juarez. There the trail went cold.

In 1985, a panel of the Arizona Supreme Court justices found Cody guilty of 11 conduct violations, including "embezzled funds and abandoned clients."

In 1987, three years after Cody disappeared, a federal warrant was issued for his arrest out of Virginia on fraud charges. He was accused of making false statements to a Virginia bank to obtain a $25,000 loan and of illegally attempting to obtain other loans under various aliases. The arrest warrant also said Cody was wanted by the FBI for questioning in an espionage case. Authorities have refused to discuss the espionage case, which last year they described as "ongoing."

During his trial last month, Cody appeared disheveled and erratic. Although Cody was expected to take the stand in his defense, he never testified. According to media reports, Cody claimed the charity was a CIA front to promote America's military interests and that it was backed by the Republican Party and the White House.

The judge fined Cody $6.3million and ordered him to pay about $330,000 for court costs.

The judge also ordered Cody to spend every Veterans Day during his prison stint in solitary confinement.

Robert Anglen and Veronica Sanchez lead the Call 12 for Action team. Reach the reporter at robert.anglen@arizonarepublic.com, Facebook and Twitter: @robertanglen.

Copyright 2013 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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