Not our gang.(The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine)(Book review)

The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine by Matthew Continetti (Doubleday, 273 pp., $24.95)

'I THINK the key thing to remember with all these clients is that they are annoying, but that the annoying losers are the only ones which have this kind of money and part with it so quickly," Jack Abramoff counseled his protege and partner in crime Michael Scanlon three years ago. "This kind of money" included $80 million in fees from Indian tribes with lucrative casinos, who parted with it so quickly they failed to notice that Abramoff and Scanlon were a poor bet. As Matthew Continetti points out in his new book, "A lack of success is one of the Abramoff saga's recurring themes--a lot of people paid him a lot of money, but no one, in the end, can tell you exactly what the clients got in return."

As we now know, within a year of that contemptuous comment about their loser clients, Abramoff and Scanlon themselves were the big losers. The FBI launched an investigation in 2003 and both now face jail sentences, having pled guilty to criminal charges arising from their greedy schemes. Continetti provides fascinating details and fresh insights into the construction and crumbling of the corrupt house that Jack built. The Abramoff saga, as colorful as its amoral central character, includes a woman scorned and a dash of Miami Vice along with bribery, fraud, forgery, tax evasion, and a level of greed rarely witnessed by Washington.

While Continetti compellingly recounts the Jack Abramoff story, his book is less successful in its attempt to portray the greedy behavior and outrageous tactics of the disgraced lobbyist as representative of his profession, the conservative movement, and the Republican party--indeed, as the inevitable result of the GOP's congressional majority. With a dismay befitting the idealistic and disillusioned young conservative--he is a Weekly Standard writer and a former NATIONAL REVIEW intern--Continetti reports that as chairman of the College Republicans in 1984 Abramoff was once seen as "the spokesman for a new generation of conservative activists, young men and women coming of age just as their party was coming into power." Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed were among those coming of age, along with Abramoff, in the College Republicans--where their staunch anti-Communist and small-government politics shared a "paramilitary flavor." Continetti sees in the trio a shared moral failing representative of "a generation, it would turn out, that was corrupted by power before they knew what power was."

Abramoff, Norquist, and Reed realized, according to Continetti, that a credentialed conservative and party loyalist could cash in when his ideology neatly coincided with moneyed interests. Following the Republican takeover in 1995, GOP operatives learned what their Democratic counterparts had no doubt previously figured out: They could bill clients for pushing initiatives the congressional majority was already inclined to support.

In the millions paid to Jack Abramoff during the late 1990s by the Northern Mariana Islands--the U.S. territory in the Pacific that wanted to remain exempt from federal labor regulations--Continetti sees all the ingredients of his signature lobbying schemes: lavish junkets for lawmakers and their aides, outrageous fees for mundane letters and meetings, and the dressing-up of clients' ...