Albany is in high rhetoric mode, again:  this time in service of a call to arms on ethics reform in the wake of Joe Bruno’s conviction on corruption charges.  In a State where high minded sentiment rarely leads to meaningful action, New Yorkers are understandably skeptical.

A call for new ethics laws, like many reform initiatives, are born of moral outrage after the commission of highly publicized abuses.  Yet, precisely because they are reactive, these measures often fail to identify the real problems or fall short of correcting them.  Like new airport security checks taken in reaction to the latest terrorist threat rather than in anticipation of future ones, expedient half measures deplete public confidence rather than bolster it.

New Yorkers understand that ethical rules don’t make people ethical.  At best, such rules identify a narrow subset of conflicts of interest and set legal boundaries around them.  They do not eliminate conflicts, or guide public officials in the manner of justly resolving them.  That skill belongs to the world of integrity.

Integrity, is a broad personal commitment, not a narrow legal compulsion, to act in a manner beneficial to the community as a whole rather than what might otherwise appear in one’s immediate personal interest.   The founding fathers understood the tension between the individual pursuit of happiness, proclaimed as a natural right in the Declaration of Independence, and the promotion of the general welfare which is a central mission of the Constitution.

The problem is that politicians, like most people, tend to identify the general welfare with their own personal happiness.     In surveys on ethics, most respondents say that the word “ethical” means “what my feelings tell me is right”.  Relying on feelings is a pretty shaky way to fashion a moral structure.

To illustrate this, in another survey, 98% of Americans surmised that they were ”a better than average” judge of character.  Obviously 48% of them are wrong.  On any question involving right or wrong, one’s “feelings” will be as often wrong as right.

A basis more substantial than instinct to “do the right thing”–which everyone seems to believe they possess–is needed to induce political leaders to accord “the right thing” as much thought as rewarding campaign contributors, re-election maneuvering, party leadership ambitions and pecuniary gain.

Something more substantial than an ethics pledge will be necessary to curb the way our nation’s leaders act in the halls of Congress:  demonizing opponents, dialog through denunciation, communication through confrontation, consistency at all costs and the equation of integrity with rigidity of beliefs, usually their own.

It simply can’t be that politicians have no capacity to do the right thing.  They are capable of introspection, discernment of duty, personal commitment and taking risks for the common good–essential elements of integrity.  That’s why many of them went into politics in the first place.  Yet this impulse is all too often blunted by the cold, hard enforcing steel of partisanship and highlights the need, not for new ethics laws, but ways to induce our political leaders to realign along fault lines of integrity rather than political ones.

For the moment though, it seems as if the only game in town is party politics and we the people are sidelined.  Is it any wonder then, that Joe Bruno, the ultimate team captain in this brutal sport quoted Yogi Berra in assessing his fate?  “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Ironically, though, he may have unwittingly struck an important chord:  we’d better pray it ain’t over because we have a long way to go to rescue our democracy.

Stu Brody is the former Chair of the Democratic Rural Conference and founder of www.integrityintensive.com, an  integrity training resource for young political leaders and public affairs professionals.

Michael Bloomberg has been acknowledged in most quarters as a good mayor, combining a steady managerial hand with bold approaches to tough problems. No one has succeeded in making the argument that his wealth has worked against him, or corrupted him. In fact, to many, his wealth has insulated him from the temptations befalling mere mortal politicians: making deals for campaign contributions.

However, there is another temptation to which he is apparently vulnerable and from which his wealth has not shielded him: the charms of eternal power.

At the outset of his tenure, Bloomberg promised he wouldn’t run for more than two terms. He repeatedly emphasized his support of the City’s term limits rule, and once called any effort to revise the limits “disgusting.” Yet as the end of his second and presumably final term loomed, he retracted this view, concluding that he is indispensable to the people of New York.

The mayor’s 11th hour conversion from supporter of term limits, to opponent, has provoked anemic opposition. Fifty city council members, or at least the 29 voting to allow him to run for a third term, concluded that their will, or the bending of it to Mr. Bloomberg’s, was a fair exercise of their legislative power, even in the face of two referenda by the voting public to the contrary.

Leading advocates of term limits, like the redoubtable Ron Lauder, who, for better or worse became the public face of term limits, lost his zeal for the fight, and caved. The teachers union, presumably ill disposed to the mayor because of his steadfast support for chancellor Joe Klein, also backed down from a resolution opposing Bloomberg’s bid.

Mayor Bloomberg now finds himself sailing calm waters in the port of his ambition. In the wake of the recent dismissal by the United States Justice Department of a civil rights challenge to the third term, the tepid response in Albany to a Senate bill restricting his effort, and his endorsement by the City’s Republican parties even after the Mayor spurned them to run for President as an Independent, no real obstacles remain to Bloomberg’s running for a third term. Incredibly, this startling power grab appears inevitable.

So the question becomes, if no one seems to care that he’s riding roughshod over his own promises, the judgment of his fellow New Yorkers in two referenda, and the resulting law limiting him to two terms, then what is really so wrong about what he’s doing? Or to put it another way: if the leaders of our democracy don’t seem to care, are his actions really a threat to democracy?

They are, and here’s why: because politicians are not supposed to change their minds in bald pursuit of their self interest, and they’re also not supposed to maintain power for its own sake. Sound old fashioned? Self-restraint in the face of the temptations of power is what men and women of integrity do. They do it to inspire and maintain public confidence in the capacity of elected representatives to do right by the people that elected them. Each time a politician disappoints that expectation, we lose a little more confidence in a system we were taught once to believe in.

Faith in the political system is no less important to our spirit as free men and women, then confidence in the financial system is to our economic well being. We are living in the painful reality of what happens when people lose confidence in the financial system. Yet the same collapse has been occurring, if more gradually and less violently, to our political system over the last 30 years.

After the loss of anything precious, we lose daily touch with the value of what we’ve lost. We close off the space where our hopes once nourished our optimism. A plurality of New York City voters — 46% — believe the term limit extension approved by the City Council for the benefit of Mr. Bloomberg is not the right thing for the city, yet they believe his continued service of mayor is.

Clearly, then, there is a wide gulf between rectitude and convenience, and this gap is the breeding ground of cynicism.  It takes a leader to close the gap not exploit it. While claiming his indispensability for leadership, the mayor forfeited its most essential aspect: respect for the people’s confidence in their leaders.

Yet, even if he wins in November, the mayor’s resulting political harvest may be a barren one. The people have a funny way of rebelling against those who manipulate the rules, especially these days, when the millions who obey them are now compelled to bail out the few who consistently broke them. Explosive reactions in democracies are often set up on a long fuse. Last November’s national election is a case in point.

New Yorkers may not rebel now, nor at the polls in November, but they’ll get there, as the problems of transportation, education and public safety are seen by New Yorkers in the new light of the mayor’s opportunism.  Just another politician is how he’ll be viewed;  a fitting return on Mayor Bloomberg’s investment in the cynicism of the electorate but a disappointing conclusion to a career that at once seemed so fresh and honest.

Last week the United States Senate managed to occupy center stage on the national scene, no small feat given the array of economic catastrophes unfolding daily. Yet, the spotlight is hardly flattering to the Senate leadership.

The Senate refused to seat Roland Burris, the person appointed by beleaguered Illinois Governor Rod Blagoivitch to fill the seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

With startling irony, Senate leader Reid invoked a “qualifications” clause in Senate rules to reject Mr. Burris, a man who would be, were he actually seated, one of the most qualified in the Senate.

Reid has since relented from this untenable position but the whole episode displays the glaring inadequacies of the gubernatorial appointment method of United States Senators.

Like a joker in the political deck, the gubernatorial appointment turns the political game on its head, substituting the objectives of one person, the Governor, for the judgment of millions. This curious practice deviates from democratic custom and is constitutionally unwarranted.

The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, in addressing United States Senate vacancies, afforded discretion to the States in the issuance of “writs of elections” or, to put it plainly, special elections. The Seventeenth Amendment authorizes temporary appointments but arguably only to ensure representation pending a speedy special election.

This plain intent of the Amendment was undermined by the New York Public Officers Law which allows, in fact, requires, long appointment periods like the two years New Yorkers will be forced to wait before directly electing Hillary Clinton’s successor. In 1968, Governor Rockefeller’s appointment of Bobby Kennedy’s successor lasted 29 months before direct election.

Other states have implemented the provisions of the Seventeenth Amendment more flexibly, including, oddly enough, Illinois which affords the Illinois legislature the power, as yet unexercised, to call for a special election.

In two states, we are now watching the unseemly byproducts of this undemocratic practice. In Illinois, it tempted the wayward Governor off a moral cliff, and probably a legal one, when he discussed selling the Senate seat to the highest bidder, but it has also diverted Illinois law enforcement officials from prosecuting him, as they focused simultaneously on blocking his appointing authority.

In New York, the effect is no less distracting: While David Paterson labors mightily to steady the ship of New York State after the collapse of Wall Street, his concentration is inevitably undermined by the spectacle of–and the resulting media obsession with–the daughter of a fabled president imploring the Governor for a patronage job: a no-win situation for two of New York’s most admired leaders.

Even from the standpoint of party politics, Senator Clinton’s Democratic replacement may not reap the advantage of incumbency in 2010 that many predict. Whoever the appointment, he or she will be less compelling than the immensely popular Chuck Schumer, also running in 2010, for a full term, and perhaps easier electoral prey to Republican appeals.

The unpopularity of the interim Senate appointment process with the public is revealed in the statistical fact that the overwhelming majority of such appointees have been defeated in the next election. The public has an uncanny way of rebelling against fiat, and this undemocratic procedure is surely that.

It is time now for the New York State legislature to revise the current statute that requires this undemocratic interruption in the people’s right to determine their representatives. A quick special election will not only elicit the public’s respect, but also buttress the budget trimming efforts of a Governor who has done much in his short tenure to earn it.