The Greek philosopher Heraclitus noted that “character is destiny.” America suffers a gaping character fault line that over time will do her greater damage than the current economic crisis. The character of our public officials has plummeted, and our political destiny seems lost in an abyss of indifference.

Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, now also IRS supervisor, failed to pay self-employment taxes for two years until audited by the IRS. Until President Obama nominated him for Treasury, he had refused to pay the same taxes for the immediately preceding two years, hiding behind the statute of limitations.

Geithner acknowledged his tax liability in writing to his employer, the International Monetary Fund, prior to the taxes being due – and the fund supplied him funds to pay the taxes. This was simply willful evasion of federal tax law, usually resulting in criminal prosecution. Yet the IRS assessed him neither negligence nor civil fraud penalties. He simply paid interest on money taken from us.

Sen. Robert Byrd, who at 92 remembers when character counted, noted when he voted “no” at Geithner’s confirmation that “had he not been nominated ... it is doubtful that he would ever have paid these taxes” upon which the statute of limitations had run. The president, a lawyer, disingenuously endorsed Geithner’s explanation, saying of Geithner’s failure to pay these taxes, “It is an innocent mistake,” a legal conclusion unsupported by the facts.

A generation ago, tax evasion of this nature very likely would have brought a prison sentence. It absolutely would have disqualified anyone from serving in the federal government. Now it qualifies as an “innocent mistake.”

Was Geithner “too big to fail,” lending credibility to Leona Helmsley’s (“the Queen of Mean”) assertion that “only the little people pay taxes”?

President Obama seems unconcerned. Consider further the tax- challenged nominations of Nancy Kellifer, Tom Daschle, Hilda Solis, Ron Kirk and Kathleen Sebelius.

The cynical and shameless actions of a generation of public officials have reduced our expectations to the point that disobeying the law is an option, frequently exercised.

Though neither apparently violated the law, consider the actions of the current vice president and his predecessor. Joe Biden received five student deferments during the Vietnam War, and when those ran out, his childhood asthma, previously interrupted by teenage star athleticism, suddenly recurred in 1968 (the height of the war), when he was 25.

Dick Cheney also received five deferments and noted that “I had other priorities in the ‘60s than military service.”

These men found service to their country in a time of war unimportant, yet their decisions never slowed their political ascensions.

Former President Bill Clinton, himself a deft draft-evader, lowered the national sense of decency even further with his sexual escapades in the Oval Office. Shirking duty to one’s country, sexual misconduct and perjury would in earlier times have sunk any person, certainly a president. Clinton, however, left office with a 66 percent approval rating.

Obama himself has admitted to past criminal acts. His nonchalant admissions that he had used marijuana (unlike Clinton, he inhaled because “that was the point”) and cocaine reveal not only his cynical and cavalier disregard for the law but also the helplessness and hopelessness of the American political culture. This behavior is unacceptable but especially so for a lawyer.

President Obama is the civilian commander in chief of our military. Young people look up the chain of command for leaders of character. A uniformed officer’s career would be lost if there were admitted drug use. We now, however, have a commander in chief who admits he violated our criminal drug laws and apparently could not care less who knows it. This sad example evokes Clinton, a former commander, who once noted that he “loath(ed) the military.”

Our modern political landscape is littered with bipartisan decay. Whether the criminal activity is financial, as with Republican Rep. Bob Ney and Rep. Duke Cunningham or Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Rep. William Jefferson, drug-related as with Democratic N.Y. Gov. David Paterson and our own former Republican Treasurer Thomas Ravenel, sexually oriented as with Democratic N.Y. Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Republican Sen. David Vitter or cockfighting, a special category of deviance indulged in by our own former agriculture commissioner, Republican Charlie Sharpe, too many public officials fail the character test. We now also know that nearly 10 percent of the South Carolina House of Representatives simply refused to even file state income tax returns at least once between 1999 and 2007 and three others owe the state a total of $21,000 in back taxes.

What does all of this say about us as a people?

Gen. Robert E. Lee admonished, “You must be careful how you walk, and where you go, for there are those following you who set their feet where yours are set.”

While we should condemn our public officials for irresponsibility or illegal behavior, we need to do more. We must insist that character does count, and deny them office or remove them from office when they do not meet our standards.

n John S. Rainey of Camden is chairman of South Carolina Board of Economic Advisors and a practicing tax attorney of 30 years. Johnnie Mac Walters of Greenville is a practicing tax attorney with 50 years of experience, a former assistant U.S. attorney general (Tax Division, 1969-1971) and former commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (1971-1973).

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