The Associated Press is reporting that former Ohio representative and convicted bribe-taker James Traficant has died, apparently from injuries he received this week “after a vintage tractor flipped over on him as he tried to park it inside a barn.” He was 73. For almost 20 years, the flamboyant Traficant represented Ohio’s 17th district as a Democrat, famous for eccentricities like his strange pompadour (which he often joked was cut with a weed-whacker) and the congressional catch-phrase of “Beam me up,” which he used to end his speeches on the House floor.
Once upon a time- 2002 if memory serves- I had a fair bit of fun at Traficant’s expense. How could I not? The man had a dead weasel on his head, the ethics of a carnival barker, and taste for corruption that would have left Tom DeLay envious. Traficant was kicked out of Congress in 2002 after being convicted of 10 felony corruption charges. Evidently, things like bribery, racketeering, and tax evasion are looked down up by The Man. He served seven years in federal prison, but that didn’t stop him from running for his former Congressional seat from his prison cell in 2002…and winning 15% of the vote as an independent candidate. It seems Democrats aren’t big on letting convicted felons into their club.
There’s nothing funny about corruption, of course, and Traficant richly deserved the punishment he got. The man was a clown, a fool, and a sorry excuse for a Congressman, but he represented Ohio’s 17th Congressional district for almost 20 years…which says as much about his constituents as it does him. Traficant was colorful, bombastic, ridiculous, and theatrical, but when you believe politics to be theater of the absurd, why not play the part? Even his death was right out of his larger than life playbook, being crushed by a vintage tractor.
Traficant may have been a complex personality, but the company he kept and his distaste for conventional ethics was what finally brought him down. He’d been ridiculously corrupt going all the back to his days as Mahoning County sheriff, but his ethical lapses finally caught up with him in 2002. Not that prison reformed him, of course; he came right back and tried to run for his old office- as an independent, because Democrats wanted nothing to do with him. And who could blame them?
In a political culture that caters to the bland and the bloodless, Jim Traficant stood out like a circus clown at a state funeral. I’d say he’ll be missed, but outside of his family, his passing will be little noted. Nor is his career likely to be remembered as anything but a long-running embarrassment, like Joe Arpaio with a sense of the absurd and a taste for bad political theater.
I suppose the best way to remember Traficant would be to close with the words he ended each of his floor speeches with while in Congress:
BEAM ME UP!!
