Where’s Larry Pressler when you need him?

And we need him – or at least we need the spirit of moral rectitude the South Dakota Republican showed in 1980 when undercover FBI operatives posing as Middle East businessmen tried to bribe him to help a make-believe sheik. Out of more than 30 public officials targeted in what became known as Abscam, a U.S. senator and six House members were convicted, along with five other government officials. Only Pressler adamantly refused the money.

Does that make Pressler more ethical than the others or just smarter? Maybe he was remembering that only a couple of years earlier, a real-life influence-buying scandal known as Koreagate had brought 30 members of Congress under scrutiny and put one in jail. Maybe he spotted the hidden camera.

Forgive the cynicism. In a polluted environment, doubt contaminates even the purest public figures. In recent years House Speakers Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich – one Democrat, one Republican – have suffered from ethical missteps. The current majority leaders of the House and Senate are accused of misconduct. Americans have come to expect it.

Hogging the scandal spotlight at present, lobbyist-felon Jack Abramoff has members of Congress scrambling to unload funds they got from him or his clients. An ebb tide of dollars is flowing back to him or into charities. As if it will cleanse them to return the donations, now that Abramoff has pleaded guilty to what he was broadly suspected of before.

Being a conservative and friends with indicted House Majority Floor Leader Tom DeLay and White House adviser Karl Rove, Abramoff’s political philanthropy extended mostly to Republicans. Former GOP Congressman George Nethercutt of Spokane is the only member of this state’s delegation to get a campaign contribution directly from the notorious lobbyist, but Democratic Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell both received contributions from Abramoff clients.

“Abramoff was a Republican operative, and this is a Republican scandal,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Wrong. This isn’t a partisan problem, it’s an institutional problem. And the more fuel members of Congress heap on a bonfire of public scorn, the quicker the American political institution will turn to ash.

So far, the ethics structures of the House and Senate have been in hiding. They need to do their duty, and they can’t restore Americans’ faith in representative democracy until they make Congress immune to Jack Abramoff and others like him.

There is no incentive for reform, though, as long as 30-second attack ads keep winning elections. We voters have responsibilities, too – to repudiate misconduct rather than reward it, and to engage political candidates in meaningful, issue-oriented conversations that money can’t buy.