Alaskan's mighty fall disgraceful, but not unfathomable

The man is 84 now, and in impressive condition for his years. Still, he resembles a gnomish, shrunken version of his younger self - which is to say, a vital, if a bit bland, mid-20th-century American male, with dark suit, Clark Kent glasses, and an air of having important business to attend to.

Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who was convicted last week on seven counts of corruption, could be the protagonist of an Arthur Miller tragedy: a formerly robust, confident American winner laid low by secret compromises and long-repressed deceits. And today could be his denouement.

Having refused to drop out of his race for reelection - despite requests from fellow Republicans John McCain and his home-state governor, Sarah Palin - Stevens could well end his career in electoral defeat, to go along with his criminal convictions.

It's a mighty fall for a man known as Alaska's patriarch, a former World War II pilot who went on to play a role in his state's battle to join the union, and then represented it in the Senate for 40 years. In Washington, he will be remembered mostly as a pork-barrel politician, delivering billions of dollars in earmarks to his constituents while stinting a bit on the larger issues of the day. But in his home state, the man was a giant, and his disgrace commands a measure of sympathy.

The elderly senator sat ramrod straight in the Washington courtroom as the jury delivered its verdict. News reports say he tried to knit his fingers, in a gesture of calmness, but had to give up because one of his hands was shaking so badly.

Despite the convictions, some of his loyal constituents - who may yet return him to the Senate - find the charges against him to be insubstantial.

There was little dispute that Stevens received hundreds of thousands of dollars of renovations to his Alaskan cabin, paid for by Bill Allen, CEO of a now-defunct oil-services company called VECO, which had extensive business on Alaska's North Slope. Stevens failed to mention the home renovations and other gifts from Allen - including a gas grill and a sled dog - on Senate ethics forms for seven consecutive years. But he contended that he was unaware of some of the gifts and thought he had paid for others. Therefore, he believed the forms were accurate when he signed them. And his wife, Catherine, asserted she alone had overseen the renovations. (Workers, however, testified that Stevens was present for some of the work. Plus, the Stevenses didn't even have contracts with some of the renovators.)

Lastly, Stevens's defenders have noted that he and Allen were friends, suggesting that the gifts were more tokens of affection than bribery. And it's clear that Stevens, like many politicians before him, finds it laughable that prosecutors would feel such gifts could corrupt his integrity: He would behave the same way in his official capacity whether Allen gave him a $6,000 mega-grill or a puppy.

But his case - starting with the longstanding allegiance between a politician and a businessman, morphing into a "friendship," leading to pampering and gifts - is practically a prototype of official Washington corruption. The purpose of ethics laws is not to guard against the unjust enrichment of senators so much as to protect the public coffers from being used to service the kinds of friendships that existed between Stevens and Allen. The sad reality is that such relative trifles as gas grills, hot tubs, and free rides on corporate jets can create a back-scratch relationship that leads to the giveaway of hundreds of times their value in public largesse.

The one sacrifice made by career politicians like Stevens is to live with a salary of $169,000 per year. It's not so tough. But for men and women who control billions of dollars, it is often galling to see less-powerful people enjoying more luxurious lives. And when those businesspeople are eager to cultivate relationships, it's easy for politicians - particularly those without rich spouses or family fortunes to fall back on - to start accepting a favor here and there.

Whether those little favors lead, in return, to bigger ones in the form of government contracts can be difficult to prove in any specific instance. But the idea that such tacit exchanges happen fairly frequently, and often under the radar, is ridiculously easy to comprehend. So the Senate wisely requires disclosures of the type that Stevens failed to make.

It seems like a long fall from being Mr. Alaska to Mr. Pork Barrel to Mr. Felon, but it may not be such a great distance after all.

Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond. He can be reached at canellos@globe.com