Here in New Jersey, we’re saddled with the Sopranos, the Jersey Turnpike, Jimmy Hoffa’s body, and, yup, Senator Robert Torricelli. The guy’s greedy. Vicious. Dishonest. His entire career, back to his college days, is distinguished by regular episodes of unethical behavior, ranging from the minor to the stupendous (not to mention world-class nastiness).

It’s not like there’s much disagreement on this. The only question is: is he going to get reelected? And we all know why he might: many of us here in the Garden State who are terrified of the possibility of a Republican-controlled Senate. As well we should be! Who’ll serve as a check on W.’s most misbegotten ambitions then? (Well, OK, nobody’s doing it now -- but perhaps a Democratic Senate means we’ll get Paleolithic Supreme Court nominees instead of Australopithecines.)

But that’s a debate for another day. I want to talk about what happens when people deliberately, with foreknowledge, reelect corrupt politicians.

Let’s talk first about who politicians are. They’re human beings. Self-selected, arguably, for a drive for power, an ability to persuade (or, if you will, manipulate), and in most cases, a gift for survival. But, nevertheless, human beings. As such, they’re influenced by the culture and the system of incentives that surrounds them.

I’ve known quite a few politicians at the local level; a few of them have risen above that level. No question, some have been venal. A few have been strikingly eccentric -- folks for whom success outside of politics would be hard to imagine. A few were pretty close to pure idealists.

But most got into the game for a complex mixture of personal and idealistic motivations. In that respect, they’re not very different from the rest of us. They bring the surrounding society’s ethics with them, for better or worse.

They could represent us well and honorably. Of course, in the dominant political culture, the incentives lie elsewhere.

Every day, a legislator (or mayor) makes a hundred decisions about which a small number of self-interested people and institutions care deeply -- and most constituents will never be aware of.

In an ideal world, each of these decisions would be made based on the broad, long-term interests of one’s constituency and one’s society -- in other words, “the public interest.” In the best possible human world, these decisions would be made through tough, reasonably honest compromise and brokering: politics as the “art of the possible.” We live in neither of those worlds: in America today, billions of dollars in self-interested money shapes these decisions.

Yet, surprisingly, some of the time, some politicians do resist, and do represent the public interest. There are courageous votes. And, short of “Profiles in Courage,” some politicians invest more energy than others in honestly trying to balance competing interests -- in trying to do what's right. That’s a fact.

We can choose to encourage those politicians, by seeking them out and voting for them. And we can discourage bad behavior by closely supervising our politicians.

If you’re a parent, you don’t expect your kids to always behave well and honorably without supervision.

If you own a business, you hope and expect that your employees will be honest and capable -- but you still supervise them, reward positive behavior, make sure there are consequences for consistent negative behavior.

But, when it comes to the politicians that work for us, we grumble that they’re “all the same,” and walk away.

There are only two ways you can vote for a guy like Torricelli. You can start from the premise that all politicians are equally corrupt: the only difference is whether they’ve been caught yet. To my mind, that’s lazy thinking which doesn’t reflect reality very well. But, worse, it abdicates our primary weapons for improving things -- or keeping them from getting worse.

Say it long enough, and they will all be the same.

The tougher argument is that a vote for Torricelli's Republican opponent will do so much damage to the causes you personally believe in -- the environment, choice, civil liberties, whatever -- that you have no choice. You have to hold your nose and pull Torricelli’s lever. Of course, that’s what he’s counting on.

No question that if Forrester gets elected, he’ll vote against what I believe in most of the time. If the Senate’s evenly split, he’ll vote to organize it around Trent Lott, and from where I sit, awful stuff will follow.

But ultimately, reelecting Torricelli will be much worse.

It will have a profoundly pernicious effect on the entire political system. It will say there’s no disincentive for even the worst behavior, even the worst politician.

It will say that it’s OK for a U.S. Senator to represent David Chang first, Schering-Plough and his other corporate contributors second, and the rest of us only when there’s time to spare.

Money will speak a little louder than it already does. People will become a little more cynical than they already are. The pulse of democracy will get a little bit weaker. No natural law says that democracy -- representative or otherwise -- must last forever. Battered by enough small blows, weakened by enough cynicism and apathy, it could one day be abandoned by citizens who’ve forgotten why anyone ever loved it in the first place.