Every election boils down, in the end, to a contest between two (or occasionally three or four) people; you don't get to have a choice between a named Republican and an unnamed Democratic saint. Unless one of the candidates has actually been charged in the case, the opponent slinging mud will just get mud slung right back, and the mud (deserved or undeserved in both cases) will cancel itself out.

If a particular person gets indicted -- Bob Ney (R-OH), for example, is in a lot of danger -- he will probably resign from Congress to deal with it. Then everything depends upon the governor of the state (Republican Bob Taft, who has his own corruption problems, in the case of Ohio); the governor in each case will name someone of his own party who never took any money from Abramoff, and who will then run as a quasi-incumbent -- but not much of one, since the investigation will take some months -- in the November election.

At that point, what will matter is how safe the seat is: in Bob Ney's case, according to Michael Barone's Almanac of American Politics, 2006, Ney has won by over 60% in the last four elections (in 2002, the Democrats didn't even bother to field a nominee against him), and the eighteenth district of Ohio went for George W. Bush by 14% in both 2000 and 2004. This is a safe Republican seat, and the Republican will likely win this year, whether it's a battle-scarred Bob Ney or someone else.

And that is part of the secret: unless there is a confluence of indictment or much greater than run-of-the-mill congressional corruption for a particular incumbent and one of the tiny number of truly competitive seats and a squeaky clean challenger, this sort of financial scandal simply doesn't have much impact. It is very different from a political scandal, like Watergate, that actually calls the ability to govern into question.

Anybody remember the Keating Five? It was one of the biggest scandals to rock Congress in the 1980s. The "five" were Sen. Alan Cranston (D-CA), Sen. John Glenn (D-OH), Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), and Sen. Don Riegle (D-MI). The scandal erupted in 1989. Quiz: how many of the Keating Five were defeated in the election following the scandal?

Answer: none, of course. Three chose to retire: Cranston (who was diagnosed with prostate cancer), DeConcini, and Riegle; the two who actually ran for reelection, McCain and Glenn, were both reelected. One could argue that the scandal persuaded the retirees not to run, but that's a tricky case to make.

The House banking scandal broke in early 1992 and ensnared far more members (over 350) than can possibly be caught up in the Abramoff scandal... and a greater percentage were Democrats. In addition, the minority leader was Newt Gingrich, far more dynamic and exciting than is Nancy Pelosi today. And back then, there were also a lot more competitive seats. So what happened in the election that year? The Democrats lost 9 seats in the House -- and gained 1 seat in the Senate, completely in keeping with the typical electoral play in those days.

But in the 1994 election, which hinged not on a scandal but rather on the Republican "Contract With America," as well as the performance of the Clinton White House and the Democratic Congress, the Democrats lost 52 seats in the House and 9 Senate seats.

And of course, the political result of Bill Clinton's impeachment for perjury was that his approval rating skyrocketed in 1998. Yeah... scandal.

I think it's pretty clear which has more impact: a scandal among the incumbent party, or the challenging party having a positive political agenda in line with the voters' own beliefs, with the incumbents having either an out of step agenda -- or no agenda at all.

Today, we have less play; I would be pretty shocked if the Abramoff scandal at its worst affected more than two or three House seats -- and any Senate seats at all.

So relax. Let's get the bad guys; we don't want them anyway, especially if they're Republicans. But don't bite your nails to the quick, worrying that this will cause significant damage to the Republican Party. It may increase the cynicism of the American voter (if that's even possible), which is pretty bad by itself. But neither party is going to come off clean enough to benefit from it.