In George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” Sugarcandy Mountain is a pretend land of sweetness promised to the animals by Moses, a pet raven who belongs to the owner of Manor Farm. The only promise more enticing to the collection of pigs, horses and assorted working animals is the even bigger idea that if the farmer went away, if they could just get rid of the oppressive human, all of the animals’ lives would change for the better. They, not the farmer, would enjoy the fruits of their labor and they alone would decide how to run the farm for the benefit of all animals because “all animals are created equal,” as their animal commandments told them.

Even though Orwell wrote the fable as a commentary on totalitarianism under Joseph Stalin, it became a classic because it is not just about Soviet power; it is about the corrosive nature of power itself. I re-read “Animal Farm” in 1995, just after Newt Gingrich and his lieutenants won control of Congress as reformers, promising voters that if the Republicans could just wrest power away from the House Democrats, Washington itself would be better. The Contract with America specifically promised “to restore accountability to Congress; to end its cycle of scandal and disgrace; to make all of us proud again of the way free people govern themselves.”

But has there ever been a Congress without a little scandal and disgrace? Gingrich, the history professor, must have known that ethical lapses in the House of Representatives are as old as the institution itself. In 1798, the first official violation of House rules occurred when Rep. Matthew Lyon was cited for disorderly behavior after spitting on Rep. Roger Griswold “following an exchange of insults.” A few days later, Griswold retaliated, assaulting Lyon with a “stout cane” on the House floor before the chamber was in session. Historical notes then detail that, “Rep. Lyon responded by attacking Rep. Griswold with fireplace tongs.” For their offenses, the House recommended expulsion for Griswold and censure for Lyon.

Over the years, the Ethics Committee or its historical equivalent, has dealt with members committing violations large and small. The crimes and their punishments reflected both the nature of the times the Congressmen lived in, as well as the level of importance the House assigned to ethical standards. In 1838, the log of the committee reads, Rep. William Graves of Kentucky killed Rep. Jonathan Cilley of Maine “in a duel over words spoken in debate.” Just prior to the Civil War, the House expelled three members from Southern states for “open rebellion against the United States.”

The ensuing years brought disciplinary action against Congressmen found guilty of manslaughter, assault, defamation of character and even bribery by a lobbyist in an effort to extend a patent on the Colt revolver. In 1983, Rep. Gerry Studds was censured for inappropriate conduct with a House page. Other infractions in the hard-charging 1980s included staff caught using pot and cocaine, while Gingrich generated eight separate ethics inquiries during his highly partisan tenure.

Could anything have been a weaker note to end Republican Congressional rule on than the House Ethics Committee’s findings in the Foley page scandal on the last day of the session? Although the committee acknowledged that members of Congress had been “willfully ignorant of the potential consequences ” of their actions and had also been “imprudent” and behaved in a way that was “inexplicable,” in the end, the committee found that no member of Congress or their staff member had violated the House rules.

The Foley affair and at least a dozen other scandals gave the Democrats a huge opening in the November elections that has brought us to this point. Today, the 110th Congress will begin with Nancy Pelosi promising to run the most ethical and open Congress in history.

But will Pelosi’s Capitol Hill be anything more than another search for Sugarcandy Mountain; a land of make-believe that people seeking power know does not really exist?

As she has prepared for her role as Speaker, her efforts to change the House for the better have had mixed results. To her credit, she has taken several small but important steps that should make the next Congress at least somewhat less partisan and more orderly from the beginning. She has extended the workweek from two and a half days to five, and eliminated several Congressional recesses. She also quietly gave Dennis Hastert a suite of offices in the Capitol rather than sending him to try his luck in the House office-space lottery for regular members. Finally, she decided to retain the Republican-appointed House Chaplain and House Sergeant-at-Arms, two positions that caused massive fighting even among Republicans themselves in years past.

On the (always ready) other hand, she is also ringing in her Speakership with the type of This-is-Your-Life extravaganza that would make Tom DeLay proud —a four day tour of the four phases of her life leading up to this very moment, complete with a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser featuring Jimmy Buffett and Carole King. As she marches forward on her First 100 Hours agenda, news has come that during those one hundred hours, Republicans will not be allowed to offer amendments or debate the bills before voting on them.

Pelosi is not alone in calling foul on Republicans last year, only to behave a lot like them this time around. Incoming senior staff for many Democrats and Democratically controlled committees are leaving jobs as lobbyists for the industries they’ll be regulating. Several departing Democratic staff are headed straight to K Street for jobs influencing their old colleagues, just the revolving door that Democrats excoriated the Republicans for in this campaign season.

When the animals of Animal Farm plot the overthrow of the humans, their mantra is “Four legs good, two legs bad.” But in the end, most of the animals find themselves ruled by an oppressive regime just the same, but by fellow animals, in this case pigs, who promised to end the reign of humans, only to become just like them as they acquired power and influence.

It is up to the Democrats to resist the very real temptation to rely on the tools of partisanship and division that they have been subjected to for the last twelve years. Like someone coming out of an abusive relationship, some Democrats openly worry that coercion is the only way to really get anything done in the modern House. But by 2008, the voters will forget who promised what to whom in 2006, and will only know if the government they have is better than the one they tossed out two years earlier, or if it is just more of the same.

Orwell reached his own conclusions about the slim chances of remaining true to our values when given real power. By the end of his story, the most important animal commandment, that all animals are created equal, had been slightly revised by the new rulers of Animal Farm with the devastating addition, “But some animals are more equal than others.”