Randy "Duke" Cunningham is the wacky and much-decorated US Navy pilot who inspired the Tom Cruise movie Top Gun and got elected eight times as a Republican congressman. Casual observers could be forgiven for thinking that he is also one of the criminal geniuses of our age - because, when Mr Cunningham was convicted last week of taking bribes, Carol Lam, the US attorney who prosecuted him, described "a crime of unprecedented magnitude and extraordinary audacity". The Washington Post called the bribes "breathtaking in their scope, audacity and sheer greed".

Except that they are not, really. What is more, the kind of graft the Cunningham case reveals - under-the-table payments for votes - is almost non-existent nowadays. Failure to realise that will distract Americans from more serious kinds of political corruption.