Deception Point
I was born in 1967, so I’m too young to remember honest government at the Federal level, if it ever existed (except for Jimmy Carter, who put it decidedly out of fashion). These days, though, Bush and Rove have raised deception to such an art form that it seem naïve at best to take anything whatsoever they say or do at face value.
Take the Roberts nomination. I watched some of the hearings, and was surprised to find myself being impressed with the nominee and, moreover, finding many of the Democrats on the panel annoyingly contentious. I was overcome with joy that Bush had sent someone up who wasn’t barking mad. I found Roberts’s professed respect for the rule of law, precedent and process refreshing. And, though certain that he would certainly rule against the interests and values of Democratic constituencies on some occasions, I was glad that he appeared at least to have the stature commensurate with the office.
But really, it’s gotten to the point where believing my own eyes is an invitation to disaster. I couldn’t shake the nagging doubt that this guy Roberts was a fiendish hoax – that he was raised in a vat in the basement of some conservative think-tank, genetically engineered to appear normal and carefully positioned in a variety of posts that made him the logical candidate for a Supreme Court seat. Once he was confirmed in his lifetime appointment, his hidden masters would push a button and detonate him like an ideological bomb. Gone would be the veneer of reason and civility, gone would be the putative respect for law and precedent, gone would be the moderate demeanor, and out would come Justice Meat Cleaver, armed with a stridency to make Antonin Scalia look like a mealy-mouthed pussy.
Paranoid much? Oh yeah, big time. But let’s look at the record. For the last five years, anyone who has taken the Administration’s claims about anything at face value has wound up looking like a chump. Ask Edward Kennedy what he thinks about “No Child Left Behind” after he leant his support to its passage. Ask any Democrat fool enough to support the various legislative hackery produced under this regime – Medicare “reform,” the Energy bill, the Highway bill, or the ruinous tax policies. In each of these cases, there was the public purpose of the bill – to address some actual problem in the country – and the real purpose, which was to hand out public money to wealthy Republican contractors and/or do dirt to some key group of Democrats.
Then, of course, there’s the war. John Kerry basically lost the election because he was dumb enough to trust Bush’s reasons for invading Iraq; because he realized only too late that these folks didn’t acknowledge the moral and rhetorical limits that tethered previous leaders to some notion of candor and reality in matters of war and peace. Today, any legislator or opinion leader who pimped Bush’s falsehoods about going to war has plenty of ‘splainin’ to do. The best of them say they believed the President because they couldn’t believe he would lie. But that’s a card you only get to play once. If he’ll lie about sending American soldiers to war, when exactly do you think he’ll start telling the truth?
What’s problematic is Bush’s three and a half more years in office. Public skepticism can perhaps curtail his more aggressive attempts to gut, privatize, cripple, bankrupt, prostrate and humiliate America’s remaining wealth, power and prestige, as it appears to have done in Social Security “reform.” But Bush still has the basic responsibilities of governing. He, and only he, gets to name Supreme Court justices. Even a Democratic majority in the Senate could hold him off only so long, and the minority is weaker still. Despite fumbling the Katrina response, Bush still gets to set the agenda for the reconstruction, and his incompetent, crony-ridden executive branch is still obliged to carry it out.
Personally, I believe that investment in physical infrastructure is, dollar for dollar, the best money government can spend. Under any other circumstances, I would tend to view the Gulf Coast disaster and the unity of public response to it as an unprecedented opportunity to redevelop one of the poorest areas of the country. Done right, the Gulf could become a showplace for all the good ideas 21st century engineering has to offer – not just in terms of levees and flood control systems, but in traffic management, housing, urban planning, environmentally-sound development, public transit, and cultural infrastructure. But who among us is fool enough to entertain that dream?
Perhaps in the right hands, such a vision could be realized. When Bush announced his blank check for the Gulf on Thursday night, however, instead of exhilaration, I felt dread. Yes, there will be money. Yes, there will be public support. But in whose hands? In service of what goals? These are certainly not people animated by the desire to use public resources for public purposes. As Barbara Bush made irrepressibly clear last week, this crowd views the public with unvarnished contempt. The idea of providing good quality services for the undeserving (and un-white) fills them with horror.
So what do you think is going to happen to all that money? It’s painful to imagine that it will be squandered in some calamitous boondoggle and vanish into the pockets of preferred contractors with the right political connections, with the minimum possible benefit to residents of the Gulf and the least possible value to taxpayers. Painful, but under the circumstances, practically inevitable. And all the time, the looting will take place under an opaque cloud of pious lies that make it sound like you’re against the hurricane survivors if you question the disposition of the money.
Ronald Reagan announced the theme of the conservative revolution in 1981 when he declared big government the problem, not the solution. Since then, he and his followers have gone about making that a self-fulfilling prophesy. Unable to destroy the foundations of public trust in the government through straightforward means, they have set about rotting it away from within – to the point where it’s pointless to expect any connection whatsoever between the stated goals of a program and its likely effects.
Lately there have been some signs of life: useful skepticism from the media, Congress, and that delicate, endangered species called “principled conservatives.” Sadly, it comes too late to stop Bush. Hopefully, it will make us all a little smarter the next time.
8:51:40 AM 
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