Government, Good

Columnist Robyn Blumner:

If you want to give a name to the coming era in American politics, you could call it the Return of Government.

I think of the years between the time that John F. Kennedy told us to ask what we can do for our country and the aftermath of 9/11 when President Bush told us all to go shopping as modern historical bookends of sorts. Kennedy arrived at about the apex of people's faith in the power of the state to make lives better. Bush arrived at its nadir. [...]

There was a time when government was expected to act in furtherance of the common good and was given the benefit of the doubt when sacrifice was called for. That time is coming back. It's the only viable option there is.

I finally got around to reading Paul Krugman's The Conscience of a Liberal, and it's just as excellent as you'd expect. The following excerpts are from an interview Krugman did with Buzzflash about the book:

Paul Krugman: The reason that Bush is so opposed to SCHIP is the same reason he was so determined to privatize Social Security, which is that they're both programs that work. You have to understand, that is the point of view of somebody who really wants to undo the New Deal — and if possible — I quote Grover Norquist in the book — get things back to the way they were before Teddy Roosevelt and the "Socialists" came in. The worst thing is a government program that actually does help people. So the SCHIP is a really bad thing, from Bush's point of view, because it works so well. It might lead people to say, well, if we can do this for lower-income children, why can't we do it for lots of other people who need guaranteed health care? So it's the determination, on his part, to do this veto, even though there's a short-term political cost, because they're deathly afraid that people will look at SCHIP and say, gee, actually the government can do some good. [...]

BuzzFlash: We want to challenge you a little on some language. […] You used the word "conservatism," though you switch and say

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Glenden Brown at OneUtah uses the current water crisis in Atlanta, Georgia, to examine the failure of conservative ideology:

The bottom line: We live in a complex society that requires intelligent planning, foresight and effective government to mediate between competing private interests and to organize and manage the infrastructure. The basic infrastructure needed to operate a modern city is mind-bogglingly complex — a series of interconnected systems that require constant maintenance, upgrades, changes and improvements. The engineering feats required to simply install an effective sewer system for Salt Lake County's million residents staggers the imagination. When it works smoothly, we don't notice it. When it fails, it does so spectacularly. […]

Hostility to government — part and parcel of the conservative ideology — creates its own problems. Throughout the US, thirty years of conservative anti-government, anti-tax madness has created

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George Packer in The New Yorker explains why conservatism was doomed to fail:

That November [1994], Republicans swept to power in Congress and imagined that they had been deputized by the voters to distill conservatism into its purest essence. Newt Gingrich declared, "On those things which are at the core of our philosophy and on those things where we believe we represent the vast majority of Americans, there will be no compromise." Instead of just limiting government, the Gingrich revolutionaries set out to disable it. Although the legislative reins were in their hands, these Republicans could find no governmental projects to organize their energy around. David Brooks said, "The only thing that held the coalition together was hostility to government." When the Times Magazine asked William Kristol what ideas he was for — in early 1995, high noon of the Gingrich Revolution — Kristol could think to mention only school choice and "shaping the culture."

At the end of that year, when the radical conservatives in the Gingrich Congress shut down the federal government, they learned that the American public was genuinely attached to the modern state. "An anti-government philosophy turned out to be politically unpopular and fundamentally un-American," Brooks said. "People want something melioristic, they want government to do things."

If you find Packer's article interesting, you can download an interview with him on Radio West with Doug Fabrizio (look for the yellow box labeled MP3).

Michael Greenberger on
Fresh Air:

Should we have an economy based on whether people make good or bad bets - or should we have an economy where people build companies, create manufacturing interests, do inventions, advance the American society, make it more productive? This economy is based on people sitting at their computers making bets all day long... We are rewarding people for sitting at their computers and punching in bets. That's not the way this economy is going to be built. India and China, with their focus on science and industry and building real businesses, are going to eat our lunch unless the American public wakes up and puts an end to an economy that praises and makes heroes out of speculators.

And, as a result, Senate Democrats are refusing to confirm Bush's appointments (The Politico):

At the height of concern over product safety and lead-tainted toys, the Consumer Product Safety Commission doesn't have enough members to meet. The nation is facing the prospect of a presidential contest with no referee, because the Federal Election Commission is too short-handed to call a quorum. With the economy in peril, the Council of Economic Advisers is plodding along with a lone member. The National Labor Relations Board, the body that adjudicates disputes between workers and bosses, has only two of its five commissioners still on the job. [...]

President Bush squarely blames the Senate for failing to give his nominees an "up or down vote."

Democrats respond that some of his nominees are flatly unacceptable and that the president hasn't sought the "advice and consent" of the Senate.

Democrats charge that the federal commissions are not innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire between the White House and the Senate, but rather are targets of an administration happy to watch them die. "They could[n't] care less," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, where many of Bush's stalled nominations sit. "They dislike government. They dislike the way government works."

The sad part is that either bad regulators or no regulators is fine with Bush.

Deseret News:

Three in four Utahns favor reform of ethics laws that affect gift-giving by lobbyists to legislators, conflicts of interest and lawmakers' conversion of campaign funds to personal use, a new Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll shows.

But lawmakers say such reforms are unlikely to pass anytime soon.

"House Democrats ran reform packages for years. But with the exception of a few innocuous and ineffective changes, nothing passed," said House Minority Leader Brad King, D-Price.

I think it's worthwhile for Dems to include ethics reforms as one of their issues; however, I do wonder how many voters will be swayed by this issue alone.

Editorial from the LA Times:

Two themes ran through President Bush's final State of the Union address Monday night, as he made the case for his continued relevance: Trust the American people, he said – again and again – and empower them to run their own lives. Trust the people with their money, and the economy will come around. Trust them to demand better schools, and schools will improve. Trust scientists to think big about global warming, and they will hit on solutions. All of that is fine, and yet for all of Bush's trust in the American people, he also made clear that he lacks essential confidence in their government – his government. [...]

Government is not the passive instrument of bureaucrats. It is the active agent of a democratic people. When the people genuinely need its help, the government should act, not merely encourage. In this, Bush has failed to give his nation what it needs. Too many Americans face the loss of homes, too many are in prison. Afghanistan is unstable, Iran threatens. Osama bin Laden is still at large.

Ours is, a great president once proclaimed, "a government of the people, by the people, for the people." This president has done too little to uphold that conviction.

I never thought I'd link approvingly to an article by right-wing clown Jonah Goldberg, but I guess there's a first time for everything (Washington Post):

Conservatism, quite simply, is a mess these days. Conservative attitudes are changing. Or, more accurately, the attitudes of people who call themselves conservatives are changing.

The most cited data to prove this point come from the Pew Political Typology survey. By 2005, it had found that so many self-described conservatives were in favor of government activism that they had to come up with a name for them. "Running-dog liberals" apparently seemed too pejorative, so the survey went with "pro-government conservatives," a term that might have caused Ronald Reagan to spontaneously combust. This group makes up just under 10 percent of registered voters and something like a third of the Republican coalition. Ninety-four percent of pro-government conservatives favored raising the minimum wage, as did 79 percent of self-described social conservatives. Eight out of 10 pro-government conservatives believe that the government should do more to help the poor and slightly more than that distrust big corporations.

Regarding Mike Huckabee, Goldberg adds:

He would even use his power as president to push for a national ban on public smoking. "I'm one of the few Republicans," Huckabee insists, "who talk very clearly about the environment, health care, infrastructure, energy independence. I don't cede any of those to the Democrats."

So about a third of Republicans think we shouldn't drown government in the bathtub. It's past time for national Dems to start unapologetically making the case that our government can be a force for good.