Jim Stillman
Nevar
Problems from the Right
July 10th 2007 20:23
I have strong views and opinions related to politics and the manner in which our leaders lead.
As of today, July, 2007, the mid-term elections in the United States have been taken place months ago, the present Administration had been repudiated by the majority of the American public and we are now in the process of waiting around while Mr. Bush and Mr. Chaney and their cohorts clean out their respective desks.
I appreciate, at times like these, the parliamentary system, enjoyed by most modern nations, wherein once the party in charge or its leader loses the confidence of the people, it –- or he -– is replaced forthwith. In the United States, the removal and replacement process takes years. Candidates for the November, 2008, election announced their availability and hunger for the top job months ago and have been collecting bushels of cash necessary to oil their way into office.
The overwhelming majority of the American public now sees the Bush administration and the far right agenda as a failure. They failed in Afghanistan and Iraq, they failed after Hurricane Katrina, they failed on health care, they failed to deliver rising wages, they failed on the deficit, they failed, they failed, and they failed again and again!
How and why did this happen? It is not because of stupidity or venality. I would submit that Republicans and the Right are no less intelligent or no more crooked than a comparable group of liberals and Democrats. So how did this set of affairs come about? In an article written some time ago, Alan Wolfe explained, “Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well." While this is, I admit, simplistic, it has a measure of truth.
Present day conservatives and the present Republican administration have been unable to govern in a responsible and effective manner because their mindset makes it impossible to operate a bureaucratic system. Ronald Reagan's well known adage that government was not the solution, but was the problem is more than a facile slogan; it explains the inability of conservatives to govern.
The President's brother, Jeb Bush, started his service as Florida Governor by looking at the state office buildings in Tallahassee and opined that, if he were successful, all of the buildings would be empty and governmental functions turned over to private entrepreneurs. Brother Jeb commenced a program of privatization, delegating child welfare responsibilities and prison operations to private companies. For the most part, the results have been frightful. The point is simply that the current crop of conservatives hates government and are terribly bad, as a result, at governing.
It would be “overkill” to recount a long litany of specific failures of the present Administration and evidence of the inability to govern and lead. I will only mention a Defense Department that is unable to take proper and decent care of America's wounded and an administration that ignored the policy that held United States Attorneys, while serving technically at the pleasure of the President, were non-political in making prosecutorial decisions. We have a Chief of Staff to the Vice President indicted, tried and convicted for Obstruction of Justice only to have his average prison sentence commuted by the President with a not-too-subtle hint of a full pardon in January, 2009.
These examples of horrible behavior could have taken place under a Democrat Administration, and there has been plenty of that around, too. But other lapses demonstrate a far greater flaw: a contemptuous attitude toward government itself. These latter episodes illustrate the administration's fox-guarding-the-hen-house concepts, the disdain of its appointees for the laws they are sworn to enforce and their attitude toward the government they are entrusted with overseeing
Take for example, the president's amazing-even-for-this-crowd choice to oversee the federal family planning program, Eric Keroack, in 2006. Dr. Keroack was finally asked to resign as head of an agency responsible for overseeing the distribution of contraceptives to low-income women; he was director of a group, A Woman’s Concern, which finds contraception “demeaning to women” and opposes their distribution -- even to married women.
Dr. Keroack gave a speech some months ago in which he stated that promiscuous women use up the "bonding hormone" in their brains during casual sex and therefore are later unable to form long-lasting relationships that require this hormone. Dr. Keroack did not caution women against "using up" the bonding hormone by having many children during marriage - the natural consequence of unprotected sex - even though having a large number of babies could just as easily exhaust the supposedly scarce supply of the bonding hormone.
The organization's claim that access to contraception increases the odds of out-of-wedlock pregnancy assumes that people who do not have access to contraception will abstain from having sex. Tell that to people in the real world; one will receive hysterical laughter.
Then, Mr. Bush nominated Michael Baroody, a top official at the National Association of Manufacturers, to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission -- the agency charged with protecting consumers against the dangerous products of, guess who, manufacturers.
Perhaps Baroody would be a great chairman, but he's spent most of the past two decades looking out for the interests of manufacturers, not consumers. The manufacturers' association recently pressed the CPSC to relax its rules about when manufacturers must report incidents of defective products. (It did.) The group argued, again successfully, against a petition to require makers of cribs, strollers and similar items to include registration cards with their products to be able to help notify consumers in a recall.
Another instance of executive appointments that doesn't pass the "smell test" is that of Julie MacDonald, the official who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service but who has no academic background in biology. Not only did she override the recommendations of agency scientists about how to protect endangered species, MacDonald also shared internal documents with industry officials and groups that lobby for weakened environmental protections.
An Interior lawyer called MacDonald's involvement in one endangered species matter "the most brazen case of political meddling" he had seen in more than 20 years in government. The 24-page report of the Department of Interior's Office of Inspector General, dated March 23, 2007, contains a litany of political influence that overrode non-political scientific research and analysis.
One should not paint with too broad a brush here: Most administration officials, and government employees, are decent, honest and hardworking; the Clinton administration, like others before it, had its share of those who did not act in the best interests of their positions. However, there is something in the "loyal Bushies" mind-set of this administration and its fundamental scorn for government that contributes to this arrogant misbehavior.
If one's faith is more in the operations of the private sector than in the capacity of government, if you have only a modest commitment to the laws you are pledged to enforce, if government is viewed less as a trust to be administered than a force to be used for the benefit of political and ideological allies, then this kind of behavior is the inevitable result.
So what must happen now? In my opinion, Conservatives must recapture their own party and assume a responsible role in governing.
In a future post, I will expound on my theories. You have been hereby warned.
As of today, July, 2007, the mid-term elections in the United States have been taken place months ago, the present Administration had been repudiated by the majority of the American public and we are now in the process of waiting around while Mr. Bush and Mr. Chaney and their cohorts clean out their respective desks.
I appreciate, at times like these, the parliamentary system, enjoyed by most modern nations, wherein once the party in charge or its leader loses the confidence of the people, it –- or he -– is replaced forthwith. In the United States, the removal and replacement process takes years. Candidates for the November, 2008, election announced their availability and hunger for the top job months ago and have been collecting bushels of cash necessary to oil their way into office.
The overwhelming majority of the American public now sees the Bush administration and the far right agenda as a failure. They failed in Afghanistan and Iraq, they failed after Hurricane Katrina, they failed on health care, they failed to deliver rising wages, they failed on the deficit, they failed, they failed, and they failed again and again!
How and why did this happen? It is not because of stupidity or venality. I would submit that Republicans and the Right are no less intelligent or no more crooked than a comparable group of liberals and Democrats. So how did this set of affairs come about? In an article written some time ago, Alan Wolfe explained, “Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well." While this is, I admit, simplistic, it has a measure of truth.
Present day conservatives and the present Republican administration have been unable to govern in a responsible and effective manner because their mindset makes it impossible to operate a bureaucratic system. Ronald Reagan's well known adage that government was not the solution, but was the problem is more than a facile slogan; it explains the inability of conservatives to govern.
The President's brother, Jeb Bush, started his service as Florida Governor by looking at the state office buildings in Tallahassee and opined that, if he were successful, all of the buildings would be empty and governmental functions turned over to private entrepreneurs. Brother Jeb commenced a program of privatization, delegating child welfare responsibilities and prison operations to private companies. For the most part, the results have been frightful. The point is simply that the current crop of conservatives hates government and are terribly bad, as a result, at governing.
It would be “overkill” to recount a long litany of specific failures of the present Administration and evidence of the inability to govern and lead. I will only mention a Defense Department that is unable to take proper and decent care of America's wounded and an administration that ignored the policy that held United States Attorneys, while serving technically at the pleasure of the President, were non-political in making prosecutorial decisions. We have a Chief of Staff to the Vice President indicted, tried and convicted for Obstruction of Justice only to have his average prison sentence commuted by the President with a not-too-subtle hint of a full pardon in January, 2009.
These examples of horrible behavior could have taken place under a Democrat Administration, and there has been plenty of that around, too. But other lapses demonstrate a far greater flaw: a contemptuous attitude toward government itself. These latter episodes illustrate the administration's fox-guarding-the-hen-house concepts, the disdain of its appointees for the laws they are sworn to enforce and their attitude toward the government they are entrusted with overseeing
Take for example, the president's amazing-even-for-this-crowd choice to oversee the federal family planning program, Eric Keroack, in 2006. Dr. Keroack was finally asked to resign as head of an agency responsible for overseeing the distribution of contraceptives to low-income women; he was director of a group, A Woman’s Concern, which finds contraception “demeaning to women” and opposes their distribution -- even to married women.
Dr. Keroack gave a speech some months ago in which he stated that promiscuous women use up the "bonding hormone" in their brains during casual sex and therefore are later unable to form long-lasting relationships that require this hormone. Dr. Keroack did not caution women against "using up" the bonding hormone by having many children during marriage - the natural consequence of unprotected sex - even though having a large number of babies could just as easily exhaust the supposedly scarce supply of the bonding hormone.
The organization's claim that access to contraception increases the odds of out-of-wedlock pregnancy assumes that people who do not have access to contraception will abstain from having sex. Tell that to people in the real world; one will receive hysterical laughter.
Then, Mr. Bush nominated Michael Baroody, a top official at the National Association of Manufacturers, to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission -- the agency charged with protecting consumers against the dangerous products of, guess who, manufacturers.
Perhaps Baroody would be a great chairman, but he's spent most of the past two decades looking out for the interests of manufacturers, not consumers. The manufacturers' association recently pressed the CPSC to relax its rules about when manufacturers must report incidents of defective products. (It did.) The group argued, again successfully, against a petition to require makers of cribs, strollers and similar items to include registration cards with their products to be able to help notify consumers in a recall.
Another instance of executive appointments that doesn't pass the "smell test" is that of Julie MacDonald, the official who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service but who has no academic background in biology. Not only did she override the recommendations of agency scientists about how to protect endangered species, MacDonald also shared internal documents with industry officials and groups that lobby for weakened environmental protections.
An Interior lawyer called MacDonald's involvement in one endangered species matter "the most brazen case of political meddling" he had seen in more than 20 years in government. The 24-page report of the Department of Interior's Office of Inspector General, dated March 23, 2007, contains a litany of political influence that overrode non-political scientific research and analysis.
One should not paint with too broad a brush here: Most administration officials, and government employees, are decent, honest and hardworking; the Clinton administration, like others before it, had its share of those who did not act in the best interests of their positions. However, there is something in the "loyal Bushies" mind-set of this administration and its fundamental scorn for government that contributes to this arrogant misbehavior.
If one's faith is more in the operations of the private sector than in the capacity of government, if you have only a modest commitment to the laws you are pledged to enforce, if government is viewed less as a trust to be administered than a force to be used for the benefit of political and ideological allies, then this kind of behavior is the inevitable result.
So what must happen now? In my opinion, Conservatives must recapture their own party and assume a responsible role in governing.
In a future post, I will expound on my theories. You have been hereby warned.
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Comment by Winston
Small Thoughts on Big Questions
I was aware of Dr. Keroack in a general sense, but did not know the particulars. Now that I do, I find it hard to believe (or I would, if I hadn't seen some of the other tip-top appointees in the administration lately). Contraception is "demeaning to women"? I guess he's right, being forced to give birth multiple times even if you don't want to sounds much more dignified.
You're right, it would be unfair to suggest that governmental ineptitude did not exist before our current far-right climate settled in. But it does seem to have a flair all its own at present, no?
Comment by youranter
youranter
Opinions
opinionatedranter
Tales From The Green Lantern
Comment by Jim Stillman
Political Certainty
Comment by youranter
youranter
Opinions
opinionatedranter
Tales From The Green Lantern
Comment by Gina-Marie Cheeseman
The Truthteller
Our founding fathers meant for the impeachment process to be used any time an elected official violates his/her oath of office. The American people are against Bush. The trick is to mobilize them to rise up as one great voice demanding IMPEACHMENT.