The Bush Administration's Disdain for Governance Leads to Folly

In a previous article in these pages [Conservatism Today is Discredited, Bankrupt Ethically and as a Political Force, published 11/1/06], I attempted to explain why present day conservatives and the present Republican administration were unable to govern in a responsible and effective manner. The simple truth is that their mindset makes it impossible to operate a bureaucratic system.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, they failed. Why? As Alan Wolfe explained in a recent Washington Monthly article, "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."

Ronald Reagan's assertion 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 to for-profit companies, the operation of prisons to private companies, and the like. For the most part, the results have been frightful. The point is simply that the current crop of conservatives hate government and are terribly bad, as a result, at governing.

Recent front-page scandals and bureaucratic horror stories have so dominated the headlines that everyday issues with the failures of the present administration have not been brought to public attention.

As examples of the former, I suggest a Defense Department that is unable to take proper and decent care of America's wounded. Conditions at Walter Reed in the District of Columbia were well known to Pentagon officials but ignored until the Washington Post and others displayed the neglect to the public. We have 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. The firing of eight such attorneys, now properly under scrutiny by Congress, was patently motivated by the refusal of some to engage in political vendettas against Democrats and, by others, the refusal to cease investigations of Republicans. Finally, in the news has been the conviction of the Chief of Staff to the Vice-President for lying to a Grand Jury, lying to the F.B.I. and obstruction of justice.

All of this has obscured the many other instances of impropriety which similarly underscore the failings of this administration and illuminate one of their root causes: a contemptuous attitude toward government itself. These 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

The president's amazing-even-for-this-crowd choice to oversee the federal family planning program, Eric Keroack, resigned after Medicaid officials in Massachusetts, where he had a private medical practice, questioned his billings. Keroack's suitability for the family planning post, in which he was responsible for overseeing the distribution of contraceptives to low-income women, was problematic, at best. He was director of a group that finds contraception "demeaning to women" and won't distribute it -- even to married women.

Dr. Keroack has served for over ten years as the medical director of an organization that, in its statement of faith, expresses a commitment to "help[ing] women escape the temptation and violence of abortion." The organization also opposes contraception, it says, because it believes that birth-control increases out-of-wedlock pregnancy and abortion rates. In addition, the organization "is persuaded that the crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness."

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.

While the lack of available contraception does not deter premarital sex, it does, however, increase the incidence of unwanted pregnancy (and therefore of abortion), not to mention the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. In a recent article by Sherry Colb, a Professor at Rutgers Law School in New Jersey, Ms Colb noted, "The fact that a doctor who heads an important division of HHS has dedicated his career to an agenda based on factually inaccurate premises is very troubling." It is troubling, no doubt, but it also in tune with the Administration's attitude toward governing.

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.

In short, if you identify so completely with the foxes, it's no wonder that you end up with a hen-house that is trashed.