Conservatives in general and Republicans in particular have chosen to bet the farm on the idea that government in and of itself is a bad thing. And every time they are voted into power, they do everything within their means to make that abstraction a reality.
Government is inefficient, they say, and then create odious budget deficits to prove their point.
Government cannot support itself, they say, and then explode the national debt to prove their point.
Government is bad for the economy, they say, and then destroy American jobs to prove their point.
For Chrissakes, they famously declared their intent to “drown government in a bathtub.” Why on earth would you ever choose them to run your government?
And yet we do. And are invariably surprised to reap the whirlwind.
In today’s New York Times, Paul Krugman illustrates how the BP oil spill exemplifies this phenomenon. The jury is still out on a comprehensive picture of the causes of the spill. But it’s clear even now that the destruction of common sense regulation during the Bush administration played a huge role.
[T]here is a common thread running through Katrina and the gulf spill — namely, the collapse in government competence and effectiveness that took place during the Bush years.
The full story of the Deepwater Horizon blowout is still emerging. But it’s already obvious both that BP failed to take adequate precautions, and that federal regulators made no effort to ensure that such precautions were taken.
For years, the Minerals Management Service, the arm of the Interior Department that oversees drilling in the gulf, minimized the environmental risks of drilling. It failed to require a backup shutdown system that is standard in much of the rest of the world, even though its own staff declared such a system necessary. It exempted many offshore drillers from the requirement that they file plans to deal with major oil spills. And it specifically allowed BP to drill Deepwater Horizon without a detailed environmental analysis.
Surely, however, none of this — except, possibly, that last exemption, granted early in the Obama administration — surprises anyone who followed the history of the Interior Department during the Bush years.
For the Bush administration was, to a large degree, run by and for the extractive industries — and I’m not just talking about Dick Cheney’s energy task force. Crucially, management of Interior was turned over to lobbyists, most notably J. Steven Griles, a coal-industry lobbyist who became deputy secretary and effectively ran the department. (In 2007 Mr. Griles pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his ties to Jack Abramoff.)
Given this history, it’s not surprising that the Minerals Management Service became subservient to the oil industry — although what actually happened is almost too lurid to believe. According to reports by Interior’s inspector general, abuses at the agency went beyond undue influence: there was “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” — cocaine, sexual relationships with industry representatives, and more. Protecting the environment was presumably the last thing on these government employees’ minds.
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In any case, now is the time to make that break — and I don’t just mean by cleaning house at the Minerals Management Service. What really needs to change is our whole attitude toward government. For the troubles at Interior weren’t unique: they were part of a broader pattern that includes the failure of banking regulation and the transformation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a much-admired organization during the Clinton years, into a cruel joke. And the common theme in all these stories is the degradation of effective government by antigovernment ideology.
Conservatives in general and Republicans in particular have no interest in the success of our government. Knowing that, we should never allow them to be in charge of it.
Never again.
