One Utah

There’s been a great deal of talk about corruption in politics. The last 8 years have seen a truly shocking level of corruption in government - from the Republicans K Street Project, to the Bushies’ endless politicizing of every aspect of government starting with no bid contracts for any firm connected to the Administration and wanting some taxpayer dollars for helping ruin Iraq down to firing DoJ lawyers for not being politicized. The Republican Culture of Corruption (documented in The Wrecking Crew) is spectacular, thorough, and shocking. Ultimately, it has poisoned our public discourse, has left a devastated trail of ruin in its wake, has wasted billions upon billions of dollars and, ultimately, has created an environment in which all politicians are suspect.

As I’ve talked to voters the last few weeks - in church, at work, in restaurants and coffee shops, I keep running into the same attitude, from Republicans and Democrats and independents. That attitude can be summed up neatly in one phrase: All politicians are corrupt. The notion that one might go into politics because one feels a passion for public service is all but laughable to so many voters. Though the bitterness is deeper from conservatives, I found it from almost every person I’ve talked with. Even more alarming to me, were statements from conservatives alleging that there is no way small donors have fueld Obama’s campaign. The idea that people like me might have given to Obama a couple times this year in sums of about $50 or $100 is dismissed out of hand. Obama’s success with small donors literally becomes evidence of corruption - apparently George Soros (according to one theory) has people making small donations using his money. The extraordinary sleaze of the Republican congress and the Bush administration has become de facto proof that all politicians are corrupt, power mongering, money grubbing crooks.

The lack of progress from our current Democratic congress is cited as more proof of the thorough going nature of political corruption. It’s political junkies who get that the Republicans in the Senate have used the most filibusters in history to stop progress, any progress (at last count, I think they had something 175 filibusters going). That Bush would veto any and every bill that would lead to actual progress and that there isn’t a veto proof majority in either house is beyond the awareness of most voters. Rather than seeing the problem as obstructionist Republicans and President, most voters just seem to believe that the Democratic congress is as corrupt as the previous Republican congress.

More frustrating to me is the way in which the notion of public morality has been so degraded. In his book Reason, Robert Reich discusses the notion of public morality. Reich describes the issue:

One of the most important distinctions a society draws is between private and public morality - which behaviors shoudl be left to a person’s own conscience, and which to public law backed by social condemnation.

Reich offers two lists of behaviors and asks “Which of these really harms the common good more?”

OR

Our public discourse about the public good has become so skewed that people asset that Bill Clinton’s blow job is more damaging of the public good than the blatant economic corruption of the Republican party. The idea that the government in six years of Republican domination was sold off in no bod contracts is seen as the natural corrupt order of things in line with Clinton’s sexual pecadilloes. Don’t get me wrong, I wish Bill had kept it in his pants but ultimately, as a matter of concern for the body politic, Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky should have been a non-issue instead of the absurd theatre of suffering it became for the whole nation. Truly, our body politic is damaged by turning it into a bidding war for politicians and laws. Our body politic is not damaged by the President having an affair, however regrettable such actions may (or may not) be. To put it another way - it’s none of our damn business what the president gets up to in his bed. I think it was John Stewart who quipped that hurricane Katrina was Bush’s Monica except that ten thousand people weren’t stranded in Monica Lewinsky’s vagina. Bush’s version of public morality involved turning control of crucial government agencies over to people with no skills, no abilities and no interest in learning how to run them and ultimately it cost us a major American city. I know which version of morality damages America most.

Such distinctions have to be drawn, have to made explicit.

But an even greater challenge lies ahead and it is a challenge which we as voters must demand and which our leaders must deliver - we want the swamp drained and we want honesty, transparency and effectiveness in government. If that means you have to purge an entire department of employees and start fresh, do it. It’s going to be rough. The people who I have talked to who are angry about the lack of government regulation over the banking industry are the same people who two years ago would have argued passionately against regulations. We have to make the case and we have to make it again and again and again.

The process is going to hurt. Good people will lose their seats in Congress. Republicans will scream bloody murder but they were going to do that anyway given their infantile tendencies. Let’s give them something real to scream about - let’s deliver real reforms and let the Republicans argue against them. The crazy making part of the whole scenario is found in the perception that Obama’s small donor fueled campaign is part of the corruption but that will come in handy. Let’s create a full reform of campaign financing, of voter registration (I saw a proposal to make it automatic and part of the census bureau’s job), of elections. The next four years have to be the undoing of the last 14 years of Republican malfeasance in Congress and the last 8 in the White House. The disaster known as George W. Bush is the culminaton of decades of conservative demagoguery and attacks on the principle of government itself. Our challenge, the challenge of our generation, is to restore government - not just the entity and institutions of government, but to restore public confidence in government.
The systemic corruption and depradations wrought by the Republicans has damaged not just the operations of government but the public’s ability to believe in government. Our job - starting now - is to rebuild our democracy into one in which people can and will place their trust. The hard work begins now.

This entry was posted Saturday, November 1st, 2008 at 10:11 am and is filed under 2008 Election, 9/11, Abu Ghraib, Alberto Gonzales, American History, American People, Barack Obama, Bush Administration, Bush Failures, Conservative Sell-Outs, Conservatives, Crimes, Democracy, Dick Cheney, Economic Exploitation, Election Fraud, Elections, Federal Budget, George W. Bush, Iraq, Liars (politics), Neocons, Political Corruption, Republicans, This Blog, Veterans, War Crimes, Wiretapping. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.