[Mb-civic] Political Crackups - Sebastian Mallaby - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Political Crackups
What Happens When Governments Don't Work
<>
By Sebastian Mallaby
The Washington Post
Monday, April 10, 2006; A17

In the fall of 1992, when a different Bush administration was 
unraveling, Shin Kanemaru ran into a little trouble. Kanemaru was the 
Tom DeLay of politics in Japan; he was the gruff son of a rural sake 
maker who became a political kingmaker, and after he got busted for 
taking money from the mob, gold ingots were discovered under his 
floorboards. In the ensuing months, two things happened. Japanese 
politics underwent convulsive shifts -- the ruling party split, then 
lost its grip on power for the first time in four decades. But Japanese 
policymaking barely improved. However odious the old crony boss, the 
alternative proved nearly as imperfect.

Today the signs of a political crackup are all over Washington. Within 
the administration, the White House chief of staff is going, the 
Treasury secretary is rumored to be going, and the defense secretary 
argues publicly with the secretary of state about whether he made 
"tactical errors" in Iraq. The president's domestic policy has shriveled 
to pleas for expanded health savings accounts, whose shockingly muddled 
design speaks volumes about the administration's lack of economic 
talent. In a mark of desperation, Bush has gone off script to take 
questions from journalists and citizens. At a forum in North Carolina on 
Thursday, he confessed that the torture revelations from Abu Ghraib had 
been "disgraceful."

The spectacle in Congress is no prettier. One cannot regret the fall of 
Tom DeLay, who combined a mastery of politics with a complete 
indifference to its purpose. Really, what did this man seek public 
office for? It's said that he was inspired by his conviction that the 
Environmental Protection Agency is like the Gestapo, but I suspect this 
theory is too kind. Unlike Newt Gingrich, who bristled with policy 
ideas, DeLay never seemed to care about anything beyond counting votes 
and cultivating links to the moneybags on K Street.

Still, in the absence of a functioning administration and a powerful 
House boss, nobody is running the asylum. Senate Majority Leader Bill 
Frist, a physician who "diagnosed" Terri Schiavo by watching her on 
video, is as charismatic as a stethoscope and as principled as a 
cigarette salesman. I doubt many Americans could even recognize DeLay's 
successor as House majority leader, John Boehner, let alone say what he 
stands for. His most memorable moment came in 1995, when he chose the 
House floor as a suitable venue for distributing checks from tobacco 
lobbyists.

In theory, this political vacuum presents an opportunity. Liberated from 
the DeLay-K Street axis, the GOP could become less of a political 
machine and more genuinely interested in governing. But the signs so far 
aren't good. Last week House Republicans began debating a budget 
framework, then decided the whole thing was awfully hard and shelved it. 
The House considered some bad tax legislation, too, but couldn't get 
around to making progress.

For a brief moment last week, the Senate seemed poised to produce a 
worthwhile immigration bill. But this turned out to be a feint, and in 
the end the whole thing fizzled. The fight laid bare the deep splits 
among Republicans: on one side, business-backed moderates; on the other 
side, spluttering nativists whose contributions to public policy include 
proposals to bomb Mecca. A president who wasn't quacking and limping 
might perhaps have secured a deal. But in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, 
the implosion of the Bush domestic agenda and unrelentingly awful Iraq 
news, this proved impossible.

The Republicans' dismal performance could shake their grip on power -- 
much as the gold-ingot episode upset Japan's politics. But the top 
congressional Democrats seem barely more attractive than the 
Republicans; they have mastered the art of obstructionism but are light 
on policy proposals. In Japan in the 1990s, the collapse of the 
cronyistic ruling party was expected to usher in economic change that 
would pull the country out of its financial swamp. Instead, reform 
proceeded at a glacial pace, and it took a full decade for the economy 
to get going again.

The paradox of politics is that government is at once essential and 
dysfunctional. Globalization, demographic change, the sheer fact of 
economic growth: All these shifts create demands for government to step 
in, as a provider of safety nets for workers; retirement security for 
seniors; and public goods such as environmental quality and food safety, 
which become priorities as societies grow richer. But governments have a 
way of screwing up. France can't even take baby steps toward fixing its 
labor market without provoking riots; Italy is led by a high-heeled 
tycoon who passes laws to protect himself from prosecutors, though the 
election yesterday and today may dispatch him. Despite a world economy 
that's growing at a record pace, governments in rich countries can't 
even pass the basic test of balancing their budgets. At least the 
American political system is not alone in its pathologies.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/09/AR2006040900491.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060410/5e598265/attachment.htm