The Bush Administration's Disdain for Governance Leads to Folly

The Fox Who Guards the Hen House

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.