Reagan Said Government Was The Problem, Not The Answer; Bush Has Made Reagan's Fantasy Come True
By Joe Rothstein
Editor, USPolitics.einnews.com
March 9, 2007
http://uspolitics.einnews.com/article.php?nid=239335A friend of mine works as a contractor-employee for a major federal agency in Washington. Shortly after the federal government's response to Katrina's devastation became a national scandal she was summoned to be part of an ad hoc disaster working group.
At the first meeting she suggested that various agencies combine their applications so that the victims could fill out a single form requesting aid, rather than having to duplicate that effort multiple times in scattered locations throughout the gulf region.
The group's leader, an assistant cabinet secretary, looked at her as if she was deranged. "You don't get it, do you?" he said. "We're not here to make it easier for people to take advantage of government programs. That just encourages people to lean on government. We want them to find private sector solutions."
Buried in that exchange is one of the keys to understanding why the Bush-managed federal government is such a failure.
The keepers of this White House are anti-government.
And because they are anti-government today's headlines are all about the removal of U.S. attorneys for spurious reasons, the colossal mismanagement of Walter Reed and other veterans' facilities, widespread abuse in government contracting-----and, for good measure, let's throw in the daily agony of a mismanaged Iraq war.
If you are anti-government and you are in a position to make key government leadership appointments, who do you select to fill those jobs? The most qualified managers who believe in the missions of their departments and agencies? Or are you inclined to appoint, instead, someone who will reduce the size and scope of that department, agency or project. If you are anti-government how much weight do you give to the notion of career civil servants? Do they stand a chance against a system that rewards political allies, regardless of competence?
We now know that many of those selected to manage the intricately difficult post-invasion period in Iraq were chosen based on their Republican Party credentials and their views on abortion---while more experienced and competent people were shunted aside.
Post-Katrina we learned that "Brownie" had slim background to qualify him to run FEMA. Many of Bush's cabinet and department head choices have been those who lobbied against the very laws and regulations their new roles required them to enforce. Just last week we witnessed the sorry spectacle of the head of the General Services Administration---the government's chief contracting arm and watchdog---testifying about a no-bid government contract she personally awarded to a friend.
If you are anti-government and your mission is to squeeze the public sector, then your interests lie in reducing the money available through government programs (read here, big tax cuts). Another strategy is to discourage long time public employees from wanting to hang around while their agencies are savaged by incompetence and neglect. That's been happening all over the government, including the very same GSA mentioned above, where a previous administrator was so successful with his wrecking ball that hundreds of veteran workers left or are leaving. These are people who review contracts to make sure they are in the public's interest.
If your motivation is more political and ideological than administrative, then a U.S. attorney who prosecutes and sends to jail a Republican congressman gets a pink slip rather than a commendation. And another, who won't play ball by announcing high visibility indictments against Democratic officials just before election day, is suddenly considered too incompetent to continue in office.
And, by the way, that friend of Karl Rove's who the Justice Department wanted to become U.S. attorney for Arkansas.....If I were a suspicious type I might think the White House would be using that office to sniff out ways to embarrass the Clintons before 2008. Just a thought.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management's web site explains the agency's mission this way:
The history of civil service is inextricably intertwined with that of the American ideals of democracy, The idea that dedicated and hardworking individuals with morals and character would come to work for the United States government has been an important concern from the very first days of the Republic.
This is the agency charged with recruiting employees, developing standards for jobs, arranging for competitive selection among the most qualified applicants, protecting the rights of those hired, and generally serving the public interest with single-mind dedication.
During the Bush years, so many of those very same jobs have been handed to contract workers who don't have to take the tests, who are not immune from short-term political influences, and whose primary interest in life may be more how to profit from taxpayers rather than serving them.
Add the devastation of civil service to the raft of incompetents and hostiles appointed to run public agencies and the result is what we see in Iraq, the gulf coast, the intelligence community, the Justice Department and the growing list of government failures.
The next president will have a lot of wreckage to clean up when he or she takes office. Maybe the worst of it will be what Bush & Company have done to undermine the core and the competence of government to do the public's work.
Joe Rothstein, editor of US Politics Today, is a former daily newspaper editor and long-time national political strategist based in Washington, D.C.
http://uspolitics.einnews.com/article.php?nid=239335
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