The Dysfunction of Our Governments: Letter and Response

Dear Editor:

 

I have to confess myself sick unto death by the mis- and malfeasance and general dysfunction of our governments, local, state, and federal. It's been more than four years since 9/11 and where are we? And what about the craziness of responding to Katrina? As an urban planner I predict that NOTHING will be done in New Orleans in restoring those areas destroyed by flooding. Governments do not fund infrastructural improvements that vastly exceed the value of the land and (former) improvements that were destroyed.

 

Consider by comparison WW II, which started (for the U.S.) at the end of 1941 when I was 10 years old and ended in mid-1945. In less than four years there was total victory on two fronts and the control of nuclear weapons at least for a while. Did FDR [President Franklin D. Roosevelt] seek a "multilateral" solution? He did not! He conspired secretly well before Pearl Harbor, mostly with the British but also with others. He enjoyed, after Pearl Harbor, the almost total unanimity of the American people (except for the Communist Party, which opposed him and the war effort until the Hitler-Stalin pact fell apart) as everything changed in support of the war effort. I remember the change vividly. And more Americans were killed at the Twin Towers than at Pearl Harbor!

 

There are times when I think we've reached our self-imposed or perhaps actual limits when it comes to governance. Why do we waste our time and energy on gay marriage, unlimited abortion rights, or ACLU-type fanaticism, not to mention congressional arrogance and stupidity? Why can't we stop the outrageous redistricting which keeps incumbents in power? Anything that Tom Delay did here in Texas in such redistricting and money manipulations (that he undisputedly is guilty of) he learned from the Democrats who preceded him. I do not think that proportional representation would improve anything. It might actually make it worse.

 

Well, I've vented my spleen. I have no recommendations to make. I wish I did.

 

Edmond Kagi
Houston, Texas
 

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Dear Mr. Kagi:

 

Thank you for writing to express your pain and exasperation. I wish we had some quick recommendations and easy solutions for the dysfunctions, stupidity, arrogance, and malfeasance of which you speak. But the fact that neither you nor we have ready recommendations does not mean that we should throw up our hands.

 

Given the human condition, there are always going to be degrees of darkness and degradation in public life and institutions just as in personal life and relationships. And I agree with you that we appear to be at a discouraging point in American politics and government right now. One thing I notice with increasing frequency, for example, is that after every disaster or accident, whether in a coal mine, or in New Orleans, or in Iraq, the responsible authorities insist that they want to learn what went wrong so that similar tragedies or mistakes can be avoided in the future. It's as if no one is responsible any longer for what actually happens but only for the study of what went wrong after it happens. Increasingly, I hear such authorities stress that they don't want to look back, they just want to look forward to a better performance in the future. All of this is just a way of avoiding responsibility, of avoiding normative judgments about what should be done and who should be held accountable for doing it. How many people have been fired for what happened in the coal mines, in New Orleans, and in Iraq? Very few, if any.

 

Surely President Bush and his Homeland Security people, and the governor of Louisiana, and the mayor of New Orleans knew that they had the kind of responsibilities that have now been described in the White House report on the management of the Katrina disaster. I have no doubt that if again this year hurricane disasters are poorly handled, we'll have more studies by the House, the Senate, and the White House showing what will need to be done to avoid such problems next year. It is maddening.

 

But rather than continuing to dig deeper and deeper into the pit in which we are mired, let me comment on a few of the statements you make.

 

First, there is a big difference between the situation with FDR and World War II, on the one hand, and the American situation today in Iraq and with Katrina. FDR was actually in close touch with allies in Europe as WW II began and his "secret conspiring" behind the scenes was possible because of a significant "multilateral" approach that was taken for granted. The U.N. did not yet exist, but FDR was working multilaterally with the diplomatic means that did exist. Secondly, it was immediately clear when Pearl Harbor was bombed that a major power was at war with us and that the circumstances called for a war response—that is, for the mobilization of military forces to respond to the military forces of countries launching major war efforts. There were no doubts about that or about the intentions of the Japanese and German forces.

 

Quite by contrast, 9/11 was nothing like Pearl Harbor. Terrorism had been going on for years prior to that. The 9/11 terrorists used no military forces in their attack and represented no major power intent on going to war with the U.S. The terrorists had command of no major weapons systems or ability to transport them. When President Bush called almost immediately for a war against terrorism, what made some sense and galvanized the American people was the attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan. That was easy but it didn't lead to the end of terrorism the way the long war in the Pacific led to the defeat of the Japanese. Moreover, as is clear in Afghanistan and Iraq, the overwhelming power of the American military cannot defeat terrorism or compel opposing camps in a place like Iraq to make peace. No wonder the president's ambiguous approach to the U.N. Security Council prior to taking military action in Iraq created doubts and even opposition among allies about what we were trying to do there. Unlike FDR, George W. Bush had not built a true multilateral coalition ahead of time in support of his war plans, but only a questionable bilateral coalition with the British (and a few minor joiners). And by now, only three years after launching the military invasion of Iraq, the president has lost much of the country's support because what he promised would happen has not yet happened and shows no sign of happening. Part of our problem, then, is that today our leaders may be misidentifying challenges and responding to them in ways that only make problems worse.

 

Yes, W.W.II ended in total victory for the allies, but total only in the sense that the military enemies were destroyed and gave up. President Bush could say the same after having brought down Saddam Hussein's regime. But the possibility of recovery in Western Europe and Japan was because the U.S. committed itself, with allies, to an indefinite and strong occupation and because West Germany and Japan were able to pull themselves together to begin rebuilding. However, don't forget who one of our allies was in the victory over Germany: the Russians, who did not remain allies for long. So part of the so-called "total victory" was nearly half a century of Cold War, plus the Korean War. Roosevelt, in other words, did not simply win W.W.II on his own by a commanding leadership. He and the U.S. did it only in close alliance with allies, most of whom hung together even after the Soviet Union left the coalition and started to build its own empire. To this day, President Bush continues to speak of our nation being at war, yet the enemy that can be defined as the proper object of our military forces is almost entirely unidentifiable. And the job that should have been done in Iraq from March, 2003 to the present is state building and recovery directed by a strong American occupation government. But that is something the Bush administration never committed itself to do and the administration has been trying to hand over responsibility for the fractured and violent results to the Iraqis ever since.

 

If we shift focus now to domestic politics there are also big differences between Roosevelt's time and ours. At the time of W.W.II, the federal government was only beginning to build significant federal institutions to deal with social and welfare policies. Up until that time the federal government was far more limited in its responsibilities—largely commerce and defense. The massive lobby groups, vast in number, had not yet materialized and Congress had not been reduced to interest-group brokering the way it now functions. The current order (or disorder) of things in Washington is the product of half a century of fundamental change in the function of our complicated federal system. In that respect, you are right that today's dishonorable bargainers and crooks learned their trade from their predecessors.

 

The corruptions of the Tom Delays and the Jack Abramoffs are related to the increasing use of government offices to seek political advantages for individuals and parties. The frequently irrational and fanatical "debates" and legal conflicts over single-issue causes is the product of the decline of civic participation by citizens and the rise of interest-group control of government.

 

I say all of these things not to justify the way things run today or to try to ease your disgruntlement, but in order to expose the depths and long-time build-up of the irresponsibility of our governments in many ways. That is why I believe that we should not have any expectation that there are short-term answers. Despite our continued bragging about the United States being the oldest and best democracy in the world, we are actually in a very degraded condition as a nation in which a constitutionally responsible government is supposed to be accountable to its citizens. The distance between ordinary citizens and government officials is exceedingly great; accountability is hardly possible through ordinary electoral means.

 

Lobbying reform efforts, campaign finance reforms, and more studies of what went wrong with Katrina, or with CIA assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, or with the Bush administration's management of the war in Iraq will not be enough. Fundamental reform of the electoral system; a more responsible approach to world affairs by the White House and State Department; a genuine and joint response to the crises of health-care insurance and Social Security by Congress and the president—these and much more will be required over the next 50 years if justice is to be done. But a 50-year effort of the kind I have in mind will require major new movements among citizens to accept and fulfill their own responsibilities. Is that possible? Is it likely? I can't answer those questions, and at the moment I am not optimistic. But clarity about what needs to be done does strengthen my commitment to the work of the Center for Public Justice as one way to help call at least the Christian community to its civic responsibility and to point in modest ways to the kind of actions that are needed.

 

Sincerely yours,

Jim Skillen