G.O.P. Corruption? Bring In the Conservatives. - New York Times
The New York Times

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August 22, 2006
Guest Columnist
G.O.P. Corruption? Bring In the Conservatives.
By THOMAS FRANK

In the lexicon of American business, "cynicism" means doubt about the
benevolence of market forces, and it is a vice of
special destructiveness
. Those who live or work in Washington, however, know another variant of
cynicism, a fruitful one, a munificent one, a cynicism that is, in fact, the
health
of the conservative state. The object of this form of cynicism is
"government," whose helpful or liberating possibilities are to be derided
whenever the
opportunity presents.

Remember how President Reagan claimed to find terror in the phrase, "I'm
from the government and I'm here to help"? Or how the humorist P. J. O'Rourke
won
fame by declaring that even the proceedings of a New England town meeting
were a form of thievery?

The true scoffer demands sterner stuff, though, and in the cold light of
economic science he can see that government is not merely susceptible to
corruption;
government is corruption, a vile profaning of the market-most-holy in which
some groups contrive to swipe the property of other groups via taxation and
regulation. Politicians use the threat of legislation to extort bribes from
industry, and even federal quality standards - pure food and so on - are
tantamount
to theft, since by certifying that any product in a given field won't kill
you, they nullify the reputations for quality and goodness that individual
companies
in the field have built up at
great expense over the years.

The ideas I am describing are basic building blocks of the conservative
faith. You can find their traces throughout the movement's literature. You
can hear
their echoes in chambers of commerce across the land. But what happens when
you elevate to high public office people who actually believe these things
- who think that "the public interest" is a joke, that "reform" is a canard,
and that every regulatory push is either a quest for monopoly by some
company
or a quest for bribes by some politician? What happens when the machinery of
the state falls into the hands of people who laugh at the function for which
it was designed?

The obvious answer is an auctioning-off of public policy in a manner we have
not seen since the last full-blown antigovernment regime held office, in the
1920's. Agencies and commissions are brazenly turned over to campaign
contributors; high-ranking officers of Congress throw grander and gaudier
fund-raisers
even after being arraigned; well-connected middlemen sell access for
unprecedented amounts.

What really worries me, though, is that our response to all this may be to
burrow deeper into our own cynicism, ultimately reinforcing the gang that
owns
the patent on cynicism and thus setting us up for another helping of the
same. This may not be apparent now, with the identity of the culprits still
vivid
and the G.O.P. apparently heading for a midterm spanking. Recall, though,
that while the short-term effects of the Watergate scandal were jail
sentences
for several Republicans and the election of many Democrats to Congress in
1974, its long-term effect was the destruction of public faith in government
itself and the wave that swept in Ronald Reagan six years later.

In the absence of a theory of corruption that pins the tail squarely on the
elephant, this is certainly what will happen again. Conservatives are
infinitely
better positioned to capitalize on public disillusionment with the political
system, regardless of who does the disillusioning. Indeed, the chorus has
already started chanting that the real culprit in the current Beltway
scandals is the corrupting influence of government, not conservative
operatives or
their noble doctrine. The problem with G.O.P. miscreants is simply that they've
been in D.C. so long they've
"gone native,"
to use a favorite phrase of the right; they are "becoming cozy with Beltway
mores,"
in The Wall Street Journal's telling
. If you don't like the corruption, you must do away with government.

Were he not the main figure in all this, Jack Abramoff would undoubtedly be
nodding in agreement with those editorials. A self-described
"free-marketeer"
who spent his days fighting "government intervention in the economy" and
leading the catcalls at Tip O'Neill, he would undoubtedly have seen the
political
gold beneath the scandals. If, in our revulsion at Abramoff's crimes, we are
induced to accept Abramoff's politics, it will be K Street's greatest
triumph
yet.

Thomas Frank is the author, most recently, of "What's the Matter with
Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.'' He is a guest
columnist during
August.

Posted by Miriam V.