| | | Editorials | Opinions | November 2008
Obama's Governing Philosophy Paul Crist - democratsabroad.org
| Brian Adams, a mathematics and computer science professor at Franklin & Marshall College, reports that there’s a 99.98% chance that Sen. Barack Obama will win the presidential election on Tuesday. | | Recently, Barack Obama has focused a great deal of his campaign on the economy and financial sector regulation. As an economist, I listen to what he is saying, as well as what he is not saying, with great interest.
In every speech, whoever the candidate, there are always unarticulated clues that reveal the candidate’s philosophy about markets, the financial sector, the appropriate role of government and regulation in a capitalist and democratic (small "d") society. His first major speech on the economy, delivered in Colorado on September 16, revealed much about Obama's governing philosophy, and he has continued to clarify and build on those themes in recent weeks, as our economy has crumbled. I like what I hear.
Since Ronald Reagan famously said "Government is not the solution to our problem; Government IS the problem," we have allowed the legitimate regulatory role of government to deteriorate. We have shifted public-sector functions to private entities. Regulatory agency budgets have been cut, making it a self-fulfilling prophesy that government can’t solve problems. Regulators have intentionally been appointed who loath regulation, ensuring that market regulation neither keeps pace with market changes nor is enforced for politically-connected market participants.
Jobs that by their nature must be performed by entities whose sole interest is the public interest have been "outsourced" to private companies whose sole interest is profit (and there’s nothing wrong with profit, but not everything can be about that). It is no accident that we have anti-environmentalists at the head of the EPA. No accident that ex-oil industry executives dominate our energy policy. No accident that non-scientists head up our Health & Human Services agency.
Outsourced jobs, formerly done by a dedicated civil service (it was always a myth that there was much more inefficiency in the government’s ranks than there is in any large private firm... large organizations are all prone to a certain amount of bureaucratic sclerosis and inefficiency) have been shown in many cases to cost taxpayers more when performed by profit-seeking private sector companies.
The "shrink the government" mentality of the past generation has indeed shrunk the number of government employees, but it has not saved taxpayers any money, and has not resulted in improved or more efficient services. It has enriched a few well-connected private companies (who have lobbyists to thank). Examples of deleterious effects of mass-privatization and agency starving are numerous... toy imports with lead paint? Tainted pet foods? Financial systems run amok and near collapse? Mass illnesses from contaminated foods? A mercenary army called Blackwater operating with impunity in Iraq? The list goes on and on. And the trend has gone on for much longer than the past 8 years.
Consider: By the end of Bill Clinton's first term, more than 100,000 Pentagon jobs had been transferred to companies in the private sector -- among them thousands of jobs in intelligence. By the end of his second term in 2001, Clinton’s "reinvention" of government had cut 360,000 jobs from the federal payroll and the government was spending 44 percent more on contractors than it had in 1993.
Consider: We have an approximately $66 billion national intelligence budget, between all the intelligence agencies (there are 16 of them). It is estimated (but classified) that 70% of that budget goes to private spying and surveillance firms. How can a private contractor, whose prime objective by nature is profit, be trusted and credible doing a job that is the ultimate in "in-the-public-interest-of-the-United-States" job? It cannot.
The outsourced information technology program of the National Security Agency (NSA) is a prime example: in 2006, NSA was unable to analyze much of the information it was collecting through private contractors... As a result, more than 90 percent of the information it was gathering was being discarded without being translated into a coherent and understandable format; only about 5 percent was translated from its digital form into text and then routed to the right division for analysis.
With privatization, there is more at stake still than just higher cost and degraded outcomes.
Whether you’re talking about regulators for the financial sector, regulators for food & drugs, or intelligence analysts, when the work of government is moved to the private sector, by contracts that are often shifted from one company to another, the institutional memory of what worked and what didn’t, what happened, how and why... is lost. That institutional memory is invaluable, and now largely irretrievable. The damage to public services is irreparable. It will take a generation or more of committed effort to rebuild a viable institutional memory that will positively affect public services outcomes.
Finally, the privatization of public services and functions creates an evolution of corporate power toward its own form of political power...we could call it "corporatism." This is not the corporatism of Mussolini, where civic assemblies represented economic, industrial, agrarian, social, cultural, and professional groups. This is corporatism as we currently understand the term "corporation." But the effect is much the same.
Corporations are unelected bodies with an internal hierarchy; their purpose is to exert control over the social and economic life of their respective areas. As corporations and corporatism gradually replaces democracy, democratic practices, and democratic values, becoming a dominant player alongside a greatly weakened state, human rights, civil rights, and the interests of the majority are not merely at risk... they are irrelevant.
Sound familiar?
Now, it’s highly doubtful that an Obama Presidency can (or would even attempt to) turn all of this around. We didn’t get to where we are in just the past 8 years, and we’re not going to fix it in another 8 years. Perhaps we won’t fix it at all. If we try, it will take decades of effort and commitment.
What I hear, largely unsaid, but certainly there, in Obama’s rhetoric is an understanding about these fundamental questions of governance. His economic and other policy prescriptions spring from an underlying governing principle that recognizes these very fundamental problems of governance that we now face, and seeks to lead us in a new direction.
Obama leads us not back to a Great Society model of government, but in a new direction that takes into account the changes that have taken place and the dynamism of our economy and our society. That is change we can believe in.
As an economist, and as a deeply concerned American, I have listened for something similar in the words of John McCain. And it is simply not there.
Paul Crist, originally from Washington, DC, now lives, works, and writes in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. He holds an MA in International Economics from Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, and is the Editor of the Democrats Abroad Mexico National Newsletter. He can be reached at editor(at)mexicodemocrats.org. For more information about the Costa Banderas Chapter of Democrats Abroad, click HERE, or contact Paul Crist at 322-222-4793 or editor(at)mexicodemocrats.org. |
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