Alan Ginsburg, a historian friend of mine, pointed out that it's been some time now since we have heard one of the most previously oft-repeated Republican applause lines — the candidate's or officeholder's solemn pledge "to run government like a business."
The reasons are obvious why this cliche has disappeared. The villains in American politics have in a single generation gone from "welfare queens in designer jeans" to "corporate welfare kings in chauffered limos," from the public spotlight on "the deserving poor" to public outrage against "the undeserving rich."
You won't hear many GOP politicians today quoting Republican presidents who urged, "Less government in business and more business in government" (Warren Harding), or asserted that "the business of America is business" (Calvin Coolidge).
The inconsistencies of the business world and its partisan apologists have been monumental. When profits were sky-high, corporate chiefs and the office-seekers whom they underwrote relentlessly extolled the genius of private enterprise and the untold damage any government regulation could do to it. But when profits go so far south that all the ink is red, business sings a much different tune. "Public-private partnerships " (aka bail-outs) are not only inspired, they are imperative.
If in fact the decision were made "to run government like a business," which particular business would be the best model? Merrill Lynch or Bank of America? How about JPMorgan or Goldman Sachs? Citigroup could be a possibility, and please give some consideration to Wells Fargo, General Motors and Chrysler.
Enron is probably not the role model we're looking for.
Nor is Lehman Brothers or even WorldCom. Or maybe one of those defense contractors that, we learned this week, have piled up cost overruns on weapons programs of $296 billion.
Actually, in this very century we voters did elect our first president with a master's degree in business administration. George W. Bush holds an envied MBA from the prestigious Harvard Business School. His commitment to bringing business principles to the running of government was best encapsulated in these words he spoke on Nov. 2, 2000: "They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program."
Bush's oval office successor, President Barack Obama, is at least hourly accused by somebody with a microphone of being the architect and engineer of a grand scheme to "socialize" the United States. The truth is that the shyster bankers and the corporate criminals have done more to sabotage public trust and confidence in American business and unfettered free enterprise than all the liberal professors, journalists and populists in shoe leather. The plunderers and profiteers themselves, along with their enablers in public office, are solely responsible for today's real and widespread outrage against CEOs and their co-conspirators now abroad in the nation.
In his second inaugural address, the only American ever elected president four times, Franklin D. Roosevelt, spoke these still-timely words: "We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics."
You can be sure that no serious Republican (or Democratic) 2010 congressional candidate will run on a promise to make Washington "run the federal government like a business." Not if she wants to win, that is.
To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
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COPYRIGHT 2009 MARK SHIELDS
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Subscription is spelled "Subsription" on website. Thought you might want to make thw correction.
Great comments by Mark Shields in this post.
gail
Comment: #1
Posted by: Gail Moreland
Sat Apr 4, 2009 8:03 PM
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I have often heard legislators, especially here in Texas, say that you can't fix education by throwing money at it. Well, I would like for them to try, at least once, just to see what happens. It seems that they are willing to throw money at all sorts of things that comfort the comfortable and take money away from important things like CHIPS and public schools. People need to be educated at least so they can read well enough to understand columns like this one so that they will not swallow whole the vitriol spewed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, the mean little emails that seem so prolific these days, and the soundbites that pass for news on television.
Comment: #2
Posted by: Paul M. Petkovsek
Sun Apr 5, 2009 7:18 AM
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Sir;... The problem in this country is, if one single cause can be put on it, the result of the government being run like a business... Businesses sell... The government sold, Our rights, and Our property to the highest bidder....It never considered that it should make clear that public property in private hands still had to support the commonwealth, and that public property in private hands still had to pay for its own defense....Ever since Jackson drove the natives from their own property, held by the government as a trust, and sold it to pay off the national debt, that has been the standard and natural situation, where the rich would evade taxes, and then public property would be sold off to them to make up the shortfall of revenue... They should understand, and we should understand, and mostly, the government should be made to understand that there is no such thing as absolute property rights...Taxes are the dues people pay for the use and profit of property.....For what other reason then, should the people have ever cut loose of any property when it was all once public??? Even in private hands it must serve a public good...And the danger of the rich running the government is that they use the public debt to break the poor, and make them poorer, while they use the debt as an excuse to manipulate all good public property into their own hands... That is our history...That is the business called America...The problem is, that when the poor have not enough of their own property to support themselves, then they will have nothing left to sell but their rights to all the proceeds of America...And that is a statement of the problem in a nutshell, that where property has rights, all rights will be treated as a property that one must sell off to put off starvation.... We have seen our rights in this country, and in its produce sold off for a pittance... It is ours no less because of that fact... Property rights are always in flux, and just as the commoners were once turned out of the commons, so the rich might be turned out of their riches...One simple fact must not be forgotten: Even in private hands, property must serve the public, and if it does not then there is no defense for it, and there should be no defense for it.... The people are the law... The law without the people is nothing... The law, like property, must serve the people or it is not the law, and not legal...The people, the ultimate customer of government and law, are always right...Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #3
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Sun Apr 5, 2009 3:22 PM
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