Raines

Raines : Broken Government

A Liberal’s Viewpoint

by Mike Raines

Email : >liberalviewpoint@mchsi.com

     Last week I shared that while I was researching the “Separation Of Powers” doctrine that is one of the underpinnings of our government, I discovered that John Dean has written books titled “Bush-Cheney Presidency: Worse Than Watergate” and “Conservatives without Conscience“. (John Dean was White House Counsel to Richard Nixon.) You may recall that last weeks article dealt with the three branches of government and how the Bush/Cheney presidency has been warping their protective boundaries. If you missed it you can find it and all past articles at: http://liberalviewpoint.home.mchsi.com/home.html. This week I went online to Amazon.com, a convenient, cheap way to buy books, and found his latest book, “Broken Government”, $29.95, Viking Press, 2007. The subtitle is “How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches”. I was shocked – here was a prominent Republican saying almost the same things I had just written about. I immediately ordered it second-day shipping.

     Having just started a new job and coming down with a mild case of flu, I have only had a chance to read the front matter and first few chapters, but I can tell you this is an interesting and enlightening read. It is so empowering and reinforcing to have a conservative and a former Republican agreeing so completely with me. Along with respect, I can feel his pain as he concludes chapter one with “I have taken little joy in writing this book. Frankly, I once believed Republicans would be good at governing. But I was wrong: They have demonstrated that they can only rule for limited periods of time. As used in the pages that follow, “governing” is a craft, a skill, even an art; it is an effort to find common rules under which all can pursue happiness; “ruling”, in contrast, is merely reigning and exercising power.”

     Dean, in the Preface to “Broken Government”, briefly describes and explains his two previous books. About “Worse Then Watergate”, he says “Asserting then that Bush’s presidency was worse than Nixon’s has proven, in any case, to be an understatement, for in fact it has proven to be much, much worse. Suffice it to say that no one died, nor was anyone tortured, because of Nixon’s so-called Watergate abuses of power.” Speaking of “Conservatives Without Conscience”, Dean describes research by social scientists concerning interaction between “compliant followers” and “authoritarians” which he equates with the “dark side” of conservatism. He explains: “For example, social scientists have found, … that authoritarians are ‘enemies of freedom, antidemocratic, anti-equality, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, power hungry, Machiavellian, and amoral’ – to mention only a few of their troubling traits, all of which are contributing to the breakdown of our democratic system.”

     John Dean and I share with over 75% of the rest of the country the belief that our Federal Government is broken. As Dean points out, most of these 75% can’t precisely say which parts are not working, or precisely how it got broken, but “they sense and intuitively understand” that it is broken. I think we further agree on the road to a solution. We need to elect a Democratic President and a Democratic veto-proof majority in Congress, and we need to insist that they proceed immediately to repairing and restoring our government (all three parts). In Dean’s words, “Today, any objective observer must conclude that it is the Democrats who … have the needs of the public at the top of their agenda. Republicans, on the other hand, have become the party of special interests. Republicans seem to thing that if their desires are satisfied, everyone will benefit. Unfortunately, it does not work that way.”

     Mike Raines is a resident of Currituck and is featured as a regular columnist. Mike can be contacted through email at: liberalviewpoint@mchsi.com or through this newspaper at nencnews@yahoo.com

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