On Regulation

October 6, 2008

"You let the fox run the hen house--what did you expect?" -- from a song by Arkansas songwriter Shawn Camp

"Government isn't the solution, it's the problem!"-- I first heard this silly throwaway line as a college sophomore when Ronald Reagan visited the campus of Arkansas State College, courtesy of the General Electric Company. Reagan, then known only as a Hollywood B-grade actor, traversed the land, spreading the gospel according to General Electric, offering glib truisms and right-wing propaganda wrapped in the American flag. Reagan's theme: Government bad, corporations good; taxes bad, market good.

You don't have to be an ace in history to know that Ronald Reagan leveraged his GE gig onto a larger stage--first as governor of California and then as President of the United States. Some insist he was a great one because the Iron Curtain fell on his watch. OK, perhaps. But in the course of his tenure, Reagan did the country a great disservice by denigrating those who make a career of government service, and by appointing persons to cabinet offices and regulatory agencies who were from the very industries they were supposed to regulate. He tried to dismantle the federal government in place, crippling the ability to enforce any law that regulated health, pollution, consumer products or safety.

Fast forward to today, pausing to note that the past eight years have been a familiar replay of the Reagan years when it came to using the appointment power to kill government from the inside. George W. Bush has done a number on the country, with appointments to agencies charged with regulation of the media, of securities, banking, industrial pollution, housing, consumer safety, food safety, drug development--giving priority to appointing people (often lobbyists) from the very industries that were supposed to be regulated. There has been little, if any, attention given to conflicts of interest or ethical standards of conduct, and lobbyists have more power than Congress.

With the determined assistance of people like former Texas Senator Phil Gramm (otherwise known as the Senator from Enron) and former Texas Congressman Tom Delay (may he sit on a cactus for eternity), laws have been rammed through that loosened existing regulations at the request of industry, and when the law was not changed, they simply refused to enforce it. And, just to make sure, Bush's Attorney General Gonzales systematically loaded the Department of Justice with political operatives in jobs that had always been non-political, assuring that federal justice would have a political edge.

Mercifully, it's almost over (Bush's term, that is). The new guy will have the unenviable task of sorting out what has become a sordid mess. One of the most severe challenges that will have to rise to the top will be to restore faith in the government. Politicians love to bash the government, yet it performs necessary functions. It defends us. It keeps our water clean. It protects patents. It catches and imprisons criminals. It builds roads and sewers and schools. It does for the collective "us" what we can't effectively do ourselves.

The mantra of the disciples of Reagan and Bush (and now John McCain) is that government is the problem and regulation is bad. I would argue that government is neutral--it is the politicians who are the problem. Political and administrative leadership must be of a higher caliber; and those in the ranks of the bureaucracy must be chosen for their qualifications and acknowledged for doing a job well.. If you want to get the most out of government, doesn't it make sense to appoint persons who actually are professionally trained in the business of running government--whatever the field--and who know how to manage scarce resources regardless of what party is in charge? And, of course, they must be those who will swear to maintain the highest standard of professional and ethical conduct…

The current economic debacle has been fed in large part by the dismantling and easing of regulations in the banking and securities fields. It is ironic that now, in time of a grave national crisis--that the public clamors for a more active role to be taken by the very government that they were being told by leaders like Bush and McCain was "the problem."

It's time to stop bashing government. We own it. We can control it. The question is not whether we have more or less government, it should be how we can assure that we get what we pay for. For starters, we have to stop electing people who betray our trust by killing it from inside.

Charlie Crow