IG Follies

Moira Whelan:

So the fact that the CIA is investigating their own IG is, um, just not ok. But as any IG will tell you, one time is an “incident” but three is a “pattern.” Recently, Democrats have released evidence demonstrating the Republican hackery of the State Department’s latest IG, and Administration officials have sought to stop Congressional efforts to strengthen the positions of IGs after several had been removed for <<gasp>> being critical of the Bush Administration. Clearly there should be an investigation into how investigators are being handled.

Once again we see the perils of being governed by a political movement that believes that instances of malgovernment demonstrate the correctness of their ideology. They believe, falsely, that it's not possible to make public sector institutions function properly and once given the keys to power have set about trying to make their theory true in practice.

Comments

Does this apply to *all* government or just the parts they don't like (e.g. social programs)?

Posted by MarkT | October 14, 2007 11:13 AM

The mechanics seem subtly weirder when we're thinking of military and intellience matters, which said political movement wishes to expand dramatically. It's not so much opposition to the entire public sector, but a belief that democracy, legislatures, and anything driven by dialog and voting is doomed to failure of one sort or another. They would prefer decision making be moved from government to markets--but public or private, they insist decision making be concentrated in a single person--either a CEO or a Commander in Chief.

So attacking the IG and other oversight institutions simply doesn't represent a failure in their eyes--the only valid oversight is Reagan's "are you better off today than you were four years ago?" And even that represents a concession to tradition--if they could eliminate elections and replace them with prediction markets of some kind, we would finally have reached the Utopia of public choice theorists. In their glorious City on a Hill, Human beings would never have to speak to each other to resolve conflicts--executives would privately decide all, markets would determine which executive does the deciding.

Posted by Consumatopia | October 14, 2007 11:16 AM

Bush & Cheney are not interested in governing.They want to rule.

Posted by PR | October 14, 2007 11:33 AM

It's not a case of philosophical or ideological subtlety. They just don't want to be hindered by institutional checks and/or balances of any kind.

Posted by MattF | October 14, 2007 11:50 AM

I wonder if Matt has it backwards. I don't really think they're clever enough to intentionally govern poorly just to prove their ideological beliefs that government is incapable of being well run.

I think that they themselves just happen to be incapable of running government well, and so if they don't believe that anyone else could possibly be more capable than them, then it's a logical conclusion that government just can't ever be run well. The ideology is not the cause of but the effect of their incompetence.

Kind of like how someone similarly arrogant who doesn't understand modern climate science would be tempted to think that climate scientists themselves must not understand the climate either. Or how someone who is naturally homosexual but is painfully suppressing those urgings would find general cultural acceptance of homosexuality to be truly dangerous to their ability to restrain their true orientation and so be quite convinced that the "gay agenda" really was about making everyone gay and ruining everyone's heterosexual marriages.

Posted by Will Hutchinson | October 14, 2007 4:27 PM

Will has an interesting point, but MarkT's question still applies if the causation is reversed. Indeed, given Bush's Supreme Court appointments, Bush is not only convinced of his own executive competence, but that of all future presidents. It's almost like they don't believe anyone else could possibly be less capable than they are, at least on military/intelligence matters.

Posted by Consumatopia | October 14, 2007 5:19 PM

Who would you rather have run your government: a party whose adherents believe in the philosophy that government is, or at least can be, a positive force for social change, and whose inquiring minds naturally gravitate towards the study of ways to improve governance, or a party whose adherents believe that it is impossible to do well the thing you are asking them to do and thus do not waste their time on the silly idea of how it might be done well?

Posted by Trickster | October 15, 2007 12:40 AM

Who would you rather have run your government: a party whose adherents believe in the philosophy that government is, or at least can be, a positive force for social change, and whose inquiring minds naturally gravitate towards the study of ways to improve governance, or a party whose adherents believe that it is impossible to do well the thing you are asking them to do and thus do not waste their time on the silly idea of how it might be done well?

Posted by Trickster | October 15, 2007 12:50 AM