Allan C. Brownfeld
Allan C. Brownfeld is the author of five books, the latest of which is The Revolution Lobby (Council for Inter-American Security). He has been a staff aide to a U.S. Vice President, Members of Congress, and the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. He is associate editor of The Lincoln Review and a contributing editor to such publications as Human Events, The St. Croix Review, and The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
Skepticism of Government Is Growing: The Founding Fathers Would Be Pleased
By any standard, skepticism of government is growing -- perhaps reaching an all-time high. Three out of four Americans are either "frustrated" or "angry" with the federal government -- and nearly a third of the public views government as a "threat to their personal freedom," according to a new survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.
The survey shows an increasing number of Americans are distrustful of both Washington and their elected officials. Only 22 percent of those polled said they can trust the federal government "almost always" or "most of the time," which Pew says is "among the lowest measures in more than half a century." Sixty-five percent hold an unfavorable view of Congress -- the worst congressional approval rating Pew has seen in a quarter century. The past year has seen public approval of Congress plummet from 50 percent in April 2009 to 25 percent in April 2010.
This does not mean, of course, that Americans oppose a role for government in areas which they believe to be its legitimate concern. "While the public is wary of too much government involvement with the economy," the study says:
. . . its suspends that concern when it comes to stricter regulation of major financial companies. A clear majority (61 percent) says it is a good idea for the government to more strictly regulate the way major financial companies do business. . .
Pew Center Director Andrew Kohut argues that the negative numbers result from
. . . a perfect storm of conditions associated with distrust of government -- a dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan-based backlash and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials.
There are, of course, those who have made a partisan argument that dismay with the Obama administration had led to these attitudes. That many policies of this administration are viewed critically is, of course, clear. The public is properly dismayed with government bailouts of failed banks and industries. The fact is, however, that our huge budget deficits and government intervention in the economy are really a continuation -- and escalation -- of policies embraced by the previous Bush administration.
Discussing the Tea Party movement -- which opposed expansion of government, deficits, and the Obama administration's health care bill -- Gene Healy, vice president of the Cato Institute, notes that one disturbing revelation in a recent New York Times/CBS poll found that while 58 percent of Americans disapprove of former President George W. Bush, 57 percent of Tea Partiers view the last president favorably.
Healy writes:
What's going on here? Tea Partiers claim they're a group with a principled opposition to big government in all its forms. How can anyone take that claim seriously when the membership embraces a president who personifies everything they're supposed to hate? Aren't the Tea Partiers opposed to profligate spending? Then why do they look favorably on 43, who led the largest debt expansion in American history, and spent more than his six predecessors, doubling the federal budget during his tenure? Don't the Tea Partiers hate bailouts? Have they forgotten which president rammed through the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, bailed out Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, and gave $17 billion to General Motors after Congress refused to authorize tax dollars for failing automakers?
In Healy's view:
Of course, the Tea Partiers are well justified in their disgust with Obama, who's just engineered a takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy. . . . And maybe it's poor form to beat up on Bush, an ex-president who's at least had the decency to hang his head, keep quiet, and cut brush. . . . But no right-minded supporter of limited government could possibly "miss" a Republican president who, in Medicare Part D . . . engineered the biggest expansion of entitlements between President Johnson's Medicare and Obamacare. . . . If the Tea Partiers are serious, they can't afford to look partisan: as if they are OK with Big Government when someone who passes for a good old boy is at the helm, but cry "socialism" when an arugula aficionado makes his own power grab. Both Parties got us into this mess. Partisanship won't get us out.
The fact is that the nation is headed for a financial crisis -- brought about by the actions of both Republicans and Democrats. This fiscal year, the country's federal deficit is expected to top $1.6 trillion, an extraordinary 10.7 percent of gross domestic product -- double the 5 percent incurred during Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal from 1933 to 1936. The deficits through 2015 alone are projected to exceed $6 trillion. And in contrast to the 1930s, today's deficit is not going to be financed by Americans. About half of it is financed abroad, mostly by China and Japan.
Reasons for dismay with government escalate each day. In the wake of a Securities and Exchange Commission which ignored repeated warnings about Bernard Madoff -- and other financial wrongdoing on Wall Street -- we learned in April that dozens of SEC staff members used government computers in the past five years to access and download pornographic images. The computer of one senior SEC attorney ran out of space for downloaded images, so he started burning them onto CDs and DVDs he stored in his office. The attorney says he sometimes spent as much as eight hours a day viewing pornography on his office computer, according to a report by SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz.
What would the Founding Fathers think of the disrepute in which government is now held? There is every reason to believe that they would be pleased. They designed a system which they understood to involve fear of government power as the essential ingredient for the perpetuation of freedom.
Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Edward Carrington, observed that:
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. . . . One of the most profound preferences in human nature is for satisfying one's needs and desires with the least possible exertion; for appropriating wealth produced by the labor of others, rather than producing it by one's own labor . . . in other words, the stronger the government, the weaker the producer, the less consideration need be given him and the more might be taken away from him. A deep instinct of human nature being for these reasons in favor of strong government, nothing could be a more natural progress of things than for liberty to yield and government to gain control.
It was because of their fear of governmental power that the Framers of the Constitution limited government through the Bill of Rights and divided its authority through our federal system. By establishing the executive, legislative and judicial branches -- and by dividing authority between the state and national governments -- the hope was that no branch of government would ever obtain so much power that it would be a threat to freedom.
In recent years, whether those in power called themselves Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, the power of government has increased, as has the percentage of the gross national product disposed of by the state. Those out of power often speak of cutting spending. Once in office, however, they do precisely the opposite. Both of our political parties are far removed from the fear and suspicion of power which the Founding Fathers shared.
Political corruption, appeasement of special interest groups, and lack of competence would be no surprise to the Founding Fathers. They expected it. The only thing that might surprise them is the faith that some Americans still place in governmental power. Now that skepticism is growing, the Framers would feel that freedom may be a bit more secure.
To Defeat Terrorism It Is Essential that We Understand the Motivation of Those Who Have Declared War Against Us
Despite our military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the dangers we face from terrorism do not seem to be receding.
Early in February, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that even a nuclear-armed North Korea or Iran isn't as great a threat to the U.S. as al Qaeda and allied groups. Also in February, CIA Director Leon Panetta and other top intelligence officials testified before Congress that a future terrorist attack against the U.S. in the coming year is almost "certain."
The deadly November shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, and the failed Christmas Day attempt to bomb an airliner -- both examples of a low-tech approach by terrorists -- have raised the fear level in Washington and across the country. Some terrorism experts say that the worst could still be to come as a wounded jihadist movement thrashes about in search of a victory.
Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair testified that the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit is emblematic of an evolving threat that relies on "small numbers of terrorists, recently recruited and trained, and short-term plots." The new tactics may be less spectacular than 9/11, but also much harder to detect and disrupt, he said.
Our approach to terrorism remains confusing. The Obama administration's original plan to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the so-called 9/11 mastermind, in New York City has been abandoned. Until Mayor Bloomberg publicly opposed the plan, it did not seem to occur to the Justice Department that placing a security perimeter around a large segment of Lower Manhattan would not only cost something like $200 million a year, but would also destroy the economy of the area. In the case of the Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallah, not only was the warning his father gave to U.S. officials ignored, but he was Mirandized after just 50 minutes of interrogation. At Fort Hood, the alleged mass killer, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, gave many indications of his philosophy and state of mind -- such as his contacts with radical imams in Yemen -- yet these were completely ignored.
The fact is that while the U.S., under both Presidents Bush and now Obama, have embarked upon large-scale wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden remains alive and well and al Qaeda is now operating in a variety of venues -- from Pakistan to Yemen to Somalia to various sleeper cells in Western Europe and, most likely, within the U.S. as well.
What we have failed to do is to properly identify the motives and ideology of our adversary, and do everything we can to eliminate active terror cells and, perhaps more important, eliminate the causes which lead young men and women to become terrorists in the first place.
President Bush liked to say that terrorists were motivated by their hatred of America because of "who we are," because of our freedom of religion, free speech, and democratic government. In a Republican presidential debate in 2008, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) made the point that al Qaeda targets the U.S. not because of our internal freedoms but because of our role, as they see it, in their part of the world. In response, Rudolph Guiliani accused Rep. Paul of siding with the terrorists. The fact is, of course, that properly understanding the motives of an adversary is a first step toward defeating him.
Michael Scheuer, a former senior CIA officer who now teaches security studies at Georgetown University, notes that:
The sum and substance of the U.S. bipartisan political elite's response to recent events has been -- as it has been since 1996 when Osama bin Laden declared war on America -- that the Islamist terrorists hate us for who we are and how we live, not for what we do. This contention is a fantasy. It is fair to say that all the U.S. Marines, soldiers, and CIA officers who have died in Afghanistan since 9/11 and in Iraq since Saddam's removal have died fighting an enemy that does not exist. In numbers now approaching 6,000, these men and women have bravely fought and died in combat against an enemy whose main motivation U.S. political leaders have consistently denied. No U.S. soldier, Marine, or CIA officer has been killed by an Islamist fighter who took the field because America has women in the workplace, beer is available in ample supply, and there are early presidential primaries in Iowa every fourth year.
The young Nigerian in Detroit and the Jordanian bomber in Khost and his wife, Scheuer points out:
. . . have told American Marines, soldiers, and CIA officers what they already surely sense, but what their political leaders deny. Both attackers cited motivations that pivot on U.S. support for Israel against the Palestinians; U.S. occupation of Muslim lands; and U.S. attacks on their fellow Muslims. The three individuals' words echo the components of U.S. foreign policy named by bin Laden in 1996 as the causes for war -- which also include U.S. support for Arab tyrants and exploitation of Muslim energy resources . . .
We are not "fighting a cartoon-like foe described by political leaders for the past 15 years," declares Scheuer. Whether or not U.S. policies in the region which have caused such enemies should be changed (which he thinks should indeed be altered),
. . . is a discussion for another time and broad public debate, perhaps during the 2010 midterm elections. For now, the discussion must focus on our enemies' motivation and the knowing failure of U.S. leaders in both parties to be honest with our fighting forces. If we fail to understand that motivation, America cannot shape a war-fighting strategy [that is likely to succeed.]
The policies we have been pursuing may, in reality, have made things worse. A study by terrorist specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, using government and Rand Corporation data, showed that the "Iraq conflict has greatly increased the spread of the al Qaeda ideological virus, as shown by a rising number of terrorist attacks . . ." American terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman believes that, "Al Qaeda is more dangerous than it was on 9/11."
Bruce Reidel, a retired CIA official now at the Brookings Institution, says that, "The U.S. invasion of Iraq took the pressure off al Qaeda in the Pakistani badlands and opened new doors for the group in the Middle East. It also played directly into the hands of al Qaeda leaders by seemingly confirming their claim that the U.S. was an imperialist force, which helped them reinforce various local alliances."
The debate about terrorism in Washington does not address these issues. Instead, we are engaged in a meaningless partisan divide over whether our efforts should be called a "war on terror" or something else. The only victors, as we refuse to face facts, seem to be the terrorists.
Despite Promises to Curb Lobbyists in Washington, a New Golden Age Is Emerging
While President Obama -- together with members of Congress from both parties -- promised to curb the role of lobbyists in Washington, more than a year after the Obama administration assumed the reins of power, little seems to have changed. If anything, the role of lobbyists has increased.
The National Journal, in its 10th annual survey of pay levels for Washington trade associations, confirmed that for lobbyists it is the Golden Age. Examining 514 tax returns between 2001 and 2009, it was found that no fewer than 89 executives for trade groups earned more than $l million. This is a 30 percent increase from the 2008 survey.
Pamela Kaul, president of the executive recruiting firm Association Strategies, said that the compensation numbers are "hard for the rational mind to justify, given the economy. But it's the mystique of Washington. These are the power brokers that have the access . . ."
The Center for Responsive Politics reported that final lobbying expenditures last year reached $3.47 billion, a 5 percent increase from the $3.3 billion spent in 2008. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $144 million on its lobbying efforts, a 60 percent increase over 2008s expenditure.
White House supporters say that the number of lobbyists has declined, but some public interest groups say that power has shifted to other Washington insiders and business executives who do not have to register their activity.
Exhibit A for many critics is Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader, who holds a top position in the lobbying firm Alson & Bird but avoids having to register. Federal rules do not require those who spend less than 20 percent of their time lobbying to register.
"To be blunt about it, any percentage that doesn't include Tom Daschle is not the right percentage," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. While restrictions may have been well-intentioned, they have been largely symbolic, says Sloan, and "it tells people you're fixing a problem without actually fixing it."
Particularly objectionable is the role of former members of Congress who often leave their elected positions prematurely in order to reap financial gain from lobbying their former colleagues.
Former Rep. Billy Tauzin of Louisiana -- originally elected as a Democrat but later switching to the Republican Party -- left his post as chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce committee -- to become a lobbyist for the drug industry. Last year, he reportedly earned $4.48 million as the head of the PHRMA drug industry lobby, a huge increase from his congressional salary. Tauzin took a leading role in pushing for and shaping President Obama's health plan. PHRMA spent more than any other single-industry lobby in 2009, winning subsidies, protection, and mandates in the Senate bill.
Former Democratic Senator from Louisiana John Breaux and former Republican Senator from Mississippi Trent Lott have jumped into the financial re-regulation battle. The Breaux-Lott Leadership Group is representing Citigroup. Citi, as the second largest full-service investment bank, is one of the prime stakeholders in the debate over the proposed "Volcker Rule," restricting proprietary trading by depository institutions. Breaux-Lott's other financial clients include Prudential and Edward Jones.
The lobbying firm run by the Republican former chairman of the Senate Budget Committee now represents payday lenders and check-cashing businesses in the debate over financial regulation. According to recent lobbying registration former senator Don Nickles' former chief of staff on the Budget Committee, Hazen Marshall, is the lead lobbyist on the Nickles Group's account with the Financial Services Centers of America, the trade group for the payday-loan and check-cashing industries.
When it comes to auto safety, the role of lobbyists can hardly be discounted. Dozens of former federal officials are playing leading roles in helping carmakers handle federal investigations of auto defects, including those for Toyota's run-away-acceleration problems. A Washington Post analysis shows that as many as 33 former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration employees and Transportation Department appointees left those jobs in recent years and now work for automakers as lawyers, consultants, and lobbyists. Several former Cabinet members have gone to work for automakers. Toyota hired Rodney E. Slater, the transportation secretary under President Clinton, to head its North American Quality Advisory Panel.
At the present time, no law bans these officials from moving straight from government into industry. But critics of the revolving-door practice say that it has contributed to flaws in federal oversight and enforcement, and several members of Congress say legislation is needed to prevent former employees from conducting business with the agency for up to two years after leaving government jobs.
Federal disclosure records show that Toyota with 31 lobbyists in Washington last year has spent nearly $25 million on federal regulatory and legislative lobbying matters in the last five years, far more than any other foreign carmaker. "Toyota has lobbied to a degree that no other foreign automaker has," said David Levinthal of the Center for Responsive Politics.
They've built up years worth of connections with federal lawmakers, and that counts for something, when you know the people who are waiting for you on the other side of that door in a contentious situation. Now, does that mean they're going to get off easily? That remains to be seen.
The White House web site recently stated that President Obama was "cracking down on special interests and, in particular, lobbying abuses." In fact, things seem very much the same. In March, a top aide to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner left his position and joined a lobbying firm with a client list that includes the nation's largest banks. Damon Munchus is at least the third top Obama official who has left the administration to become a lobbyist.
Or consider how lobbyists are used by the media. On December 4, former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge appeared on "Hardball with Chris Matthews," and counseled the administration to "create nuclear power plants." Viewers weren't told that since 2005, Ridge has received $530,659 in compensation for serving on the board of Exelon, the nation's largest nuclear power company. Moments earlier, "NBC Military Analyst" Barry McCaffrey told viewers that the war in Afghanistan would require an additional "three-to-ten year effort, and a lot of money." Unmentioned was the fact that DynCorp paid McCaffrey $182,309 in 2009 alone. The government had just granted DynCorp a five-year deal worth an estimated $5.9 billion to aid American forces in Afghanistan. In 2008, David Barstow wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning series for The New York Times about the Pentagon's use of former military officers -- many lobbying or consulting for military contractors -- to get their talking points on television. In 2009 bloggers uncovered how ex-News Week writer Richard Wolffe had guest-hosted "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" while working at a large PR firm specializing in "strategies for managing corporate reputation."
A recent study found that since 2007 at least 75 registered lobbyists, public relations representatives, and corporate officials -- people paid by companies and trade groups to manage their image and promote their interests -- have appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, CNB, and Fox Business Networks with no disclosure of the corporate interests that have paid them.
Lobbying, it seems, is alive and well in Washington -- despite repeated pledges to bring such practices under control. This distorts much of our public life, reinforcing the idea that what we have, in reality, is the best government money can buy. Both Republicans and Democrats are co-conspirators in these efforts and it will take a bipartisan effort to reverse course. Unfortunately, too many have a vested interest in keeping things the way they are. *
"The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man." --James Madison
