Making a change of course impossible

In the Jan 18 Guardian there's a 'comment is free' piece by Mikhail Gorbachev. He addresses the state of the world since 1990, looking at Europe and - of course - the Mid-East. He offers this assessment of the current state of affairs (emphasis mine):

Another consequence of unilateralist policies and attempts to claim exclusive leadership is that most international institutions have not been able to address effectively the new century's global challenges - the environmental crisis and the problem of poverty. The unprecedented scale of international terrorism and the proliferation of ethnic and religious conflicts are disturbing signs of troubles to come.

Americans have also felt the effects of the administration's flawed foreign policies. In November the voters made their verdict known, delivering a defeat for the Republicans in the midterm elections. Yet that is a challenge to the entire US political establishment, for Democrats as well as Republicans. There is a need for a correction in the superpower's policies. Is the administration of George Bush capable of such a correction?

Both in the United States and elsewhere, the prevailing view is often negative. The administration gives ample reason for this view, because it seems to prefer the inertia of the old course. It would appear that all the Bush administration wants is to persuade the world that it is still firmly in the saddle. The president's recent statements and the plans being discussed in his administration are cut from the old cloth.

The Republican leadership clearly wants to leave to the next president a legacy that would tie him to its policies and make a change of course impossible. If so it is not just a tactical blunder but a recipe for an even greater disaster.

He ends hopefully:

And yet I think the possibility of change is still there. ... I have always said that in this day and age we cannot afford to be pessimists. There are many reasons to be concerned and even alarmed. But history is not preordained. A new division of the world, a new confrontation, is not inevitable. A democratic world order is not mere rhetoric. It can be built.

The possibility may be there, though even in the last two weeks things tend to indicate that it won't be taken up. Just for instance, W's decision, reported yesterday, to install political officers (yes, I mean to make you think of the Soviets here) in governmental agencies. As Robert Pear writes in the NYT (my italics):

Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president's priorities. This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats.

Yes, that sounds like the president is willing to change his ways - but not his goals. This is but the latest in a string of actions which indicate that, although the administration talks about bipartisanship, what they mean is either, best case, getting the Democrats to support the same old policies, or, worst case, continuing to "decide" regardless of what Congress thinks.

In a bizarre sidebar to this whole political officer thing, it doesn't really seem necessary. After all, most of the agencies are already run by his appointees, and their track record has been stunning, from canceling regulatory work in progress when they came to power through stopping plans to combat tuberculosis to lightening the regulatory load on everything from strip-mining to health care. This can only be seen as an in-your-face declaration of power.

Recent events also include Gonzales declaring that "there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution"; the White House firing US Attorneys right and left - well, left and center anyway (and using part of the Patriot Act to circumvent Senate confirmation for their replacements); the administration escalating the Iraq campaign and threatening to spill it over to Iran; the Pentagon instituting a back-door draft and lowering qualifications for enlisting; and repeated pronouncements by Bush, Cheney, Snow, et al., to the effect that the President has all the power and the Congress has none that matters.

No, things don't look all that hopeful, really. In fact, things look as though this administration does indeed want to dig us in so deeply that the next one (presumably Democratic but possibly some sort of "renegade" Republican) will have no choice but to continue. And this, why? Can it be because they're sure they're right about it, and the rest of the world is, so to speak, wearing bifocals? That's an almost admirable quality, and it's certainly the way the White House tries to cast it. Remember when Cheney compared the November elections to polls, and suggested the president had an obligation to ignore them?

WALLACE: "By taking the policy you have, haven't you, Mr. Vice President, ignored the expressed will of the American people in the November election?

CHENEY: Well, Chris, this President, and I don't think any President worth his salt can afford to make decisions of this magnitude according to the polls. The polls change.

WALLACE This was an election, sir.

CHENEY: Polls change day by day, week by week.

They want very much to cast themselves as the righteous few, standing steadfast in the face of misguided opposition. But unfortunately for them, they also spend a great deal of time lying and obfuscating, "deciding" instead of convincing, and becoming petulant when called on it.

Also unfortunately for them, they have an astounding track record of appointing people to important tasks based on political loyalty rather than competence. I recently finished Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Rajiv Chandrasekaran's account of the Coalition Provisional Authority's governing of Iraq in the early days "after the war was over". Not only is it an unflinching look at a series of steadily increasingly bad decisions, many of which created the situation we are in today (e.g., de-Baathification, the decision to privatize instead of repair industry, the 'one district' voting which guaranteed sectarian resentment and dissent), but without exception the key players could be described with this formula: X had no experience in Y but was [a GOP loyalist/heavy contributor], where X is a person or company and Y is what they were in charge of. This is typical of the Bush White House, where loyalty has always trumped competency - even while they pretend otherwise. Think of Brownie (heckuva job), think of Miers (most qualified), think of George Deutsch, Paul Bonicelli, Ellen Sauerbrey, Julie Myers...

In another facet of the problem, ideology trumps science. We don't have to get into the contentious areas of abortion or stem cells; we can look at climate change or ID in science classes. Agencies such as NASA and the Park Service have been directed to soft-pedal science so as not to offend the GOP base who don't believe in the Big Bang or deep time. Chris Mooney's excellent and well-researched The Republican War on Science lays it out in great detail. And it's all part and parcel of pushing an ideology, a world view, and a party.

What this administration is trying to do looks not so much like upholding some notion of the right thing to do as it does keeping one political party in power come what may and no matter what. Making a change of course in the Mid-East impossible is only a small part of the administration's decision to make a change of course anywhere at all impossible.

Once, when some of us were questioning part of our agency's "transformation" policies, a senior told us that "the train was out of the station. You can get on board or you can get out of the way." That's the way Bush and Cheney want it: train under way. No stops. Bound for glory.

Our question for him was, what if we, not being on board, see that the bridge is out? Are we to let the train crash?

That's the question in front of liberals now. Clearly, the ship of state has sailed. But ships (to change the metaphor) can change course. Bush may want to make that impossible, but it never is. We just have to want to do it. Congress has to reassert its right to set the course. It is, as Humpty Dumpty remarked on a different topic altogether, only a question of who is to be master.

Today is FDR's birthday. We would do well to remember his words:

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.