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AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
RELEASE ON OR AFTER WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 7, 2005
KATRINA, KATRINA
BY STANLEY CROUCH

In a piece of fiction I wrote, I had a character who made the distinction between high corruption and low corruption. "High corruption" meant that politicians and contractors overcharged as much as they could but got the job done -- built the bridge, laid down the highway, built a sewer system or whatever else was needed. "Low corruption" was when so much money was made off with that a project could not be finished, like the Triborough Bridge that stopped in midair because New York Mayor Jimmy Walker and his crew of crooks had stolen so much money they couldn't finish the bridge. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to supply the finances in order for the bridge to be finished. Hmmm.

What Katrina has shown us is that the Republican philosophy of hating the federal government has finally proven, in the very clearest terms, what the worst version of getting government off the back of the people can mean. The naked back of the people can be broken because the government was not up to the job of protecting its citizens. That is what has to be taken seriously because, though his leadership was tragically inept, I do not think the problem is George W. Bush. I think that the government could be in exactly the same very bad shape if another Republican had been in the White House.

This is important to think about seriously because we need more than a throwing of the rascals out come election time. Sure, there will be plenty of proof of who was wrong and when and why. There will be plenty of bitter gloating and self-righteous sneering at this administration, but this administration is fully the product of an agenda that is running on the fumes of an empty philosophical tank.

Yes, the Bush administration is now an obviously impotent symptom, but it is not the disease. The disease is a vision of American society that is clearly at odds with reality. So what we need to realize, as the brilliant writer Barbara Probst Solomon was recently pointing out to me, "What Roosevelt did was reinvent the federal government so that its primary job was to protect the populace. I don't think that the Republicans or the Democrats fully understand that."

Of course, you will always have patronage of one sort or another, but patronage needs to be used in the pursuit of an ideal. In other words, make sure that the person being given the job can do the job damn well first. The person cannot get a high position just because he drinks with the right person or was a buddy in college or brought in some votes or some money. Then we have low corruption, which is the ultimate governmental sin, because money is wasted AND the job is not done. This sin, as we see, leaves thousands of dead floating in fetid water if the job is emergency assistance and the dupe in charge may be well-connected but doesn't know what he is doing.

It is perhaps impossible to change human nature, but it is possible to keep vigilant and come into the game playing by the rules that mean the most to a successful team. John McCain seems to be one of the few prominent elephants who understands this.

The Republicans have sold out to everything possible -- big money, the Christian right, Southern rednecks and the idea that cronyism works in place of good, federal government. They have confused winning elections with the rightness of their core principles, which do not have anything to do with each other, actually. That is so true that when the country saw what an inept federal government looks like, even the mass-media mouthpieces for Republicanism at its most rabid reacted. They turned purple, popped some collar buttons and began spitting bile at the elephants, because one can only excuse so many dead bodies floating in the water. But what they were actually seeing was a dead political philosophy floating downriver, with its passing marked clearly by the corpses of the people of New Orleans and the suffering of those who survived.

(Stanley Crouch can be reached by e-mail at scrouch@edit.nydailynews.com.)

© 2005 Stanley Crouch
Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Inc.