Sept. 11 — Mandate for big government?
June 26, 2002

Several polls taken after last fall’s terrorist attacks in New York and Washington seemed to indicate that the public was willing, in the interests of safety and security, to put more trust in government than at any time in recent memory.

Political science professionals, liberals and Democrats were briefly ecstatic, as it appeared that a new day was dawning. Leading Democratic strategists argued, in fact, that the road to electoral success lay in embracing government solutions to just about everything rather than downplaying the party’s historic love affair with the state. Bill Clinton, they argued, was flat wrong when he suggested that the “era of big government is over.” It was just beginning.

They were, of course, misreading the polls. The public does support government action where it’s perceived that government is filling the major role for which it was originally formed, which was to protect its citizens from aggression and, yes, terrorism. It was in believing that this support for strong government action against our enemies could somehow be leveraged into similar support for bigger and more active government at home that they messed up.

The Founders were deathly afraid of governmental power run amok and spent most of their time at the Constitutional Convention seeking ways to keep it in check. This fear of, and hostility to, such power has been an important strain within the American psyche for more than two centuries and is still with us.

But the American people are about as nonideological a bunch of folks as will be found anywhere. That’s why they have, on occasion, seemed to support an expanded governmental role despite their heritage and natural cynicism toward government. Thus, when Lyndon Johnson and his party promised to solve almost all societal ills through federal programs and funding, the public let them have their shot.

It was the realization that such approaches are not only costly and a threat to individual freedom but that they simply don’t work that turned voters against the Great Society. It continues to fuel opposition to big government solutions to our problems today.

Every time liberals try to rehabilitate the state, public employees manage to demonstrate in some incredibly dramatic or bone-headed way that they are part of the problem rather than the solution.

The foolish, ineffectual and downright dangerous way FBI and CIA employees go about their work has been, and is being, documented every day. In the face of all the talk about reforming the FBI, one wonders whose personnel file will look worse in two or three years: the courageous agent who put her misgivings on paper about the inability of her colleagues to cope with the terrorist threat or Billy Potts, the fellow who everyone acknowledges was responsible for the outrages at Ruby Ridge. I’ll take bets.

Then, last week, those of us privileged to live and work in Washington witnessed an act of government arrogance that sounds as if it comes from a Dave Barry humor column.

A couple of years ago, it was discovered that the Army Corps of Engineers was dumping waste and sediment from District water treatment into the Potomac River rather than truck it though the more privileged neighborhoods of Georgetown. In the process the corps, acting without a real permit, was destroying the spawning grounds of a rare sturgeon once thought extinct, but discovered in small numbers right here in good old Washington.

Had that sturgeon been found on private property in the West, federal agents would have been on the scene in no time and the government would have spared no cost to save it and its habitat. In Washington, D.C., however, things have turned out rather differently.

The government has thumbed its nose at the Endangered Species Act and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has actually argued in favor of the corps action on the ground that dumping the stuff is good for the fish because it forces them to flee the area in a search for a safer and more remote sanctuary where they will be safe from their real enemies — fishermen.

When The Washington Times unearthed the memo explaining this, everyone denied writing it. The EPA blamed it on the corps and the Interior Department finally said it wanted the dumping stopped. No one stepped forward to claim the words or sentiments in the memo. Let’s face it though, the guilty party has to be a public employee. Who else would have the nerve?

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David Keene is chairman of the American Conservative Union and a Washington-based government affairs consultant