LBJ left a legacy of revolutionary policy-making. Reagan re-established in citizens a sense of American exceptionalism, for better or worse. Some presidents (FDR, Lincoln) managed to do both, even while saving the nation.
No one in their right minds ever expected George W. Bush to match those performances (his self-acknowledged incuriosity and lack of imagination cut off expectations early). But was anyone really so prepared for such unequivocal failure? It's hard to think of a single policy initiative in the past five-plus years that hasn't failed. Leave aside the major misadventure in Iraq for now. The prescription drug plan is a disaster. No Child Left Behind has propelled U.S. children to the world lead in test preparation but put them at the back of the pack in science and history (global and U.S.) and curtailed their exposure to art, music, and other creative endeavor. Immigration and Social Security reforms have foundered. By any reasonable standard of governance, this administration basically rates a zero.
But there's the rub. The very concept of "governance" is defined much differently by the current administration and its institutional and corporate backers than by ordinary citizens–or even by Republicans like Nixon. By their definition, government exists mainly to be dismantled–but not before it succeeds in dismantling perceived barriers to business (environmental regulations, consumer protections), to executive authority (congressional oversight as laid out in the Constitution), to the amassing of personal wealth at the uppermost levels (fair and progressive taxing), to the projection of military and economic imperialism (U.N. resolutions, international treaties).
No wonder the administration and its backers see not failure, but success–or at least a hopeful work in progress. They are well along the road to achieving an intellectual ideal, where the very notion of the body politic is rendered meaningless, conveniently dispensed with as corporate coffers fill up and shortsighted "moral" gains achieved (criminalization of women's rights, of homosexuality, of end-of-life decisions; erosion of personal privacy; denial of the right to worship outside the straitened precepts of a state-sanctioned religion–or to not worship, period; politicization of the courts). What they seek is not governance but its opposite: The imposition of an ideology that negates the need for governance at all.
It's the nature of conservatism to be blindly self-congratulatory, since conservatism fetishizes the idea of a "select" ruling elite–those self-chosen few who know what's best for all. We have won, they say, because we are here: Quod erat demonstratum (their facility with ancient locutions more proof, in their minds, of their proper ascendency). And it's what makes meaningful debate so frustrating and, ultimately, futile.
But what it really demonstrates is a concession on their part: They find that governance is simply too difficult. That makes it vital for the other side to restate and hold fast to its belief that governance is necessary–no matter its difficulty. Of course it's a lot easier to stand aside and let theoretical forces (market, economic) "improve" lives. Of course it's easier to ignore or trivialize the actual forces (nature, deprivation, oppression) that inflict real harm and endanger lives. But that's a dereliction of duty, no matter the intellectual embossing it's given, and a selling short of the visionary principles put forth by the founders the current administration so dearly loves to quote–when it isn't busy reformulating slogans to exploit the image of towers falling. Dereliction often finds its fullest expression in fear, which this administration has excelled in promulgating far more than any lasting idea.
Epictetus 