Backslapping Brooks
NYT's conservative editorialist David Brooks seems to agree with little ol' me:
In fact, you know institutional change is needed because there's simply no working institution or party we can really look to as a model for how to get things in order. The GOP? The Dems? The UN? The EU? China? Pfffft to them all. We must create entirely new paradigms for governing in the way that the Founding Fathers thought far beyond their time's established notions of the state.
On Sept. 11, Rudy Giuliani took control. The government response was quick and decisive. The rich and poor suffered alike. Americans had been hit, but felt united and strong. Public confidence in institutions surged.It's actually a very good editorial. It falls apart a little near the end (and what editorial, in these days of two-hour turnarounds, doesn't?), but his prediction -- well, his call really -- for political change on not simply a party level, but an INSTITUTIONAL level, is vital.
Last week in New Orleans, by contrast, nobody took control. Authority was diffuse and action was ineffective. The rich escaped while the poor were abandoned. Leaders spun while looters rampaged. Partisans squabbled while the nation was ashamed.
The first rule of the social fabric - that in times of crisis you protect the vulnerable - was trampled. Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield.
In fact, you know institutional change is needed because there's simply no working institution or party we can really look to as a model for how to get things in order. The GOP? The Dems? The UN? The EU? China? Pfffft to them all. We must create entirely new paradigms for governing in the way that the Founding Fathers thought far beyond their time's established notions of the state.
3 Comments:
I don't understand. Doesn't the column basically illustrate that our current institutions can and do work (as they did on September 11) but that something has hobbled them in the intervening 4 years?
I think he starts at that point, but then rattles of that laundry list of institutional failure. That's what prompted me to extrapolate the argument (perhaps incorrectly, I admit) to a larger scope.
Also, the failure of Bush to prevent 9/11, or Clinton to take out a nascent Bin Laden, were themselves systemic failures. To me, the well-managed response to 9/11 increasingly looks to be an abberation.
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