Paul Krugman | Ending the Fraudulence

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Mon, 31 Oct 2005 12:18:09 -0800

t r u t h o u t - Paul Krugman | Ending the Fraudulence

 

 

 

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/103105O.shtml

 

Ending the Fraudulence

By Paul Krugman

The New York Times

 

Monday 31 October 2005

 

Let me be frank: it has been a long political nightmare. For some

of us, daily life has remained safe and comfortable, so the nightmare

has merely been intellectual: we realized early on that this

administration was cynical, dishonest and incompetent, but spent a

long time unable to get others to see the obvious. For others - above

all, of course, those Americans risking their lives in a war whose

real rationale has never been explained - the nightmare has been all

too concrete.

 

So is the nightmare finally coming to an end? Yes, I think so. I

have no idea whether Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, will

bring more indictments in the Plame affair. In any case, I don't share

fantasies that Dick Cheney will be forced to resign; even Karl Rove

may keep his post. One way or another, the Bush administration will

stagger on for three more years. But its essential fraudulence stands

exposed, and it's hard to see how that exposure can be undone.

 

What do I mean by essential fraudulence? Basically, I mean the way

an administration with an almost unbroken record of policy failure has

nonetheless achieved political dominance through a carefully

cultivated set of myths.

 

The record of policy failure is truly remarkable. It sometimes

seems as if President Bush and Mr. Cheney are Midases in reverse:

everything they touch - from Iraq reconstruction to hurricane relief,

from prescription drug coverage to the pursuit of Osama - turns to

crud. Even the few apparent successes turn out to contain failures at

their core: for example, real G.D.P. may be up, but real wages are down.

 

The point is that this administration's political triumphs have

never been based on its real-world achievements, which are few and far

between. The administration has, instead, built its power on myths:

the myth of presidential leadership, the ugly myth that the

administration is patriotic while its critics are not. Take away those

myths, and the administration has nothing left.

 

Well, Katrina ended the leadership myth, which was already fading as

the war dragged on. There was a time when a photo of Mr. Bush looking

out the window of Air Force One on 9/11 became an iconic image of

leadership. Now, a similar image of Mr. Bush looking out at a flooded

New Orleans has become an iconic image of his lack of connection.

Pundits may try to resurrect Mr. Bush's reputation, but his cult of

personality is dead - and the inscription on the tombstone reads,

" Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. "

 

Meanwhile, the Plame inquiry, however it winds up, has ended the

myth of the administration's monopoly on patriotism, which was also

fading in the face of the war.

 

Apologists can shout all they like that no laws were broken, that

hardball politics is nothing new, or whatever. The fact remains that

officials close to both Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush leaked the identity of

an undercover operative for political reasons. Whether or not that act

was illegal, it was clearly unpatriotic.

 

And the Plame affair has also solidified the public's growing

doubts about the administration's morals. By a three-to-one margin,

according to a Washington Post poll, the public now believes that the

level of ethics and honesty in the government has declined rather than

risen under Mr. Bush.

 

So the Bush administration has lost the myths that sustained its

mojo, and with them much of its power to do harm. But the nightmare

won't be fully over until two things happen.

 

First, politicians will have to admit that they were misled.

Second, the news media will have to face up to their role in allowing

incompetents to pose as leaders and political apparatchiks to pose as

patriots.

 

It's a sad commentary on the timidity of most Democrats that even

now, with Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff,

telling us how policy was " hijacked " by the Cheney-Rumsfeld " cabal, "

it's hard to get leading figures to admit that they were misled into

supporting the Iraq war. Kudos to John Kerry for finally saying just

that last week.

 

And as for the media: these days, there is much harsh, justified

criticism of the failure of major news organizations, this one

included, to exert due diligence on rationales for the war. But the

failures that made the long nightmare possible began much earlier,

during the weeks after 9/11, when the media eagerly helped our

political leaders build up a completely false picture of who they were.

 

So the long nightmare won't really be over until journalists ask

themselves: what did we know, when did we know it, and why didn't we

tell the public?

 

 

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