{"id":20906,"date":"2024-10-07T15:23:21","date_gmt":"2024-10-07T19:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=20906"},"modified":"2024-10-07T16:24:38","modified_gmt":"2024-10-07T20:24:38","slug":"the-mirage-of-honest-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/07\/the-mirage-of-honest-government\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mirage of Honest Government"},"content":{"rendered":"
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@copyright James Bovard 2007<\/p><\/div>\n

The Mirage of Honest Government<\/a><\/h1>\n

by James Bovard, October 7, 2024\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For more than 70 years, America has been on the verge of honest government.<\/strong> In election after election, politicians have promised to finally take this nation to the moral high ground once and for all.<\/p>\n

In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower captured the presidency based in part on his promise to end \u201cthe mess in Washington\u201d\u2014festering corruption from 20 years of Democratic presidents. Housewives were swayed to support the Republican ticket with red, white, and blue scrub pails with the slogan, \u201cLet\u2019s clean up with Eisenhower and Nixon.\u201d Those pails did not prevent waves of scandals and top Eisenhower appointees resigning in disgrace.<\/p>\n

In 1960, Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy captured the presidency after his party\u2019s platform promised to \u201cclean out corruption and conflicts of interest\u201d and \u201cestablish and enforce a Code of Ethics to maintain the full dignity and integrity of the Federal service.\u201d Kennedy\u2019s lofty rhetoric mesmerized the media and assured that his scandals would be suppressed until long after his death.<\/p>\n

In 1968, Republican candidate Richard Nixon promised to \u201cmake government more responsive\u201d and \u201cre-kindle trust.\u201d Nixon also promised to lead \u201can administration of open doors, open eyes, and open minds.\u201d His efforts to uplift the federal government were interrupted by the Watergate scandal.<\/p>\n

In 1976, campaigning in the shadow of Watergate, Jimmy Carter promised voters \u201ca government as good as the people.\u201d His fulfillment of that pledge was exemplified by the regal treatment received by his beer-swilling, bribe-taking brother Billy.<\/p>\n

In 1980, Ronald Reagan campaigned promising to banish waste, fraud, and abuse from the federal government. Reagan\u2019s 1983 pledge to \u201cdrain the swamp\u201d went nowhere, in part because of a vast scandal by his appointees at the Environmental Protection Agency. By the time his reign ended, busloads of his appointees had been indicted, convicted, or forced to resign after accusations of impropriety or high crimes.<\/p>\n

In the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton promised to lead \u201cthe most ethical administration in history.\u201d Instead, the Clinton administration uncorked one scandal after another, and Washington streets were soon crowded by independent counsels documenting crime waves by officialdom. Clinton\u2019s pretensions to purity also took a wallop from his impeachment for lying and obstruction of justice.<\/p>\n

In 1994, the Republicans captured control of Congress thanks to the corruption of Democratic incumbents. Rep. Zach Wamp of Tennessee announced in 1995 that he and his 72 Republican freshmen colleagues were \u201cthe purest, most worthy group of leaders elected to this body in my lifetime.\u201d Three years later, House Speaker Newt Gingrich was forced to resign after being caught in a sex scandal. Gingrich\u2019s successor as House Speaker, Dennis Hastert, was sent to prison for shenanigans tied to hush money payoffs to ex-students he sexually abused during his time as a high school wrestling coach. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay resigned after being indicted for money laundering and conspiracy; he was convicted in 2010 but an appeals court later overturned the verdict. Other Republican congressional committee chairmen were nailed for brazenly taking bribes.<\/p>\n

In 2000, George W. Bush campaigned for the presidency by promising America \u201ca fresh start after a season of cynicism.\u201d Once ensconced in the Oval Office, Bush periodically prattled about ethics while lying the nation into war, launching a worldwide torture network, and illegally destroying Americans\u2019 privacy. Like his father, Bush used presidential pardons to minimize the risk of his tools testifying against him.<\/p>\n

In 2008, Barack Obama capitalized on Americans\u2019 revulsion against the Bush administration\u2019s abuses by promising \u201chope and change.\u201d But even before Obama took the oath of office, one of his top political mentors\u2014Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich\u2014was arrested for seeking to auction off Obama\u2019s now-vacant Senate seat. Blagojevich was convicted for wire fraud, attempted extortion, and conspiracy to solicit bribes. The Obama administration launched a crazed gun-running operation that left hundreds of Mexicans dead, exploited the Internal Revenue Service to illegally hound Obama\u2019s critics, and vastly increased illicit surveillance of American citizens.<\/p>\n

In 2016, Donald Trump won the presidency after promising to \u201cmake our government honest again\u201d (again???) and to \u201cdrain the swamp\u201d to end DC corruption. Trump was too busy dealing with Special Counsel investigations and impeachment challenges to purify the nation\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n

In 2020, Joe Biden promised to end corruption by creating a Commission on Federal Ethics to \u201coversee and enforce federal anti-corruption and ethics laws.\u201d Alas, that was merely a non-binding aspiration. Or maybe Biden was distracted by the endless revelations of his son and other kinfolk secretly pocketing millions of dollars from a long array of shady foreign sources.<\/p>\n

Despite scandals stretching generations, Americans are still encouraged to believe that the next election will result in honest government. Are citizens supposed to believe that elections automatically redeem democracy, like a buzzard that magically transforms into a unicorn every four years?<\/strong> Are we supposed to presume there is an automatic moral rebirth of representative government three days after vote-counting ends, like a resurrection after crucifixion? Are we supposed to believe that next time that presidents and members of Congress will finally honor their oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution? But, as former US senator Bob Kerrey explained in 2013, \u201cThe problem is, the second your hand<\/a> comes off the Bible, you become an asshole.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The absurdity of expecting a presidential election to produce honest government is obvious from public revulsion during recent campaigns. Shortly before the 2016 election, a Gallup poll found that only 33% of voters believed Hillary Clinton was honest and trustworthy, and only 35% trusted Donald Trump. The Clinton-Trump tag team made \u201cpost-truth\u201d the Oxford English Dictionary\u2019s 2016 word of the year.<\/p>\n

Since 1952, every rebirth of political decency proved a mirage. But good Americans are exhorted to believe that this election will be different.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Political purity is almost always an illusion\u2014a stage trick courtesy of the media or shameless PR wizards<\/strong>. Most Americans pay more attention to political personalities than to the vast coercive machinery of government. But it is far easier to detect whether a law or policy permits arbitrary power and constitutional travesties than to perceive the full venality of rascals hustling for votes.<\/p>\n

Americans cannot expect to have good presidents if presidents are permitted to make themselves czars<\/strong>. Instead of asking, \u201cWhom should we trust with all this power?\u2019 Americans should ask, \u201cHow much power can any politician be personally trusted with?\u201d The issue is not which political party should hold the reins, but whether the American people should be leashed by Washington.<\/p>\n

Political saviors almost always cost more than they deliver. Trying to end misgovernment merely by changing the party in charge is like an alcoholic solving his problems by switching from whiskey to rum. Trusting politicians is a luxury that Americans can no longer afford.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Mirage of Honest Government by James Bovard, October 7, 2024 For more than 70 years, America has been on the verge of honest government. In election after election, politicians have promised to finally take this nation to the moral high ground once and for all. In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower captured the presidency based in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4352,2124,4351,10,4350,4041,51,83,4344,4349,4345,4347,2958,3558,27,245,38,88,2696,4346,12,708,4348],"class_list":["post-20906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-asshole","tag-biden","tag-bob-kerrey","tag-bush","tag-buzzard","tag-carter","tag-clinton","tag-corruption","tag-eisenhower","tag-ethics","tag-gingrich","tag-hastert","tag-honesty","tag-kennedy","tag-lying","tag-nixon","tag-obama","tag-reagan","tag-swamp","tag-tom-delay","tag-torture","tag-trump","tag-zach-wamp"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Mirage of Honest Government - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"America has been on the verge of honest government for more than 70 years. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20906"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20908,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20906\/revisions\/20908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}