Ronald Reagan liked to offer a little quip about government that indicated his attitude toward governing: He would say, "The nine scariest words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
Reagan delivered the line in an avuncular and humorous way that drew laughs but his position was clear: government is the problem and if we could only rein it in then your problems would go away.
Bobby Jindal in his response to Barack Obama's almost state-of-the-union address this past Tuesday essentially attempted to resurrect both Reagan's engaging, folksy style and his philosophical approach to governing. Both attempts, as many have observed, fell horribly short.
Leaving aside Jindal's struggles with delivery, tone, and style, it was, IMHO, the content of his speech that really fell flat. In the wake of the massive financial collapse in banking, on Wall Street, and in home mortgages, Jindal's calls for a Reaganite-solutions to the nation's pressing problems seemed irrelevant and out-of-touch.
But for me at least the most striking aspect of Jindal's speech, and the element which left commentators like Rachel Maddow speechless, were the moral lessons Jindal drew from Hurricane Katrina.
In his response to Obama's speech, Jindal offered an apocryphal anecdote about Sheriff Lee's attempt to rescue people in the wake of Hurricane Katrina stranded on their rooftops. Aside from the point that Jindal's story is probably not true, Jindal explained that:
During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I'd never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: 'Well, I'm the Sheriff and if you don't like it you can come and arrest me!' I asked him: 'Sheriff, what's got you so mad?' He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go - when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn't go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, 'Sheriff, that's ridiculous.' And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: 'Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!' Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.
The moral of the story for Jindal is clear. Like Reagan, Jindal concludes that:
There is a lesson in this experience: The strength of America is not found in our government. It is found in the compassionate hearts and the enterprising spirit of our citizens. We are grateful for the support we have received from across the nation for the ongoing recovery efforts. This spirit got Louisiana through the hurricanes and this spirit will get our nation through the storms we face today.
To solve our current problems, Washington must lead. But the way to lead is not to raise taxes and not to just put more money and power in hands of Washington politicians. The way to lead is by empowering you, the American people. Because we believe that Americans can do anything.
Such a conclusion is so astoundingly absurd that it is hard for sane people to get their minds around it (exhibit one here would be Rachel Maddow but further examples of sane people scratching their heads in bemusement would also include David Brooks). It's even entirely possible that every insane person would draw the opposite lesson from the federal response to Katrina than does Jindal.
[Ex] President Bush's "Heck'of a job Brownie" comment captured a sneering contempt for government and an indifference to the problems people in crisis. Far (about as far as one can go in fact) from Katrina serving as a shining example of how the free market combined with an entrepreneurial spirit and a laissez-fair approach to governing can solve our most pressing problems INSTEAD the mess that was Katrina demonstrated the exact opposite.
Katrina was a call for an active, big government, competently executed, efficiently organized, run by experts who both understand the complicated nature emergency management and believe in their responsibility to do good works for the country. In the end, this is what the moral of the Katrina story is all about.
There was a time when Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians used to at least pay lip service to the notion that the federal government must respond energetically in a time of crisis. A natural disaster, like say a hurricane, would offer the perfect example of the right time for government action. This is in part what made Jindal's homily about the failure of government so ill conceived. But there are plenty of conservatives today who see the federal government's inadequate and failed response to Katrina and its aftermath as an example of why we should not place our trust in government. But this line of reasoning, followed by Jindal on Tuesday night, fails to acknowledge what everyone else seems to know: namely that Katrina's failures stemmed from a Republican philosophy and approach to governing that undermined the effectiveness of the government. It was people in charge like Bush, Cheney, and Brownie who were not only incompetent but who also did not themselves really believe in the government they were running or services they were charged with dispensing.
Like the aftermath of Katrina, the economic calamity that we are facing today also calls for an active government that is professional, competent, and well executed. But it is also a call for a government run by people who believe in its efficacy; run by people who actually believe that the agencies and organizations they head can and must be up to addressing the staggering challenges that the nation faces now.
Jindal's calls for lower taxes, less regulation, and for government to get out of the way of the ingenuity of the American people are laughable in a moment like this.
"Americans can do anything."
was Jindal's refrain throughout his speech, implying that robust government action is unnecessary and implying that the other guys don't really believe in or trust Americans. The refrain embraces the same implied critique offered in McCain's campaign slogan of "country first," (as if Obama and the Democrats don't or wont put the country first).
The notion put forward by Jindal, that Americans can accomplish anything (as long as government doesn't get in the way or help out) fails to convince an electorate facing such dire economic conditions. The hundreds of thousands of laid-off workers, the families unable to meet their mortgages, the parents unable to find the money for their kid's college education, the retirees who lost their nest eggs in a collapsing market will not be comforted by an action plan that says in the face of a global economic meltdown, you are on your own...go be ingenious and creative, call on your entrepreneurial spirit and find a way to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
This country needs a big government response to our problems and everyone but a small coterie of Republicans seems to know it. Contrary to Reagan's line about government, people want someone to knock on their door and say, "I'm from the government and I am here to help." Only they don't want that person to be George Bush's college roommate Brownie. They want someone who knows what the hell they are doing...and someone who actually believes they can help.