A curious linguistic consequence of America’s constitutional
structure is that the phrase “the government” means something quite
different from what it does in a parliamentary democracy. In, say,
Britain “the government” is transitory, created anew after each
election by the victorious party or a coalition of parties. In the
U.S., where the executive and legislative branches are separate,
“the government” refers to permanent bureaucracies and other
institutions, especially the departments and agencies of the
executive branch. The president and his political leadership are
“the administration.”
This semantic artifact has consequences for the way in which
journalists describe the workings of the administrative state. By
ascribing a decision or action to “the administration,” or to the
president or one of his appointees, a reporter or commentator can
fix political accountability. By attributing it to “the government”
or to an agency, he can avoid laying political blame or giving
credit.
Here’s an example. After an April explosion on a BP oil rig
caused a massive spill, the New York Times investigated
what it described, in a front-page story on May 14, as a regulatory
failure:
The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP
and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico
without first getting required permits from another agency that
assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong
warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely
to have on the gulf.
The MMS is an office within the Interior Department — that is,
part of the executive branch. The Times reported that the
service had come into conflict with another executive-branch
agency:
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, is
partly responsible for protecting endangered species and marine
mammals. It has said on repeated occasions that drilling in the
gulf affects these animals, but the minerals agency since January
2009 has approved at least three huge lease sales, 103 seismic
blasting projects and 346 drilling plans. Agency records also show
that permission for those projects and plans was granted without
getting the permits required under federal law.
January 2009, of course, marked the beginning of the Obama
administration — yet the name Obama never appeared in the story.
The Times quoted Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for the
Interior Department, who blamed George W. Bush: “Under the previous
administration, there was a pattern of suppressing science in
decisions, and we are working very hard to change the culture and
empower scientists in the Department of the Interior.”
This is a marked contrast with the way the Times
covered the MMS during the previous administration. Here is the
first paragraph of a March 1, 2006, story:
The Bush administration is scaling back on audits of energy
companies that pay billions of dollars for leases to produce oil
and gas on federal property, state officials said.
It may be true that the regulatory failures of the Minerals
Management Service are the result of policies begun under “the
previous administration.” But it is at the very least self-serving
for the current administration’s spokesman to say so. And if the
Bush administration’s policies were defective, surely it is to the
Obama administration’s discredit that it took a disaster 15 months
into Barack Obama’s presidency to prompt a change.
Another case in point is a Times editorial published
the same day, titled “The Wavering War on AIDS.” The paper faulted
the Obama administration for reducing the priority of anti-HIV
efforts in developing countries, especially in Africa:
The global war on AIDS has racked up enormous successes over the
past decade, most notably by providing drugs for millions of
infected people in developing countries who would be doomed without
this life-prolonging treatment….
Donor nations cite the economic crisis and tight budgets as
reasons to slow their contributions to the global fight against
AIDS. The Obama administration and many donor nations apparently
believe that more lives could be saved by fighting other cheaper
diseases, such as respiratory illnesses, diarrhea, malaria and
measles….
The United States has been a leader in providing financing for
the war on AIDS through bilateral programs and a multilateral
global fund. Now, instead of a sharp increase in donations, as once
planned, the administration proposes only a slight increase in
bilateral financing and a modest reduction in its multilateral
contribution.
Back in 2006, Bill Clinton spoke at a global summit on AIDS,
where, according to a CNN transcript, he said: “I commend President
Bush and the Congress for appropriating far more money than we
could ever get back in my second term.” The Times
editorial, however, never mentioned which administration was
responsible for the “enormous successes” of “the past decade.” If
you can’t say anything nice about someone, it must be George W.
Bush.
Another result of the American concept of “government” is that
“anti-government” is an ideological designation — albeit usually a
tendentious description of one’s opponents. Thus when Bush was
president, commentators on the left often attributed administrative
failures to his supposed “anti-government” philosophy. Now that an
administration is in power that favors increasing state power over
domestic affairs, the left’s criticism of the right is even more
heated. On NBC’s The Chris Matthews Show in April,
Time magazine’s Joe Klein told the host:
I did a little bit of research just before this show — it’s on
this little napkin here. I looked up the definition of sedition,
which is conduct or language inciting rebellion against the
authority of the state. And a lot of these statements, especially
the ones coming from people like Glenn Beck and to a certain extent
Sarah Palin, rub right up close to being seditious.
This is the sort of thing that liberals imagined conservatives
were saying about them when Bush was president. Accepting the
Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, John Kerry
declared:
We have an important message for those who question the
patriotism of Americans who offer a better direction for our
country….We are here to affirm that when Americans stand up and
speak their minds and say America can do better, that is not a
challenge to patriotism; it is the heart and soul of
patriotism.
Kerry’s party is now in power, and its leaders and supporters
actually are questioning their critics’ patriotism. In an August
2009 USA Today op-ed, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer called ObamaCare opponents
“un-American” (though Hoyer, eight months later, said he regretted
using the term). It is clear in hindsight, if it was not already in
2004, that complaints like Kerry’s were a matter more of
partisanship than of principle.
Somehow, even the most hysterical critics of Bush’s anti-terror
policies were almost never tagged as anti-government. And the truth
is that ideological libertarians — those who are consistently
anti-government — make up a tiny fringe. Generally speaking, the
right favors more limits on government power in areas of economics
and personal hygiene, and the left in matters of war and law
enforcement.
Fortunately, a consistently “pro-government” view is even rarer.
Hardly anyone wants a socialist police state — even if many of us,
right and left, are prone to worry that our opponents are moving
dangerously in that direction.
