The Decline of the Republic

Patronage Politics

The last decades of the old Roman Republic were replete with corruption, big money politics, intrigue, murder, and vaunted arrogant ambition.  Naturally, the Republic eventually broke down, to be replaced by the Empire.  (If you are a non-specialist, and want a ripping, riveting good read about the decrepit latter days of the Republic you can go no further than the historical novels by Robert Harris about the life and times of Cicero, Imperium and Lustrum.)

At times we get a sense that the Republic of the United States is echoing the decline and fall of the ancient Republic of  Rome. There are adumbrations of that failed Republic at almost every turn.
But it appears to have got much worse under Obama's watch.  Obama is a venal Chicago politician of the classic sort.  He is an artful exponent of "patronage politics" where former favours to the imperial presidency get a commercial payoff from the President and his cronies.

We posted the following last September as an example:

It looks like we may have underestimated the negative fortunes of President Obama.  Whilst Carter may have had many faults, corruption was not one of them.  To his shallow ineptitude, Obama has recently added the dirty smell of corruption, using tax payers money to reward companies which gave him financial support in his 2008 presidential campaign.  He appears to have acted like a true-to-type Chicago politician covertly working behind the scenes to ensure that his "debtors" get federal contracts and tax payer money. 

But this thing is like a cancer.  What happens very quickly to watching government functionaries and bureaucrats is the idea that, if the President can do it, it's OK for us to do it too.  Corruption, thus sanctified at the highest level of the government, spreads rapidly through the corridors of the rest of government. 

Another example is the payoff Obama arranged for large unions--a key sector of electoral support for the President and one to which Obama is ideologically committed.  His administration rapidly passed a rule which required that construction contractors to the Federal Government must have a unionised work force.  The upshot: costly, feather-bedded federal construction contracts, with attendant union officials living up the good life.

Michelle Malkin describes how it works:

Thanks to President Obama . . . the federal government is steering that money toward Big Labor patrons with a proven track record of cost overruns, construction delays and corruption.

As I’ve reported previously, the linchpin is E.O. 13502, a union-friendly executive order signed by Obama in his first weeks in office. It essentially forces contractors who bid on large-scale public construction projects worth $25 million or more to submit to union representation for its employees. The blunt instrument used to give unions a leg up is the “project labor agreement,” ["PLA"] which in theory sets reasonable pre-work terms and conditions. But in practice, it requires contractors to hand over exclusive bargaining control, to pay inflated, above-market wages and benefits, and to fork over dues money and pension funding to corrupt, cash-starved labor organizations.

The direct costs are enormous, according to one expert:

David G. Tuerck of the Department of Economics and Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University testified on Capitol Hill last year: “The adoption of a PLA amounts, in effect, to the conferral of monopoly power on a select group of construction unions over the supply of construction labor.” The mandate serves “one purpose: to discourage competition from nonunion contractors (and, in some instances, union contractors) to the end of shoring up declining union power, along with union-mandated wages and benefits, against competitive pressures.” The institute’s studies show that PLAs have added between 12 and 18 percent to school construction costs in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

But the costs resulting from spreading corruption are far, far more.  If the "boss" can do it, we can too:  the message spreads like a virus through the entire edifice of the federal government.   Bureaucrats watch Obama paying off his mates with favours and patronage.  Like all employees, they imitate the (ignoble) example of their chief.

A senior functionary of one government agency has been caught throwing profligate parties all over the country for his staff and hangers-on.  Spending tax dollars like it was going out of fashion, he could reasonably point to the example of the President for his muse.

The arrogance of these civil servants is, of course, jaw-dropping. Regional Commissioner Jeff Neely, the Paris Hilton of GSA party animals, wrote in an invitation to personal friends: “We’ll get you guys a room near us, and we’ll pick up the room tab. … I know I’m bad, but as Deb and I often say, why not enjoy it while we have it and while we can. Ain’t gonna last forever.”

"Enjoy it while we can."   This is but one example of defalcation and corruption resonating the inner corruption of the Republic. We have no doubt that the rapid spread of the cancer is due to the corrupt patronage politics of  Obama and his cronies.  He has set the tone: others are whistling the tune.

[Thankfully we don't see much of this sort of institutionalised corruption in New Zealand.  The reason is not due to our rectitude, but rather to the accident of being a small country.  Corruption usually gets detected early, before the noisome odour of death itself.  Early detection proves to be salt in a seeping sore.]