Talking Point

Conservatives promise to crack down on “earmarks”—federal spending allocated in legislation for a specific project or location. No more "bridges to nowhere." That’s great, but it doesn’t add up to much—$18 billion of a $3 trillion federal budget. Want to root out waste in government? Over the past eight years, you’d do better to look at the Iraq war ($656 billion), subsidies for big corporations ($100 billion a year), waste and fraud in the Pentagon’s budget, and tax breaks for the rich (which amounted to a $1 trillion transfer to the richest 5 percent of Americans).

Remember the salmonella outbreak that sickened more than 1,200 people this summer? An understaffed and underfunded Food and Drug Administration spent months gouging American farmers with a cry of “tainted tomatoes” before finally locating the likely source in hot peppers imported from Mexico. The FDA didn’t have the records it needed to locate the source of the contamination. The Bush Administration has allowed food-industry lobbyists and representatives to gut laws that would have improved food safety. We need an administration and Congress dedicated to insuring our inspection agencies can do the job, rather than starving them of the resources and authority they need.

Learn more in this Making Sense issue alert.

In the hours after the horrific crime of September 11, 2001, Americans rallied as one and the world stood at our side.

Now, all that has changed. Americans are divided. Allies are alienated. The Muslim world’s fury has increased. Osama bin Laden is still at large. Terrorist acts are up across the world. Afghanistan is a mess. And U.S. troops are mired in an occupation amid a growing civil war in Iraq. We are more isolated, less respected and less safe.

In response, the Bush administration chose not to change course, but to rouse fears—worried more about saving the president's face than serving the nation's security.

It is time to stop fanning fears to cover up failure. It is time to change course.

The fiasco in Iraq is a direct consequence of catastrophic conservatism. There are four key factors that led to the conservative failure in Iraq.

• Conservatives undercut government. They rushed our troops to war, but skimped on the government planning, diplomacy and expertise needed to get the job done effectively.

• Conservatives displaced experts with zealots. Instead of sending experts on reconstruction, conservatives recruited ideologues who spurned allies, shut down "hearts and minds," and lost control of the country.

• Conservatives forced risky privatization. They outsourced core government functions to private contractors whose profit motives compromised troop security, eroded Iraqi trust, siphoned away taxpayer money, and failed to deliver results.

• Conservatives stifled accountability. They supported ideology over effectiveness, and repeatedly blocked efforts to investigate the pervasive waste, fraud, incompetence and abuse sabotaging the U.S. mission in Iraq.

Accountability, expertise, planning and good management are not partisan issues. But conservatives, blinded by their own ideological certitude, scorned even common sense.

Under Republican control, economic growth has been lopsided at best. CEO salaries are soaring and profits are up, but most Americans aren't seeing the benefits.

When President Bush talks about how strong the economy is, most Americans think he's out to lunch.

The conservative call their obsession with dominating media narratives a neutral quest for "balance"—which is actually a reliance on intimidating feckless media organizations into treating even settled scientific facts as open "debates."

Conservatives respond to the public's rejection of conservative governance by retroactively declaring the conservatives in power as "false" conservatives—then ask for another chance with the next generation of "true" conservatives." Elect more conservatives, and the same process will repeat itself—again and again and again.

George Bush has been a failure as a president. But the problem isn't rooted in Bush's personality—it's rooted in his conservative ideology. People who disdain government can't be trusted to govern.

The signature conservative policy proscription—tax cuts—offers short-term blandishments to (some) voters, at the expense of the basic infrastructural needs that maintain America as an economic powerhouse. The collapsing bridges, failing power grids, and sinkholes we're suffering now will be visited tenfold on our children and grandchildren.