Bill Moyers talks with Thomas Frank: Web Exclusive
Your book describes conservatism as "an expression of American business." Why exclude Democrats? Jimmy Carter triggered the deregulation frenzy. Bill Clinton pushed for NAFTA, signed the Telecommunications Act of l996 which gave the megamedia companies everything they wanted, auctioned off the Lincoln Bedroom, and swooned over Robert Rubin while showing Robert Reich the door. Democratic Congresses were shaking down corporations when George W. Bush was still tipsy in Texas. And who was running Congress during the S&L swindles of the late 80s? Why single out conservatives as the greedy party?
Democrats can be conservatives too, of course. In fact, certain Democrats' embrace of the free-market faith has been just as consequential as the Republicans' own move to the right. When the Democrats gave up on FDR and came around to the ideology of Reagan, the opposition ceased to oppose.
Clinton's contributions here were not insignificant, but they were more passive than active. His celebration of outsourcing set up the government-for-profit of the Bush era. His war on federal wages ensured that government would remain an unattractive career option, especially when compared to what's offered by the contractors who are our de facto government today. His failure even to try to reverse certain initiatives of the Reagan years allowed them to harden into permanent fixtures of the Washington scene.
There are other forms of corruption that are particular to liberalism, and that occur more naturally among Democrats. But by and large, the particular mode of corruption I describe in this book is a Republican invention. True believers in the free-market way invented it and feel most comfortable in it. Most Democrats can be embarrassed by their relationship to lobbyists because publicly they pretend to be the "party of the people"; most Republicans are happy to say they believe in market-based government.
You go on to write that the political triumph of conservatism has coincided with the rise of the Washington area to the richest rank of American metropolises. But can't it be said that the ascendancy of liberalism turned government into the cornucopia of spending which became a vast feeding ground for predators of all stripes?
During its heyday, liberalism was often depicted in these terms-as a giveaway to special interests, handouts to organized whiners, pork-barrel projects like the TVA. There may have been some merit to those charges-they aren't my subject in this book so I don't know-but whatever they were, they are as nothing compared to the kind of money presently being sent down the chute to defense contractors and homeland-security operators and so on.
As for Washington's wealth, it is uniquely a phenomenon of the era of privatization and outsourcing, not of liberalism.
You seem to dismiss, if not denigrate, the term "culture of corruption." If that doesn't fit the nexus between K Street, the White House, Congress and contract-dispensing federal agencies, what does?
My problem with the term "culture of corruption" is that the word "culture" is being used generically-to mystify and accuse, not to define. I wanted to get down to specifics: What, exactly, is corrupt about this culture? How did it get that way? What's responsible for it? The Democrats' talk about a "culture of corruption" implies that simply voting for Democrats will fix it; when we know more about this culture we discover that it goes far too deep for such a simple solution.
You argue that the sprawling spectacle surrounding Jack Abramoff was not just a matter of a "few bad apples." So was the whole orchard rotten?
It's not the apples, it's the trees themselves. It's systemic. It's structural. It's the logical consequence of the philosophy of government currently in place. It has nothing to do with individuals except for the handful of geniuses who invented it all.
I read the muckraker David Graham Phillips, whom you quote in your book. A hundred years ago he was writing about The Treason of the Senate when the biggest names in the world's "greatest deliberative body" were serving "interests as hostile to the American people as any invading army could be, and vastly more dangerous; interests that manipulate the prosperity produced by all, so that it heaps up riches for the few; interests whose growth and power can only mean the degradation of the people." Ralph Nader couldn't say it better. So what's new?
Morally, those sentiments are right on-target. What's new is (a) the unthinkable is back; (b) it's infinitely more complex; and (c) it's ideological. The Vanderbilts had their own U.S. Senator because that way they could grab more, but the people doing it today are motivated at least partially by ideology. They have a theoretical justification for what they've done: the market is always and in every case better than the bureaucracy.
What's more, many of the people I describe in the book understand themselves as crusaders against corruption. They think *they* are the muckrakers, demanding more and more deregulation or privatization. Government should get out of the marketplace altogether. By what right does it regulate insider trading or price fixing? Get off our backs!
When exactly when was it the government that you believed in as a kid in Kansas - apparently schools there taught the Preamble to the Constitution --- was reengineered, as you put it, "into a device for our exploitation?"
You require several pages - riveting pages, I will admit - to describe a "fantastic misgovernment." Distill the essence of it for a bumper sticker or t-shirt.
Bad government is the natural product of rule by those who believe government is bad.
Or: Cynicism spawns corruption, which spawns cynicism.
Or: Bring back the regulators before the system self-destructs.
Conservatives are fond of writing op-eds and going on television to say, "Don't look at us. It was the Republicans!" Are we really talking about a colossal case of mistaken identity here? Were the souls of conservatives actually hijacked and implanted in Republican bodies bought at a local taxidermist shop?
It is true that not all Republicans are conservatives-we used to have some pretty liberal ones out in the midwest. Also some pretty clean ones, especially in Kansas City, where the Dems were the party of Pendergast.
But the distinction is constantly abused by conservatives in order to get their movement off the hook when their one-time leaders' numbers plummet. One day Jack Abramoff is their maximum leader; when it's discovered that he's been ripping off his clients, suddenly he's not a conservative anymore. One day George W. Bush is thought to be in daily contact with the Almighty; when his numbers tank, he's an "impostor" who's tricked the movement. They once said the same things about Reagan, incidentally.
Incidentally, all of this is a basic logical fallacy called "No True Scotsman." Scotsman A says, "No Scotsman puts soy milk on his porridge." Scotsman B says, oh yeah? I know a Scotsman who puts soy milk on his porridge. Scotsman A then replies, "well, no *true* Scotsman puts soy milk on his porridge."
Many years ago I reported for a documentary on the Iran-Contra scandal - when President Reagan was waging a "secret" war against the Sandinistas and his hirelings in the basement of the White House traded arms for hostages to finance it. In your description of that scandal you write that two great conservative themes converged: "freedom fighters" and political entrepreneurship. Right?
Yes. The right of those years was infatuated with the idea of "freedom fighters"-the contras in Nicaragua, the mujaheddin in Afghanistan, Jonas Savimbi in Angola, and whatever that brutal gang was called in Mozambique. To conservatives these guys seemed to represent a kind of sixties in reverse, in which the glamorous guerrillas were now on our side. And, yes, they thought Jonas Savimbi was glamorous.
They supported these figures with entreneurial methods: asking millionaires to contribute to nonprofits which would then buy supplies for the contras (and supplies for the fundraiser); transforming their control of the state into cash (selling weapons to Iran). Their ultimate ambition was supposed to be called "The Enterprise": a foreign policy instrument completely free from the scrutiny of Congress.
And you think some of what we've seen under this regime evolved - pardon the secular language - from that convergence?
The entrepreneurship is officially woven into the fabric of the state now: "Government should be market-based," Bush says. Entrepreneurship is what gave you both the catastrophic depopulating of FEMA and the lucrative but ineffectual recovery effort after Katrina. Or look at Iraq, where much of our foreign-policy apparatus is indeed private and is almost completely beyond scrutiny. Try phoning Blackwater and asking them why they do the things they do.
Two years ago my documentary "Capitol Crimes," which we're repeating and updating this Friday night, reported on how conservatives in Washington ganged up to promote sweat shops on American territory. You devote a chapter to this story and call it Bantustan That Roared." Give our readers a peek into what you mean.
"Bantustans," or "homelands," were a tool of the apartheid government in South Africa. They were supposedly separate countries in which the black population could be theoretically housed, leaving South Africa proper for the whites. Generally speaking, the bantustans had two industries: casino gambling and low-wage manufacturing. One of them was ferociously libertarian, and much beloved of American conservatives. And they were all propped up ideologically by appeals to racial or ethnic pride.
Each of these elements was present in Saipan, to one degree or another. The raging libertarianism, the casino gambling, the sweatshop manufacturing-exploiting, in this case, imported Filipinos and Chinese-and the constant use of ethnic pride to excuse the whole rotten thing. I say Saipan "roared" because, while the bantustans pretty much sucked for everyone who lived there, it has been a great success for some.
Tom DeLay went there with a gaggle of conservatives in two and called the sweat shops "a petri dish of capitalism." How about that for a vision of America's future?
DeLay was right. That's what we're becoming. Democracy is over. It's rule by money, now: plutocracy, the pre-thirties system.
What do you make of the fact that Norquist is still riding high, despite the seamy business he carried on of using his organization to funnel money from Abramoff's clients to Ralph Reed? Does his constituency just not care about such things?
Apparently not. Maybe they think Norquist is just a good entrepreneur. I met him, by the way, and found him a charming and very intelligent man.
Who are the real casualties of THE WRECKING CREW?
It's ordinary working people. Thirty or forty years ago, it was possible to work a blue-collar job and enjoy a middle-class standard of living. In fact, it was common. It was the American way. The reason it was so common, though, was because we decided to make it that way and used government as our instrument. That instrument is no longer under our control. Someone else is at the wheel, and they're steering us in a different direction. So can good little liberals go to bed at night now and sleep soundly knowing the Good Democrats have slain the monsters and reclaimed the castle?
No. Unfortunately, the system I describe is part of the landscape in Washington now. It's structural. It's an industry. It's not going down without an enormous fight. Besides, rather than putting away this very profitable game, a lot of Democrats seem excited to try their hand at it.
(Other Democrats, though, are trying to get to the bottom of things. Some Republicans, too. There used to be one called John McCain that I liked.)
Years ago the WALL STREET JOURNAL banned subversive - liberal - writers from their editorial pages. Suddenly you pop up as a columnist on the op-ed page. Are you Rupert Murdoch's fig leaf?
How did it happen? This wasn't supposed to be the Age of Miracles.
I have never met or spoken to Rupert Murdoch. The editor of their op-ed page is the one who offered me a spot. I was as surprised by the invitation as you are, since one of my previous books was basically an extended commentary on the JOURNAL's opinion page over the course of the 1990s.
I personally think that one of the reasons I've ended up at the JOURNAL is, ironically, the famous "liberal bias" critique. I've always suspected that one of the reasons I've never been offered a regular, permanent place in any prominent mainstream publication is that everyone in big-media-land is terrified of seeming too liberal, and hiring someone like me would obviously expose them to terrific blasts from the right. Well, one of the only publications in America that is totally immune to that critique is the WALL STREET JOURNAL. Which means they're free to hire me. Has living in Washington made you cynical? Or was it the ripping of the veil in "The Wizard of Oz" that destroyed your faith?
The literature of Washington is, by and large, the literature of cynicism and disillusionment. I wanted to update it for our time. But I prefer the word "skeptical," since I believe good government is possible.
Please note that the views and opinions expressed by Thomas Frank are not necessarily the views and opinions held by Bill Moyers or BILL MOYERS JOURNAL.
Comments
Just a request Mr. Moyers. When I am on the boards, for example at iVil, people on both sides argue that both parties are always equally corrupt at the national level - a fatalistic view indeed. It seems to me that since Nixon, if you were to add up the number and magnitude of convictions of both parties, Republicans would do far far worse. No one, as far as I can tell, however, is keeping track. Would you please keep a count/listing, for example since World War II? It would really help hold the parties accountable. We on the boards could cite it all the time, like the way I cite your beyonddelay site. Thanks for your consideration.
Posted by: Duck Soup | August 3, 2008 10:39 PM
Donna Brazile and Karl Rove have been collaborating for the past five years on throwing the 2008 Democratic Primaries . It would be terrific if Moyers could address the corruption as it's happening, rather than after the fact. Here's some of the story that I've dug up on the "Anybody But Hillary" strategy of the G.O.P. and their inside connection to the Democrats.
http://www.thecityedition.com/Pages/Archive/Summer08/BrazileRoveConnect.html
Posted by: Factcheck2 | August 3, 2008 6:58 PM
The Ignorance - to Fear - to Violence cycle.
Did the ignorance of the USA as to who flew airplanes into our towers, cause fear, and violence to Iraq, who was not involved in the planes of 9/11? They did have some violent weapons like the USA does, but is that enough to attack them in war?
Did we as a country do just as Adkkison did, and attack innocent Humans like he did? How can Government Morals be any better, than their citizens that approve of Killing innocent Brothers/Sisters of Life, and ruin GODs Planet.
We are all victims of the Inequality of Human Life on Earth. Not just in War, but in all other phases of Killing our land, sea, and air.
With all our High Tech Science Knowledge of the Universe, we still act like Animals.
Did we really come from the Animals and Cavemen, or from the High Tech Science Male and Female Clone Humans in Genesis? We still do not accept if Life on Earth Evolved or was Created Supernaturally by the High Tech Science in Genesis.
When are we going to put our Actions where our Mouth is, and instead of 'Saying' we love God, and our Brothers/Sisters of Life, 'Live' like we do, like Jesus did?
Posted by: Dolores Lear | August 3, 2008 4:28 PM
Thanks very much for your invaluable program. It is my only "must see" program. Not much on TV is thoughtful and inciteful.
Keep up the good work!
Posted by: Robert Rush | August 3, 2008 4:10 PM
Bill is one of the last true investigative reporters and commentators - a rare vanishng breed of Patriotic Americans still trying to wake up the populace at large. With the recent passage of HR 1955 by a overwhelming majority of treasonous Congressmen and women we run the risk of losing people like Bill who try their damnedest to get the truth out - keep up the good fight - we need more like you - especially now!
Posted by: Doug | August 3, 2008 12:34 PM
Weeding out the Conspirators will take Patriots from both sides.
McCain and Hillary's complicity with this corp agenda is a painful reality.
As a Life long Liberal Dem and someone who can recall the Old school Republicans ideologies, I welcome my previously formidable Foes with open arms.WE mus twork together to end this long standing business stratedgy and Marketing campaign.
Obama/Hagel '08
Posted by: Purple Girl | August 3, 2008 12:27 PM
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Edmund Burke's words were never truer than today. You mention John McCain as someone we could once look up to, that is if we could see past the blind spot of political affiliation. We have chosen to ignore the council of the wise sages in both political parties to participate in the mind numbing partisan horserace that has been substituted for a Democracy. As usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle where far too many good men do nothing !
Posted by: Richard | August 3, 2008 10:13 AM
Abramoff, Reed, Delay and Rove. Four typical scumbags running around DC as if they were the moral compass of this country when in fact, they are the toilet bowls of the world!
Yet, Rove is still regarded in high esteem, Delay is still the guest speaker at many events (including television shows) and who knows about those other jerks! I know Reed is in jail, but still...
One final thing. You know the red door on K street? You are aware that a red door is the universal signal that "prostitutes are working here", don't you? I'm sure Jack was absolutely aware that, one; he is a whore and two;
that he got a "sick thrill"
from having his door painted red! Bastard that he is!
Posted by: G Clayton Taylor | August 3, 2008 6:01 AM
Grady Lee Howard, shame on you too.
Posted by: Ted Michael Morgan | August 3, 2008 5:45 AM
Shameful people. Shameful government. Shameful behavior.
Posted by: Ted Michael Morgan | August 3, 2008 5:42 AM
It is time to take the lobbying out of politics.
We are paying politicians to recruit research specialists and make decisions that keep our society functioning. Taking money from lobbyists is begging for corruption. We are building corruption into the system. Money for elections should be only allowed from individual citizens with limited donations. Any money accepted from corporations should be illegal. Politicians bought and payed for by corporations do not represent the people.
Posted by: David Eddy | August 3, 2008 12:21 AM
Hostage Bill: So you played it safe again, shilling a Thomas Frank book and updating your 2 year old Capitol Crimes. (You could have given us that as an archive, offered as a quick on-air update. See how few bloggers have responded.)
The Anthrax Attack (Amerithrax) which followed 9/11 and was probably sent as a warning to those who would investigate a false flagged conspiracy, had seemingly become a dormant investigation after 7 years. After prodding by Congress, a convenient scapegoat and implausible scenario has been injected into mass media (Orwellian, isn't it?).
What you missed was the clumsy handling of this investigation by the FBI, and the suspicious death of germ warfare scientist Bruce E. Ivins, after Stephen Hatfill had been awarded over 8 million dollars for formerly being harrassed as a suspect.
Senator Leahy, a target of the later 2001 mailing has stated,"I think there are people within our government who know where it came from."
This week you described conspiracy for profit and for perpetual dysfunctional government (Wrecking Crew), with all its intricacies and secrecy and yet you poo-pooh the larger possibility, that the entire War on Terror is also, at its heart, a for-profit grab for dictatorial power. The ideology of the holy market manipulated by God's chosen would certainly encompass such treasons and mass murders.
You are a pitiful classist and racist if you think low- waged taxpayers, American Indians on reservations, natural disaster victims and wage slaves in Saipan
are any less deserving of justice than 9/11 victims in the Twin Towers +7 or the Pentagon.
If you can't entertain what has become obvious to the thinking public, I can't see why you'd waste time pitching a hybrid of Dallas and the Sopranos. Even Kathleen hall Jamieson could tell you that bomb is a ratings loser. Your instincts are "way-off", Bill, because people are well beyond your whore's race and tabloid laziness (Capitol Crimes). I despise Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff as much as anyone, and I actually resent hearing about or seeing these perverts: There are bigger fish to fry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I hope you get some guts soon. P.S. Don't open any puffy envelopes.
Posted by: Grady Lee Howard | August 3, 2008 12:03 AM
Wow! What a glass-bead game. Connecting all these dots, from native American casinos, to sweatshops in the Mariani's, to Russian hoodlums, boggles the mind.
And this does not even take the trioka of the religious right (Ralph Reed,) congressional corruption (Tom Delay,) and cynical gamesmanship (Grover Norquist)into account.
The fact that Abramoff was so tightly connected with his college buddy, Karl Rove, and through him to George Bush, is truly amazing.
It is high time we kicked the rascals out.
Posted by: Danny Clarke | August 2, 2008 10:46 PM
Something is really really wrong with our Republican government.
I cried when I heard this story:
I suggest strongly that you listen to it if you haven't already.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/28/60minutes/main3889496.shtml
So many poor sick Americans who can't afford health care must resort to going to a third-world medical relief agency now operating in the United States voted. Many of these people for the same Republican politicians who have done everything they can to block healthcare reform. These Republicans even blocked healthcare for kids in the expansion of S-CHIP.
Where are you Republican politicians? Where are you? What are you doing for these citizens? Many of them voted for you. They work hard. They are not all lazy. Listen to this. Listen to them.
God bless RAM. God bless them. RAM can't do it alone, however. They can't provide healthcare like the government can. They must turn away hundreds of sick Americans with no recourse. They can't tackle this problem with a makeshift operation and one big helicopter from World War II.
These sick Americans want to pay for healthcare. They can't afford it. Like the 28-year-old mother of 3 who is at risk for recurrence of cervical cancer and can't afford the follow up, they are putting their families before their health. Obama doesn't want to give them a handout. He wants to offer affordable healthcare which they can pay for with dignity instead of taking handouts.
And shame on you Republican politicians. Shame on you. No excuses. Just shame on you. You haven't lifted a finger to help these good American citizens. Instead you have blocked the help. Shame on you. Shame on you. You all need to just stop for a while. You need to sit out politics and reflect. Shame on you. May God forgive your warped souls.
Posted by: Duck Soup | August 2, 2008 9:52 PM
Thanks for posting this interview. The book looks like it's worth a read. I fear that a lot of Americans won't take what Mr. Frank has to say seriously until it's too late. Even if Obama wins, and he isn't just spweing rhetoric, he's up against systemic rot.
Posted by: nunya | August 2, 2008 7:14 PM
Tx again, Mr. Moyers. Let's hope we can get this government by business men turned around before it's time for you and me to check out. For the sake of my kids and grand kids.
Posted by: William L. Fell | August 2, 2008 5:22 PM
I thank the universe for Bill Moyer's Journal, Frontline, NOW and all the other wonderful PBS programs on television. If you didn't exist, where would we find the truth?
P. Newson
Posted by: P. Newson | August 2, 2008 4:49 PM
Mr. Moyers--You are my families most important source of information. Please keep it up. Don
Posted by: Don Prell | August 2, 2008 2:24 PM
You are truly our hero, Bill, for speaking truth to power over and over and over again. As I read this interview with Thomas Frank, I was reminded of a character in my new book, Bargaining for Eden. In the 1990s, Mac Livingston was a flower shop manager in Salt Lake City who many saw as eccentric and infuriating. But he stopped a billionaire hotel developer, Earl Holding, from raking in public redevelopment money. He did so by everyday acts of citizenship, performed fiercely. After the fight was over, he told me: "The issue is not Earl Holding. It's not the politicians, it's not the judges. It's the awful system. People like Earl Holding are being born as you and I sit here talking, people who will take advantage of other people, who are born in a culture that stresses the making of money. It's a plutocracy: money rules the law. The tragedy is our ignorance. It's us, paying no attention to politics while those we elect to defend us against tyranny pass and support tyrannous laws."
Thanks to both Bill Moyers and Thomas Frank for dispelling a little of that ignorance.
Posted by: Stephen Trimble | August 2, 2008 12:24 AM
tom frank drops science like it should be dropped. read ONE MARKET UNDER GOD now, i say.
Posted by: jacob lunow | August 2, 2008 12:05 AM
After watching this program, I am reminded of what has been said before about religion and politics. The preacher who was duped into working pro bono says it all, "bringing religion to the people thru political means."
I am appauld, but why does this continue to happen and when will the American public demmand justice. With a war costing taxpayers billions, contractors bilking the government, and an economy looking more and more bleek by the day, something must be done. I have sat up many nights wondering how my children will survive with a budget that can never be paid off and religious politicians pushing theocratic teaching in public schools.
Thanks again Bill for another stellar program that should be the bellweather of them all to those that wish for accountability, since we "working class" citizens are held accountable for our own actions.
Posted by: Chris | August 1, 2008 10:33 PM
After reading this interview, I truly look forward to tonight's program.
I will be putting "The Wrecking Crew" on my list of books to read in the near future, along with "The Shock Doctrine" & "Blackwater."
And this:
"Unfortunately, the system I describe is part of the landscape in Washington now. It's structural. It's an industry. It's not going down without an enormous fight. Besides, rather than putting away this very profitable game, a lot of Democrats seem excited to try their hand at it."
This is undoubtedly true, and should be a significant concern for anyone who cares about the direction our government takes in the future; rule by the Democratic party guarantees NOTHING unless they work diligently at eliminating Friedmanite economic policies and the systemic corporatism that has hobbled effective governing in DC.
Posted by: MWAnderson | August 1, 2008 3:27 PM