Conservative incompetence.

Great article ("Why Conservatives Can't Govern," by Alan Wolfe, July/August). Though perhaps overly harsh, it seems to accurately depict the majority of the Republican conservatives who currently rule the country.

I was once a Republican, and considered myself a conservative, meaning that I was in favor of limited government and personal and fiscal responsibility. I'm no longer a Republican and no longer consider myself a conservative, and am outraged at how those in power absolve themselves of fiscal and personal responsibility.

STEVE EVANGELOU

Walnut Creek, Calif.

Alan Wolfe argues that "Refusing to acknowledge the importance of government while relying on it to achieve your objective causes the same kind of chaos in foreign policy that it does in matters closer to home."

Bush's Iraq is a mess, Wolfe argues, not because government does as poor a job at social engineering in Baghdad as in the United States, but because Republicans lack Tinkerbell's belief in the effectiveness of government. Unlike, say Lyndon Johnson's masterful handling of the Vietnam War, Jimmy Carter's deft use of Keynesian economics to provide low inflation and economic growth, Bill Clinton's Churchillian handling of Somalia and al Qaeda, Sudan, and Haiti. Or former California governor Grey Davis' handling of California, Louisiana Gov. Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Nagin's recent lessons in effective Democratic governance. And The Washington Monthly is named after a city that is governed by people who truly, truly believe in the wonderfulness of big government.

Ronald Reagan expected and asked the government to do less. Inflation fell from double digits. Over 44 million jobs have been created since January of 1981. Less regulation and lower taxes brought in more revenue. He broke the neck of the Soviet Union without a war or occupation, but by cutting off loans, and doing small but critical things in Nicaragua, Angola, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe.

Bush has asked the government to do a very big and complicated thing in Iraq. The left wants government to do many big things all at once. But government is like a baseball bat. Fine for killing things and smashing up the place: Tokyo 1945, Berlin 1945, Iraq 1991 and 2003. But when you ask government to do an appendectomy with said baseball bat it leaves blood all over the floor and it doesn't work out well for the patient.

Big government doesn't work well. The East Germans really truly believed. There was no lack of faith in government in the Politburo. Limited government can do the limited number of things that governments can do if they are not constantly distracted by trying to do the impossible with the blunt force of the state as their tool.

GROVER NORQUIST 

President, Americans for "Fax Reform

Washington, D.C.

Alan Wolfe brought back memories of my years as a visiting scientist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda in the 1990s. Believing that I was entering an environment where research would be the highest priority, I was astounded to learn that I'd entered a bizarre parallel universe managed by bureaucrats whose first priority was to play it safe by doing nothing--absolutely nothing--that wasn't the least bit outside of their own literal interpretation of their job description. The whole place barely functioned: It took months to do the same work done in days or weeks in the "real world," new equipment would be purchased when perfectly good equipment was being surplused by the lab next door because it was next to impossible to requisition it, and it was a daily struggle to even find someone in administration who could accurately write down a message. (I once spent the better part of an hour arguing with someone in the purchasing office in a vain attempt to make them understand that there could be more than one scientific equipment supplier with the name Nippon in its title, and that therefore there could be companies beginning with the term Nippon but with different addresses and fax numbers).

However, the most demoralizing part of the job wasn't necessarily fighting the daily hassles but the sheer lack of interest among my American-born colleagues in trying to do anything to improve the system. In both my lab and the surrounding ones, only those of us visiting from other countries (Canada, Finland, France, and Taiwan) ever tried to appeal to the higher-ups to make the system work better. Almost without exception, the American-born scientists believed it to be a waste of time to try to argue with the bureaucracy, that government was always inefficient, always had been inefficient, and always would be inefficient, and that we were naive, somewhat immature, foreigners for believing otherwise.

I've since returned to my native Canada, where taxes are higher and government bureaucracy is a greater part of everyday life. On the other hand, I am surrounded by fellow citizens who believe that government doesn't have to be wasteful, and that they have the power (and duty) as citizens to pound their fists on a desk or a countertop and call their Members of Parliament to demand that inefficiencies in the system be fixed--immediately. This system doesn't make everything perfect, but it sure feels more like democracy and freedom than does simply resigning yourself to the evils of government.

GLENN WARD, PH.D.

Department of Health Studies and

Gerontology, University of Waterloo 

Waterloo, Canada

This is something I have believed for a very long time, though I see it more as an indifference to what progressives think of as good government, rather than classic incompetence. I doubt the individuals and corporations benefiting from the Bush administration's policies consider them incompetent. I do not understand why this hasn't been worked more by Democrats, which is to say, what this administration is doing, it is doing very well--but what it is doing does not really conform to the view of America most people cherish. I think it is true that the fall in the President's poll numbers was precipitated by and given momentum by the torture revelations, the assault on Social Security, intrusion into the Schiavo case, the Katrina debacle, the prescription--drug benefit debacle, the port and border security debacle, and the realization that the Iraq expedition was making us less secure by inflaming the animosities of the Islamic peoples. All of these points reflect deliberate conservative administration polices.

This president was given an unprecedented opportunity to be one of our great presidents. Though put into office under questionable circumstances, the country rightfully stood behind him, giving him broad authority to deal with the threat realized on 9/11. Rather than building on the unifying result of that day, he chose to follow the narrow path of radical ideology, and to gratify the desires of a narrow constituency. I believe the low poll numbers reflect the failure of this president and his administration to measure up to the call for inspired leadership; but more so, they reflect the failure of the conservative principles practiced by this president.

NICHOLAS MORRIS

Via email