Rove wins elections but no one governs

America is a democracy, right? Win the election, and the government belongs to you and your supporters, right?

Depends on who you ask, apparently. That is the Republican view.

Most of us grounded in American history consider democratic elections a way of choosing our political leaders, but they become the leaders to all of us. The idea is that we can't get a total consensus of the governed in how government should work, but we damned well know we don't want the opposite, one man as a monarch, making unilateral decisions that effect all of us.

Instead we have traditionally adopted a system in which our leaders are selected by the majority of the voters who are concerned enough to vote, and the minority has a set of rights guaranteed by the Constitution which the individuals elected by the majority cannot abrogate. In a Parliamentary system the legislature directly controls the government, but in our Presidential system we elect an Executive who is separate from the legislature and ask the Congress to limit the Executive through the power of taxing and funding.

Since we can't trust those election winners to live by the rules, we also have an independent judiciary which has the power to declare the orders of the Executive and the Legislature to be beyond the rules of the Constitution. Given this system of government we give the winners of the elections the limited powers of the government. We then expect them to govern in a manner fair to everyone, not just the voters who elected him.

In this, the traditional American system, the government belongs to and works for everyone. It is only the selection of the top policy leaders that is given to the majority of the voters. Within those rules most of us assume that the powers of the government itself are not to be used as part of the process of convincing the voters who to vote for. That is, you don't use tax money to bribe potential voters.

Conservative Republicans apparently missed that part of the government classes. But lets face it, they are the intellectual descendants of monarchists and have never been wild about democratic values to begin with.

Go to Salon and read this article. You will have to sit through an advertisement to get a day pass, but it is worth it. It answers this question. Why did FEMA provide superb service to the victims of the hurricanes in Florida in 2004 yet hasn't done shit in New Orleans in 2005?

Hint. Does the election in November 2004 ring a bell?

The Bush administration is quite capable of directing FEMA to operate efficiently if an election is in the offing and it is in a swing state. But in the off years, whatever the crony who got the political appointment decides he wanst to do is great.

To the Conservative Republicans, government is the property of the winners and is shared only with the voters who can help them win elections. Everyone else is SOL.

In my previous article "How does Bush think" I suggest that the current Presidency is actually a triumvirate consisting of Bush, who gives speeches, Rove who wins elections, and Cheney who controls the military and Intelligence activities.

Assume that Bush does nothing at all except give speeches and that Rove directs only those governmental actions that directly effect an election coming up. Cheney sticks to foreign policy. The difference between Florida in 2004 and New Orleans in 2005 becomes perfectly reasonable. Especially to a triumvirate who assumes that because they won the election the government became their personal property and the goal of winning power it to use the government to win further elections, not govern.

Rove has less incentitive right now to direct prompt governmental actions without an election coming up, and with the possible indicments in the Plame Affair nearing this fall, he is clearly distracted. None of the three takes significant actions to direct the government to plan and prepare for uncertain future needs. They all seem to think that things like that just automatically happen.

Rove is a college dropout, Bush drifted with disdain, alcohol and drugs through his education based on his family power and money, and Cheney dropped out of his first college, returning to a local state school to get a degree with no real distinction. There is no reason to think they have any conception of what government really does or how it works other than what they learn from FOX News, the Heritage Foundation or the CATO Institute.

The current Presidency is the direct result of their collective ignorance. They win elections, but governing is beyond them.