Killing the Referees: The Republican Assault on Political Accountability

The other day, Ed Kilgore posted a wonderful rant on the topic of political accountability (or the lack thereof). His frustration is palpable and essentially mirrors my own. Kilgore writes:

"Maybe I'm just consumed with anger at the
administration and its congressional allies right
now, but I think Mark [Schmitt is] basically
right. Most of these people have no concept of
"accountability"--in terms of short-term
performance, long-range consequences, the
judgment of history, or even public opinion. Their
only benchmark is progress towards their own
ideological goals, which are "starving the beast,"
destroying the very possibility of meaningful
bipartisanship, radicalizing permanent institutions
like the judiciary, the military and the corporate
sector, and keeping Americans afraid of the world
and each other. That's why they've relied so heavily
on abuse of power; it's the only way to perpetuate
their power without compromise or accountability.
And that's why they are so uninhibited by most
considerations of truth or decency. In fact, I would
argue that their most important tactical consideration
has been to destroy the possibility of accountability
by short-circuiting all the signals whereby a healthy
society normally judges its leaders. Any source of
objective measurement has been systematically
discredited as inherently ideological: scientists are
secularist fanatics; the media are elitist liberals; the
judiciary is full of anti-Christian activists; the
opposition party is anti-American. We've all had much
fun with the conservative characterization of "liberals"
as "reality-based," but it's no laughing matter: the
essence of Rovism is to eliminate any zone of rational
persuasion and force Americans to pick sides in an
identity politics of real and perceived privileges under
imaginary assault. . . .

So if we do not happily cooperate with the GOP in
reducing all politics to our team versus their team,
and our "truth" versus their "truth," to what higher
standard can we appeal? And that gets back to the
problem of accountability in an age with few
uncontested facts and no credible referees
to keep a score card."

Kilgore puts his finger on the heart of the problem. Over the last two decades, the Republican political machine has engaged in a relentless and systematic assault on all of the institutions in our society that have traditionally served as checks on excessive partisanship. They have attacked the press, the judiciary, academia, even the very concepts of science and empiricism. Their goal is to discredit and disable the referees, to politicize, marginalize, and co-opt any and all non-political institutions, and thereby eliminate any meaningful policing of political discourse. And they have been remarkably successful. In a relatively short period of time, conservatives have managed to convince a large segment of the population (including most of the Republican base) that the media, the judiciary, and even science itself cannot be trusted. Beyond damaging their credibility, this withering assault has actually transformed the institutions themselves. Fear of the "liberal bias" charge has effectively emasculated much of the press corps. The federal judiciary has been disproportionately stacked with reactionaries and Federalist Society-types. And our scientific and empirical knowledge has been polluted and corrupted by pseudo-science and ideologically-driven research. We've reached a point where nearly all truth is politicized. The line separating facts from spin has been hopelessly blurred, and political discourse has become a joke.

Unfortunately, I suspect that the only way out of this partisan trap is for the party that started it all to be confronted by the real world consequences of its near-sighted and reckless policy decisions. Bad policy and bad governing inevitably lead to bad results, and as we've seen in the last week, there are some facts and some failures that are nearly impossible to ignore or spin. Sooner or later, there will be a reckoning.