Plan A was the dynasty plan. The plan presumed a continuation of Bush policies, notably the radical conservative game plan laid out in the 2002 National Security Strategy, under the next Republican administration. The Legacy Plan recognizes the possibility that the Republicans might not only lose the White House, but that they might also face such a widespread backlash against their disastrous policies to make any form of Republican recovery unlikely. The goal under Plan B is to lock in as many of Bush administration's fondest structural changes as possible before turning over the keys of the White House.

First, the relay team dropped the torch. The president, whose job it was to pass the torch, began to lag seriously behind in the race and then bungled the pass. Then the candidate, whose job it was to receive the torch, fumbled the handoff, complaining that the torch itself was defective. By the time the Bush team realized just how bad things were the situation had become worse. The polls showed signs that an African-American, liberal upstart would actually win the race. That would blow Plan A out of the water. Although all possible attempts would be considered to save it, including Dick Cheney's personal favorite of attacking a foreign country (the much-discussed October Surprise) there seemed to be no choice but to prepare Plan B. This was the "Legacy Plan."

To fill the potential gap created by drawdown in Iraq, the legacy plan is expanding military spending in other areas and preparing the ground for new conflicts. The Bush administration pushed increased military spending in Afghanistan and Pakistan and started delivery of defense contracts for the U.S.-Mexico border region. The $162 billion FY2008 supplemental spending bill passed in June provides significant breathing room to defense contractors in the case of a transition, but concerns are mounting about what will happen to bloated defense companies when the Iraq feed line is cut

THE MISGOVERNANCE OF AMERICA

© 2008 Michael Kountouris   All Rights Reserved

Corruption is uniquely reprehensible in a democracy because it violates the system's first principle, which we all learned back in the sunshiny days of elementary school: That the government and its vast workforce serve the people. The idea is so deep in the American grain that we can't bring ourselves to question it, even in this disillusioned age. Republicans and Democrats may fight over how big government should be and exactly what it should do, but almost everyone shares those baseline good intentions, we believe, that devotion to the public interest.

We continue to believe this in even the most improbable circumstances. Take the worst apple of them all, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose astonishing career as a corruptionist has been unreeling in newspaper and congressional investigations. Journalistic coverage of the Abramoff affair has stuck closely to the "bad apple" thesis, always taking pains to separate the conservative movement from its onetime superstar. What Abramoff represented was "greed gone wild," asserts the most authoritative account on the subject.

But the truth is almost exactly the opposite, whether we are discussing Abramoff or the wider tsunami of corruption. It is just this: Fantastic misgovernment of the kind we have seen is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society.