Scandals costing us American exceptionalism: Column

Glenn Harlan Reynolds | USATODAY

"Who can you trust?" That's the title of a pretty good album, but it's also the question for our age. One of the underpinnings of successful representative government is that voters feel they can trust their representatives, and those in the bureaucracy to whom power is delegated, to follow the law. That trust in government officials' willingness to follow the law is the foundation for a sense that the law is legitimate, so that citizens feel a duty to follow the law as well.

But that trust has taken a big hit lately. Over the weekend, the IRS scandal hit the 100th day since the IRS admitted targeting conservative groups during the 2012 election year. Yet the IRS is still being charged with stonewalling Congressional investigators. IRS official Lois Lerner, of course, has already taken the Fifth rather than testify about what went on.

Meanwhile, new revelations of NSA lawbreaking have come out. As the Washington Post reported, the NSA violated privacy rules thousands of times per year. It appears that despite assurances that there was no domestic spying program, the NSA was, in fact, hoovering up vast numbers of phone calls, emails, etc. in order to spy on Americans. (New White House talking point: Hey, it's not a domestic spying program, it's just a program that does a lot of domestic spying!)

Back in June, President Obama told us that if you trust Congress, you can trust the NSA. That wasn't all that reassuring, considering how few Americans trust Congress. And, in fact, it appears that Congressional overseers either didn't know what was going on, or went along with the lawbreaking. (Last week we also saw the conclusion to the Bradley Manning trial, where we discovered that Bradley Manning's most damaging revelation was that our national-security establishment was willing to put dangerous secrets in the hands of . . . a guy like Bradley Manning).

Meanwhile, the Benghazi scandal -- successfully pushed off past the 2012 elections by scapegoating an obscure YouTube filmmaker -- is looking worse and worse. Although government officials blamed the video the administration in fact knew that Al Qaeda was involved from the beginning.

And now former Washington U.S. Attorney Joseph DiGenova, representing a Benghazi whistleblower, even says that missiles were being funneled through Benghazi to the Syrian rebels and that 400 were stolen by Al Qaeda terrorists at the time of the attack. CNN has reported that dozens of CIA agents were on the ground in Benghazi -- and that they're being pressured to keep quiet. Are these missiles real, or figments of Di Genova's imagination? Who knows?

After the administration's willingness to blame a filmmaker for what they knew was a terrorist attack, even the wildest theories start to seem more plausible than they otherwise might. Whatever went on in Benghazi -- and especially in Washington, afterward -- it doesn't inspire trust.

Then there's the wrap up of the Whitey Bulger trial in Boston. Bulger was a mobster who was in tight with Justice Department officials and Massachusetts politicos, (Bulger's brother, a Democratic pol, was president of the Massachusetts Senate) and after his conviction one juror reported that she was "stunned" by the extent of government corruption that came out in the trial. That's impressive. It's getting harder and harder to stun people with government corruption these days.

And that's the problem. Enough breaches of trust -- and I haven't even started to hit all the scandals out there, by a long shot -- and ordinary people will start to assume that the whole system is corrupt. And if that happens, people will quit following the law because they think it's the right thing to do, and only do so to the extent they're afraid of getting caught. Plenty of countries operate on that principle. They're just not as nice to live in as countries where the law has moral stature. When government officials breach trust, they push us closer to that sort of third world condition. Which is why, when they're found doing so, they should be punished severely.

It's also why we should try electing, and employing, people with strong moral compasses of their own; government officials who will follow the law because they think it's the right thing to do, rather than simply to the extent they're afraid of getting caught.

Based on the evidence to date, there seems to be plenty of room for improvement in that department. As we look forward to 2014 and 2016, perhaps we need to think harder about the character of the people we put into office.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is professor of law at the University of Tennessee and the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself. He blogs at InstaPundit.com.

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