opinion

A democracy or a corporatocracy?

When Ronald Reagan entered the White House, the national debt stood at $907 billion. It had taken 190 years to run up that bill. During his tenure, Reagan tripled it to almost $3 trillion. Dick Cheney famously said that Reagan had taught us that “Deficits don’t matter.” Two Republican and one Democratic administrations later, the national debt had increased by an astounding $10 trillion more, in spite of a couple of balanced budgets by President Bill Clinton. Yet, few voices were raised in protest until Obama became president. Overnight, Republicans became deficit hawks, denouncing Obama’s economic measures to restore our crippled economy while carefully ignoring his success in lowering operating deficits by a third. What had caused the Republican switch to pretended parsimony?

That generously financed political mechanism that has replaced the traditional Republican Party is dedicated to achieving two objectives. The first is to convince the citizenry that elective government doesn’t work and the second is to replace our admittedly messy democratic system with an arrangement run by corporate powers. Raleigh provides a nascent version of that scheme.

Implementers of this undertaking have done an excellent job of reducing Congress to the condition of ineffectiveness that justifies the electorate’s contempt. But, if the nation’s management were turned over to unrestrained corporate power, would all be amended?

The business world claims to believe that competition is the essential nutrient of prosperity but much commercial energy is aimed at eliminating competition. Civic affairs require cooperation rather than competition. Replacing politicians with corporate types would be like replacing farmers with machinists. There are vital distinctions between the skills required for working metal and those needed to draw sustenance from the soil, just as there are essential differences between commercial management and democratic statecraft.

Hal Hogstrom lives in Asheville.