The Book Blogs - Broken Government by John W. Dean

Frank and I were at BookPeople yesterday. I hadn't been there in like 20 years! It was nice to go in. It was there that I saw Julie Powell's Julie & Julia, the book made into the major motion picture. I also found a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child herself, the cookbook which was the premise of the movie Julie & Julia. If you haven't seen that film, I highly recommend it!

So here I am titling this blog what it's called, and the book I'll be writing about has nothing to do with cooking. I realize that. But it was when I saw those books when I remembered a scene in the movie:

JULIE: 

I can write a blog. I have thoughts. Yeah, I'll cook my way through Julia Child's cookbook and blog about it. 

This became the cornerstone of my reading goal. Pick a book, read it, and write about my thoughts after having read it, and hopefully capture my literary journey of putting books back in my heart, where I know they truly belong.

When Frank and I were looking around, he supported the idea that if I wanted to love reading, I needed to read something that truly interested me. Right now, the things that interest me are hot-button issues:

-gay marriage
-homosexuality and religion
-politics and current events
-understanding the truths, myths, and lies about the political spectrum

When I narrowed down my interests, we went to the Politics section of the store, and he picked out a book he thought I'd like: Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches by John W. Dean. Frank explained to me that this man was working for Nixon, resigned, and turned on Nixon due to the corruption of the Watergate scandals. So far, I've read the preface, and the 24-page introduction entitled "Process Matters".

Following the introduction, the book has 4 chapters: 3 chapters (1 for each branch and its state of "damage" however reparable or lack thereof), and a final chapter on how to repair the government's processes.

Upon starting to read the preface and introduction, it seemed that the book was only reaffirming all the negatives against the Republicans that I've heard from moderate-to-liberal commentators on podcasts or live streaming online videos. Some people say they prefer Fox News *gag reflex* because it's "fair and balanced." Others have told me that they'd watch a segment on Fox News, then see the same segment on a different news media channel, and the stories would be very different.

Well, from what I've read so far, according to the author and his experiences on the inside, Republicans are not fit to govern a nation. They are too busy trying to help themselves stay in power so what they want done can get done, and that because their standards are being met, it'll hopefully fix national problems. Bullshit, I think. But more so, the introduction focused more on what the author said were called "process issues". This refers to how things get done in government. How will laws be made and passed? How will court decisions be handled? According to Dean, process issues are of little importance to candidates, especially when they're running for their designated office. Media sources also fail to discuss much about process issues as well.

However...

During W's reign - and yes, I do mean reign - Dean writes that CNN put out a series entitled Broken Government where reporters were asking ordinary citizens about what they thought about our current system of government. To Dean's amazement, not one person questioned anything about policy; every citizen spoke about how politicians were going about doing things and getting stuff done: process issues. So upon reflection, citizens, you know, those people candidates are supposed to represent, actually DO give a shit about process issues. But their candidates? Hmm...not so much.

Of course Dean went into even more detail, more than I'll go into here. After all, these blogs are meant to be summaries about the content I'm reading, but more importantly, about how I'm hoping reading what I like will make me enamored with it. I don't have much else to say because I've only read the intro. We'll see what my tongue and fingers will let loose on this keyboard in the days (weeks?...months?!) to come as I read this book. But on a humorous note, at least for me, I love how Dean said this in his book (he quoted Alan Wolfe, Ph.D., professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania) that he wanted to catch a reader's attention for some very important upcoming information; if I ever was going to daydream while reading, a statement like this would catch and keep my undivided attention:

If I could turn on a blinking red light to catch a reader's attention, to give him a heads-up to alert him to pay attention, I would place it next to the following observations of political scientist Alan Wolfe: "Political parties expend the time and grueling energy to control government for different reasons," he explained, viewing politics with his wide-angle lens.

 Liberals, while enjoying the perquisites of office, also want to be in a position to use government to solve problems. But conservatives have different motives for wanting power. One is to prevent liberals from doing so; if government cannot be made to disappear, at least it can be prevented from doing any good. The other is to build a political machine in which business and the Republican Party can exchange mutual favors; business will lavish cash on politicians (called campaign contributions) while politicians will throw the money back at business (called public policy). Conservatism will always attract its share of young idealists. And young idealists will always be disillusioned by the sheer amount of corruption that people like Gingrich and DeLay generate. If yesterday's conservative was a liberal mugged by reality, today's is a free-marketer fattened by pork. 

 Dean goes on to say (and with this I'll conclude this post):

If you understand these observations of Alan Wolfe you have grasped the essence of Republican rule. If not, reread this passage, for you will never find a more succinct explanation of the quintessence of modern Republicanism.

I've taken little joy in writing this book. Frankly, I once believed Republicans would be good at governing. But I was wrong: They have demonstrated that they can only rule for limited periods. As used in the pages that follow, "governing" is a craft, a skill, even an art; it is an effort to find common rules under which all can pursue happiness; "ruling," in contrast, is merely reigning and exercising power.