Examines the subversion of citizenship

...The contrast of the "people's money' with the "government's money" is part of a common political strategy...

...The spirit of citizenship does not rest on compassion...

...In this construction, "Washington" becomes a strange and alien place not to be confused with anything "American...

...We are, after all, a people who "believe in social mobility...

...These people represent "[m]uch of today's poverty [that] has more to do with troubled lives than a troubled economy...

...The promise of leadership was repeated in his inaugural address, which noted "differences so deep that we seem to share a continent, but not a country" and gave a "solemn pledge...

...The former was to be satisfied by a tax cut and the second by his claim to be a "uniter not a divider...

...A typical campaign proposition on taxes was that "we're dealing with people's money, not the government's money, and I want to give people their money back...

...As electric power shortages and sharp increases in electricity costs hit California, the administration declared an "energy crisis...

...It is true that a change in the way an individual uses energy would not by itself solve "the crisis," but a heightened public consciousness about energy usage in daily living would be of practical value...

...As in all campaigns, he appealed to voters' material interests and to the more intangible desire for "leadership...

...This conception erases the idea of poverty as we have historically known it—a social condition rooted in economic and political institutions...

...George W. Bush's presidential campaign and his speeches as president provide excellent examples...

...Even when the opportunity arises to build "a single nation" that will overcome "deep differences," it is blatantly ignored...

...I don't mean, of course, that there must be initial agreement on what the ends of action should be or on how to reach them...

...His answer was correctly taken to mean that citizens had no role to play in dealing with a crisis affecting the entire nation...

...Maintaining that focus, acting as a catalyst for the discussion and implementation of appropriate policies, is one of the major functions of leadership in a democratic society...

...to work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity...

...Our society must enlist, equip, and empower idealistic Americans in the work of compassion only they can provide...

...Contemporary political alienation has been attributed to everything from the Watergate and Iran-contra scandals to the sexual antics of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, and these are undoubtedly important...

...the poor, lacking a sense of personal reI0 n DISSENT I Fall 2001 sponsibility, do not have what it takes to advance themselves...

...We must therefore, "revive the spirit of citizenship . . . marshal the compassion of our people," and in so doing we will enter the third stage "of combating poverty...

...A certain wariness of state power and those who wield it has been present throughout our history, but that is different from today's seemingly pervasive and persistent hostility to government and politicians...

...Poverty in this view is a failure of social mobility...

...When he said early in the campaign, "I believe that after we meet priorities, all that remains must be passed back to Americans, so that it will not be spent by Washington," he was implying that the government commonly misappropriates the people's taxes...

...Conservation," Bush declared, "does not mean doing without...

...That kind of leadership is not found in the present administration...

...What remains are "the hardest problems," people with few marketable skills along with unfortunates suffering from "illiteracy and addiction, abuse and mental illness...

...The equation of DISSENT / Fall 2001 n 9 COMMENTS & OPINIONS conservation with deprivation shows, as critics were quick to point out, that the administration was afraid that asking citizens to conserve energy would be taken as a call for "sacrifice" and interpreted as an attack on "the American way of life," which the president regards, the White House assured us, as "a blessed one...

...One way of understanding this state of affairs is to take conservative political rhetoric seriously and see how it reproduces and supports political alienation...

...In a Florida speech, after signing the new tax bill, Bush echoed Lindsey by triumphantly proclaiming, "This bill reflects a philosophy that says we trust the American people more than we trust government...

...A troubled life requires "the personal support" of other "caring, concerned human being[s...

...Welfare entitlement," a two-sided moral coin, is precisely a good example of that spirit's meaning...

...the culturally ingrained wariness of state power makes "the government" a tempting and easy target, even for someone who aims to head it...

...THE 2000 ELECTIONS were marked by voter apathy, distrust of politicians, and a widespread cynicism that extended to the political process itself...

...Such a heightened consciousness would require some account of how individual action could contribute to the overall good...

...But calling upon compassion or "the good works of the faithful" as a means of dealing with the problem of poverty does not "revive the spirit of citizenship...

...When the problem is a social evil like poverty, a focus on the institutional roots of the evil helps in motivating people to meet their obligations as citizens...

...But what has not been said is that politicians painting themselves as "leaders" encourage and support political alienation by subverting the meaning of democratic citizenship to promote their own narrow political goals...

...Thanks to new technology, it can be doing better and smarter and cheaper...

...For Bush, as for other conservatives, the spirit of citizenship is satisfied when people act separately, not together, and in a sphere removed from the political arena...

...Instead, civic action was denigrated...

...When, for example, jeremiads against "big government" or "the overweening bureaucrat" become the core of political argument, real political argument disappears...

...For Bush, the burden of the charge is not that the government is ignoring the electorate's mandates, but that "the government" is an enemy of "the people...

...We are the country of the second chance, where failure is never final...

...It is difficult to see how a president of a democratic society who cannot trust his own government can be a "uniter not a divider...

...This is the ultimate scandal...

...Citizens are members of a nation who act together to determine its course or fate, and this entails a sense of moral obligation to participate in the affairs of the nation...

...If this ideological perspective encourages attitudes of distrust and cynicism, by the same token it discourages active participation...

...In a democratic society, politics is the struggle among contending parties and groups to further their own policies and programs, and political discussion and action should revolve around those competing visions...

...it is an autonomous entity serving only itself...

...T T HERE IS A seeming difference here between the administration's conception of the role of citizens in the energy crisis and their role in its ideas about poverty...

...As I have already noted, the problem of poverty as a political issue is ruled out, since poverty is now only a matter of "troubled lives," and those lives need only the charitable help of the faithful...

...But it was almost wholly defined in terms of technological innovation...

...In a press conference, Vice President Dick Cheney responded to a question about conservation with the contemptuous dismissal of it as simply "a sign of personal virtue...

...T T HE MORE general issue here is the meaning of citizenship itself...

...What remains, then, is to encourage the "work of compassion"—the personal efforts of "concerned human beings" and "mentors" offering "personal support" to help the "troubled lives" of the failures among HS...

...The strategy of running against the government distorts politics because it obscures the issues that ought to be in the center of attention and, more fundamentally, it distorts the idea that government is the means for coping with basic social and economic problems...

...It does mean, though, that citizenship requires, as a moral matter, that individuals participate with others to achieve a common good...

...In his commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, Bush praised Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty for establishing "a federal commitment to the poor" even though it had the unintended consequence of turning the "welfare entitlement" into "an enemy of personal effort and responsibility, turning many recipients into dependents...

...Poor people, because they are citizens, may legitimately expect government aid, and their fellow citizens have a moral obligation to support the government because that is what citizens owe one another...

...Compassion is an awareness of the suffering of others and the wish or inclination to alleviate it...

...The point was made more bluntly by Lawrence B. Lindsey, Bush's chief economic adviser and head of the National Economic Council, who told a reporter that for a conservative like himself, the greatest threat is "the overweening bureaucrat with the power of the state behind him who may be unchecked in his ability to tell someone how to run his life...

...The inclination to act, however, does not mean that one will actually extend aid or do so generously...

...The remark was widely criticized, and subsequent administration pronouncements tried to emphasize the importance of conservation...

...When welfare "as we know it" was reformed in 1996 that situation was largely remedied...

...MURRAY HAUSKNECHT is a sociologist writing from New York...

...This is most apparent in Cheney's comment on conservation and Bush's yoking of "the revival of citizenship" with "the good works of the faithful...

...DISSENT / Fall 2001 n 11...