Why Conservatives Can't Govern

Robert L. Borosage

March 19, 2007

'Robert L. Borosage is co-director of the Campaign For America's Future.

Donald Rumsfeld has been axed. Tom DeLay cut and ran. “Scooter” Libby stands convicted. Michael “you’re doing a heck of a job” Brown was tossed. Newt Gingrich disgraced himself. And now the clueless Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, is surely the next to go.

Why this confederacy of dunces? The conservative National Review cover asks plaintively, “Can’t Anyone Here Play this Game?” Time Magazine puts conservative icon Ronald Reagan on its cover, a tear rolling down his face, reporting on “How the Right Went Wrong.” But it’s not incompetence or corruption—although both abound—that fostered the misrule of this conservative administration. And Reagan would feel not dismayed, but right at home with the follies and crimes. Remember: Reagan’s attorney general, Edwin Meese, was disgraced. His national security advisor copped a plea. Oliver North stood convicted. His defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, would have been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice if George Bush the first hadn’t issued a preemptive pardon.