The Public Good, who now speaks for it?
George Will, in an op ed piece in Sunday’s Washington Post, while critically assessing Zephyr Teachout’s argument (“The Anti-Corruption Principle,”) for emancipating government from First Amendment restrictions on its powers to regulate political speech, has this to say:
Congressional Democrats want to kill a small voucher program that gave some mostly poor and minority students alternatives to the District of Columbia’s failing public schools, and the Obama administration spent additional billions to avoid a declaration of bankruptcy by General Motors. Some people think both decisions represented disinterested assessments of the public good. Others think the decisions represented obeisance by Democrats to the teachers’ and autoworkers’ unions, respectively.
Now it’s true that both interpretations are possible, even reasonable. On the one hand some of us would like to think that the two decisions did represent “disinterested assessments of the public good.” I would like to think that, but I’m probably in a minority, perhaps joined by the editorial writers of the New York Times.
The second interpretation is probably much more prevalent. That, in the case of the D.C. vouchers the teachers’ union got its way, and in the case of a General Motors bankruptcy the automotive workers got what they wanted.
The liberals would spin both decisions as being good for the public and the country, while the conservatives, not getting what they wanted, would spin the decisions as one more instance of the government going along with the wishes of a powerful constituency, in disregard of what was best for the country.
Probably most of us who voted for Obama still hold onto the belief that his government does care about the public good, does make decisions, as in these two instances, with that good in mind.
But we are going to be labeled naive. Furthermore, is it clear, ever, what is in the best interests of the public, what is best for the country? In any case the public good, whatever it is, probably has no important constituency, and in the absence of such, government actions, even those of Obama, will inevitably appear to go along with one pressure group or another, because that’s all there is.
John Gardner’s Common Cause in the 1970s did try to address this situation head on, did try to speak for the public, did try to give the public good position a constituency. But although the Cause is still alive the voice is no longer heard.
Is this because there can be no constituency for the public good? In government, as in life, perhaps there can only be interested positions, the promotion and defense of whatever it is one may want for oneself and one’s allies, although in the best of cases while doing so trying not to trample on the wants and interests of others.
