But you’re right that this can’t come down to just whether members of a particular political faction have the right values, etcetera. It also has to come down to process and procedure, to a system that guards against the inevitable drift to corruption. It’s when a political leadership sets out to remove safeguards, stop oversight, abolish judicial review, and so on, that we should get very worried, far more so than when we see a media report about some individual case of venality. Well, guess what the last eight years have been all about? The systematic dismantling not just of specific systems of oversight and regulation, but also of the entire *concept* of oversight. And here we are again with that proposition with the bailout: to fix a system where people ran wild without any systematic checks or safeguards, we are being told that it is necessary to give someone else the option to run wild without any systematic checks or safeguards.

I admire and actually support your goals around competence and corruption. Despite being a libertarian, there is something very nice about doing business in scandanavia and not being shaken down by the political powers that be (though outside of their home countries, swedes can bribe with the best of them … hmm how are those swedish jet fighters flying Mr. Zuma???). that being said, getting corruption out of the system IMHO is about increasing the punishments, both through judical and ex-judicial efforts(shaming would be ideal) without regards for political point-scoring.

Unfortunately corruption is here and has to be fought, whether it embarasses Republicans or Democrats. While anti-corruption makes a good soundbite this election cycle with the netroots, I don’t believe any of them are committed to this as a philosophy or ideal – rather it is the path to power where their guy calls the shots. Charlie Rangel for Secretary of Treasury? Spitzer for Director of HHS? Or more seriously, Mayor Street’s brother for any position or the city of chester putting in resources for an empty soccer stadium, or democratic politicians setting up shell wholesaling companies for the casinos starting in Philadelphia?

The interior department was bad – bad enough that the press will shame them into changes, charges, and punishments. Corruption in Philadelphia school district? Shrugged shoulders and no competitive political process to change that there – it takes a body to drop to get local corruption/competence issues in the news.

Where I disagree with you is in your implicit description of these policies as leading to “failure”. The over-riding policy aim of Robert Mugabe has always been the gaining and the retention of political power, even at the expense of the complete emiseration of the populace. Mugabe has, after all, an MSc in Economics from the LSE (a degree gained by correspondence after Independence — he flew to London to sit the exams during the 1985 election campaign), and he is no slouch intellectually. He knows full well the relationship between the money supply and inflation in a capitalist economy, and has used this knowledge to destroy the economy in order to retain his hold on power.

Unlike in many African countries, Zimbabwe’s present position is not the result of incompetent policy-making and/or -execution, but of superb competence. Making people dependant on food-aid, and reducing the formal sector of the economy through inflation and the compulsory acquisition and re-allocation of assets, turns a capitalist economy with its anonymous transactions into an economy based on patronage — whether for food aid in the rural areas or for farm-ownership and for export & import permits among the elite. From the perspective of Mugabe and his circle, there has been no failure here.

So I say with a peaceful feeling of absolute certainty that both parties are to blame and those partisans who have been office the longest are the most to blame. So John McCain has been in office a long time and therefore bears much responsibility for what has happened. Any claims to the contrary only prove that he has been worthless, or in the words of my sainted grandmother, “not worth the powder it takes to blow him up.”

Barack Obama has been in office for only a short time and therefore bears less responsibility, but he will not make any lasting, substantive changes, even if he tries, which, at this time, is still an open question.

The system is under duress and controlled by almost any interest except the interest of the People. But all of this is not news, and should be obvious to the casual observer, let alone the learned one.

In Federalist 1, Alexander Hamilton called our attention to this when he said that debate over the proposed Constitution would be based on interests and prejudices, or as he said, “??that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties.?? He went on to say more about parties, ??To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives.?? Sounds familiar, doesn??t it?

So every four years we poor fools in the electorate cannot help ourselves, and we succumb to the invective and bitterness because so much is at stake and because we have such dreams for ourselves, our families and for America. We rant and rave and curse and hurt until we finally purge ourselves as if we had consumed two bottles of magnesium citrate. And we return to our occupations and hope for the best.

That’s a wonderful way of not answering the question.

As for the oversight, surely the Democrats could also have done this in the last two years, when the scandal was occurring? Isn’t Obama representing a party that did nothing? Doesn’t he have to answer for their lack of initiative?