Tim Russert had an interesting guest on Meet the Press yesterday: John M. Barry, the author of ”Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America." Here’s a Globe article about him.
The fascinating thing about Russert’s interview was the political reassessment that occurred in 1927. From the Globe:
It also led to a new idea in America — that the federal government,not state or local government, must take responsibility for regionalflood-control systems and disaster relief. That new idea, Barry wrote,paved the way for the Tennessee Valley Authority and other massive federal projects of the Great Depression.
Essentially, people did not expect the federal government to provide much of anything in the 1920s; by the 30s there was a hue and cry for federal help. It required an enormous political realignment, spurred on by the Depression.
I was surprised to hear such a far-reaching political thesis on MTP, obviously posed as an analogue to the current situation. And doubtless some will complain that liberals and moderates are "exploiting the tragedy" to flog old ideological horses. I don’t think so. Rather, our government’s feeble response, crippled by apathy, neglect and cronyism, is only the most dramatic example what we’ve been talking about: Sometimes government is the best tool for the job. When you cripple or degrade that tool, people suffer.
Mike Brown just resigned. His tenure represents the apex of cronyistic nihilism: Government doesn’t matter, so we might as well give the jobs and contracts to our pals. Hey, if bureaucrats are faceless anyway, why not Mike?
Why not Mike indeed? Because government matters. We simply have to have high expectations of the services our government provides. Bill O’Reilly likes to say, "Government can’t help you." That’s been our self-fulfilling prophecy in the age of corporate cronyism — not limited to Republicans by any stretch. (Big Dig, anyone?)
If we don’t demand it, government won’t help. It won’t even lend a hand when you’re drowning.
