Breach of Contract

Michael Ignatieff wrote a moving essay in the NYT Magazine, The Broken Contract, on the political catastrophe of Katrina when the government failed to respond to help its citizens when disaster struck. I agree with most of his thesis.

"A contract of citizenship defines the duties of care that public officials owe to the people of a democratic society. . . . When the levees broke, the contract of American citizenship failed."

""We are American,' a woman at the convention center proclaimed on television. She spoke with . . . astonishment that she should be required to remind Americans of such a simple fact."

"Let us grant that the contract is contested ground. Liberals since Franklin D. Roosevelt have believed that being a citizen should give protection against the dangers of unemployment, old age and ill health, while conservatives have sought to curtail the contract, arguing that government programs weaken personal responsibility and hobble economic progress. Still, the idea of a contract is very basic."

"What makes the failure over Katrina so unexpected is that while liberals and conservatives agreed about nothing else, they were supposed to have agreed that government should protect Americans from natural disaster."

"The most terrible price of Katrina - everyone can see this - was not the destruction of lives and property, terrible though this was. The worst of it was the damage done to the ties that bind Americans together."
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Since the disaster of Katrina, the failure to respond has been blamed on negligence, incompetence and bureaucracy. As I watched the horror of the flooding and abandoned people in need, I couldn't help but think that the response (or lack thereof) was much more intentional.

Issues of race, class, poverty and politics were all factors, of course. Politics was part of the reason the Bush Administration responded ably during the election cycle to hurricane disasters in Florida. Race, class and poverty have been addressed in many commentaries assessing the manner in which the response was mishandled. These issues did play a part and cannot be minimized.

I think, however, it goes further. The federal non-response with Katrina was part of an understated, underlying agenda of the Administration, that the role of government does not extend to "helping people." That is the core belief of the "Starve the Beast" mentality, that individuals should not rely on government to help with their needs. This concept is somewhat radical, so the Administration is trying to gradually, quietly advance this theory. Social security reform is a variation on this theme. That is, you need to plan for your own retirement, the government won't be there to help you.

In my view, Katrina was a "testing of the waters" by the Administration, with a slow, wait and see approach to federal intervention. The initial response was consistent with this, with the federal government saying it was deferring to local and state authorities. It was only when public reaction was so horrified, so negative, that the Administration decided that it had to act. Realizing the extent to which it miscalculated the political fallout from this disaster, it could never acknowledge the deliberateness of this reaction. Better to respond (and shift blame) based upon incompetence than reveal the truth. The public's reaction demonstrated that we are not prepared to go it alone and gives me hope that the contract is not truly broken. It is just the Administration that has breached the contract with its people.