For progressives, it's time to press

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, last seen haplessly offering up conservative nostrums in response to the president's 2009 State of the Union address, is now begging for the federal government to act. "BP is the responsible party, but we need the federal government to make sure they are held accountable and that they are indeed responsible," Jindal said after surveying the oil spill impact on the Louisiana coastline last week.

Jindal raised eyebrows by departing from the old Republican text in this way. But actually, what's surprising is that after the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression, the worst mining disaster in 30 years, and what is now the worst environmental disaster in the nation's history, more conservatives aren't revising the gospel about the blessings of deregulation and the horrors of government. Despite what should be obvious failings, deregulation, smaller government and privatization remain central to the dominant Republican message.

Case in point is Newt Gingrich. The former Republican House speaker seems to be pushing the notion that rather than renovate their ideas, conservatives should become more shrill. His new book, To Save America, is a screed against President Obama's "secular socialist machine," which poses a "mortal threat" to America as we know it. And he retreads the entire conservative mantra -- smaller government, lower taxes, less regulation, strong dollar, free trade, privatization, even the ownership society -- as if we hadn't just pursued those policies over the cliff.

There's also Rand Paul. The Senate candidate suggested that in the context of the oil spill, the administration was "really un-American" in its "criticism of business" and that "this sort of blame-game" is unnecessary because "sometimes accidents happen."

Paul's position, of course, is tied to Tea Party anger at Big Government and the mission to rein in Washington. And there's a part of this faux populist critique that's spot on: Washington is indeed corrupted by money.

But what the Tea Partyers miss is that this corruption is in part the product of too little government involvement -- and the success of the conservative agenda over the past 30 years. President Reagan, preaching that government was the problem, not the solution, gleefully set about rolling back regulatory authority and budgets, cutting staff while packing agencies with political appointees from the very companies they were supposed to regulate.

President Clinton believed in effective government, but his New Democrat administration accommodated itself to conservative themes, privatizing and outsourcing government, celebrating reductions in the size of government, touting the benefits of market-based regulation. Then came George W. Bush, who revived Reagan's course, denigrating government employees and appointing regulators opposed to regulation, while corruption and cronyism ran amok.

And so, the Securities and Exchange Commission failed to rouse itself to respond to repeated warnings about Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme. The Federal Reserve stood idly by as the housing bubble inflated and the banks made ever wilder bets with more exotic instruments. And regulators of the Minerals Management Service were literally in bed with the oil companies they regulated, trading sex, drugs and parties for cursory oversight.

We learned once more, at a very high price, that markets need laws and limits. Self-regulating markets are a myth, voluntary regulation a cover for corruption.

Cleaning up the Washington mess was, back in the day, a central part of Obama's attraction as a force of change. That's why the deals cut in the health-care legislation, so patently part of the old way of doing things, were dismaying. That's why bailing out the banks without vigorously reorganizing them has been so corrosive. And that's why the president's halting, at times inarticulate, response to the catastrophe in the gulf has been painful to witness.

What we really need is a citizen's movement focused on cleaning out Washington, curbing the flood of money in politics, boarding up the revolving door and putting serious cops on the corporate and financial beats. That movement would push to overturn Citizens United, the wrong-headed Supreme Court decision that opened the floodgates to corporate money in politics, and move to ensure publicly financed "clean" elections. It would expose politicians who vote the interests of their donors over the interests of their voters. It would insist on rules that would prohibit legislators from using service in public office as a steppingstone to making a personal fortune in lobbying.

This movement is a progressive burden. Conservatives have little to offer here. With rare exceptions, such as Bobby Jindal, they are determined to continue to denigrate government and gleefully dismantle its capacity. It is up to progressives to make the case that government can work for the common good.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation and writes a weekly column for The Post.