by James C. Sherlock
Virginia faces a crisis of governance during COVID-19, and the repercussions will play out in the General Assembly and in our elections for federal offices this fall.
The political campaigns both within and outside the General Assembly will be about policy rather than the administrative skill to carry it out. In Virginia, there will be pressure to expand the responsibilities of the Department of Health. The Left will want increased oversight and control to be crafted and run by the “experts.”
The so-called “Virginia Way” relies exclusively upon Virginians to lead Virginia government agencies. Accordingly, we can expect Virginia Democrats who run all levels of our government to recruit help from Virginia universities. They will be loath to point out that Virginia’s current health commissioner is a product of a Virginia faculty lounge and that the Department of Health he leads has demonstrated in COVID-19 response that it cannot carry out with competence those duties already assigned.
This column will assess the coming political storm and the way that the press will present it. Virginia’s political process, as always, will operate in the shadows of national reporting, more so today than ever because of the demise of the regional press.
The central conceit of today’s national press is that the media is investigating, reporting and editorializing on government responses to COVID-19 with full background information and open minds.
Conservatives wish to preserve freedom and the fruits of capitalism and the system that produces them. Conservatives support and help plan for crisis actions by government to deal with emergencies.
Conservatives understand the founding documents – the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – and find them and the expression of individual freedom that is capitalism not only relevant but crucial to the dual goals of maintaining individual freedom and prosperity.
They find in the constitutional separation of powers a logical tool for dealing with crises, ensuring coordination but distributing responsibilities to ensure that they are exercised as close as possible to the people any crisis might affect in this vast nation. California, Idaho, Florida, Louisiana, New York and Virginia simply are not identical and need tailored responses.
Progressives in the media, the street Left, the cocktail party Left, the faculty lounges and the political class, unschooled in or uncaring about the foundational necessity for and successes of the Constitution, a market economy or personal freedom, want to transform all three in favor of ideas they consider improvements. The progressive philosophy is people can do whatever they wish as long as it is mandatory, and mandated by “experts” from those same faculty lounges.
They see in the COVID-19 emergency an opportunity to legislate full time government surveillance and control of wide swaths of an economy. Government bureaucracies have proven repeatedly unsuited to exercise that span of control anywhere, even if one thinks that government surveillance and control are good things, which conservatives most assuredly do not. Progressives have always seemed less interested in the efficient and effective management of such controls, which is a fantasy, than their enactment. Even if one ignores the Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela and pre-capitalist China, we tried it and it failed in the United States. The 12-year Depression ended not with New Deal programs to control the economy but with rearmament for the Second World War.
If you think I exaggerate about the goals of the left to turn this crisis into opportunity for expansion of government, you must consciously ignore Speaker Pelosi and the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe.
Before the latest bipartisan relief bill made it through the Senate, Speaker Pelosi temporarily derailed it by insisting that any emergency relief bill include:
- Mandated “diversity” on corporate boards and in banks.
- Expanded tax credits for wind and solar power;
- Required airlines to reduce emissions;
- Federalized the rules for state elections;
- Increased union bargaining power;
- Prohibited universities from disclosing the citizenship status of their students; and
- Provided a bailout for some private pensions.
The mind boggles at what the Speaker will demand for the President’s $2T infrastructure bill, much less the agenda for next session if she is still Speaker.
Read the articles and opinion pieces that praise the totalitarian regime in China for its “control measures” that they claim, without evidence, reduced the spread of COVID-19 in China.
Try to find any discussion from those same voices of the responsibilities of states under our Constitution. Try to find any acknowledgment of the pre-existing, fully coordinated and federally funded federal, state and local pandemic virus operations plans that many Governors and their bureaucracies either ignored or, more likely, had never read much less exercised. Try to find in today’s press any reference to the state emergency stockpiles that those plans mandated other than fiercely criticizing Jared Kushner for daring to bring up the subject.
There are rays of light with some Governors taking responsibility. The LA Times reported :
“Gov. Gavin Newsom said California will significantly increase COVID-19 testing capabilities, adding that he “owns” testing lapses in the state that have made it difficult to track the deadly virus. In a Saturday news conference, Newsom announced a task force that he said will work toward a five-fold increase in daily testing in the state by identifying supply shortages and adding testing locations.”[1]
Newsom wants a progressive revolution in politics, but at least he is accepting and acting on the Constitutional responsibilities of his job. Would that we could hear that declaration of responsibility or planning from Governor Northam.
We will face in the fall elections and next year’s federal and state legislatures a full-scale attempt to socialize and control the nation, the states, and free people everywhere, all in the name of being ready for another COVID-19. Discussions of the constitutionality of the transformation will be muted in the mainstream press as it was with the ACA, whose foundational provision that required Americans to buy something they did not want was a near certainty to be struck down, as it was.
Discussions of the competence and suitability of federal or state bureaucracies to shoulder the new policy loads will be suppressed in favor of discussions of the brilliant faculty lounge quarterbacks who will lead them, not the expanded armies of public servants who will have to do the blocking and tackling.
It will be a bold lie — the Left’s passion for government control of every aspect of life predated both the 20th century and the current pandemic – but it is coming. It will constitute the political battle of our lifetimes.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-04/gavin-newsom-california-coronavirus-testing-task-force
