Frank Should Sic Semper His Temper

Last seen inveighing against the free market for the scourge of surrogate motherhood, Thomas Frank is now blaming the entrepreneurial spirit for Gov. Blago's alleged criminality.

Frank writes:

"Blago's alleged acts bring us face-to-face with what's wrong with American politics, and this time it can't just be brushed off as part of a Republican "culture of corruption." It goes far deeper than that. The rot is structural; it is trans-partisan; and it stinks to high heaven.

"So let President-elect Obama recruit a thousand Patrick Fitzgeralds. Let him turn them loose on Chicago, on Washington, and on every corner of public life where the market-based ideal still survives. Sic semper tyrannis."

But how do we know the prosecutors recruited by Mr. Obama won't be subject to the same human flaws as Gov. Blago. How do we know we won't get a thousand power-mad Eliot Spitzers?

Frank misidentifies the problem here and rather badly.

What is wrong with American politics is that human beings are involved in them. And that is not fixable.

Frank seems to be forgetting that Blago got caught. He got caught because the system sometimes works. Because men as venal and greedy as Blago have a hard time concealing from others there true natures. We have prosecutors and cops to catch such people when they break the law but we will never catch them all.

America has always had it share of theives in high places, con artists, hucksters and snake oil salesmen.

Read Brock Pope's excellent "Charlatan: America's Most Danger Huckster, The Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam." You will quickly realize, with the mortgage loan business meltdown and guys like Bernard Madoff stealing $50 Billion, we still live in such an age.

We probably always will, no matter how many laws we pass, zealous prosecutors we hire or cops we put on the street.

Frank is the flip side of an anarchist.

An anarchist looks at politicians like Blago and says "See, government is the problem. Get rid of it and the problem goes away."

Frank wants more and more powerful government. It is not only the Blagos he wants pursued, he would love to see a thousand more prosecutors let loose on those in private enterprise. Because somewhere someone is getting away with something.

Blago isn't a tyrant. He's a crook, a foul-mouthed crook on the public dole and he's going down like one.

We don't need a thousand John Wilkes Booths assassinating imagined tyrants. And Frank is fool for thinking we do.