Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day : The Real Deal on How Politicians, Bureaucrats, and Other Washington Barbarians are Bankrupting America

Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day : The Real Deal on How Politicians, Bureaucrats, and Other Washington Barbarians are Bankrupting Amer Joe Scarborough Date: 07 September, 2004   —   Book product page Rating:

I actually enjoyed this book. I've read other right wing-nut books and they're nothing but irrational hate, but Scarborough's rant -- if you can get past the requisite Clinton bashing -- is pretty coherent. He isn't buying into President Bush's insistence that everything's fine, and he lays out some of the problems confronting the Republican Party today including runaway federal growth and record setting deficits.

Ten years removed from the Republican assault on Capitol Hill, the depressing truth is that the "Marxist" White House of Bill and Hillary Clinton reined in federal spending a hell of a lot better than Armey and all the conservative critics combined, and especially better than our current president.

Lamenting the Republican Party's abandonment of Reagan's small government and less spending ideals (and somehow forgetting that Reagan never lived up to either one) Scarborough blames pork stuffed bills for the explosive growth of debt under Republican rule. Three rounds of irresponsible tax cuts that predominantly favor the rich never get mentioned at all. No surprise there.

What's interesting, though, is that Scarborough wrote a fairly honest assessment of his party's root problems.

Ten years after taking control of Congress, the Republican Party's governing doctrine has morphed from: "The government that governs least governs best" to "The government that's run by Republicans governs best. End of conversation."

Republican Party leaders now pursue power at any cost through lobbyists, corporate welfare, and poorly designed populist programs like the prescription drug fiasco -- and that cost includes an annual half trillion dollar budget deficit and an 8.5 trillion dollar national debt that's forcing us to sell out America to creditors like Japan and China... And Dubai.

Republicans cheering wildly for their team should not fool themselves into believing their agenda is consistent with the values of the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan. It is not. In fact, this most recent fleecing of America is a betrayal of everything the Republican Party has been saying about fiscal discipline since Reagan burst onto the national stage.

After really beating up Republican fiscal infidelity and ethical lapses, Scarborough offers a set of remedies. Unsurprisingly, none of them involve voting for Democrats. That would be too easy. Instead, he offers a set of rule changes very similar to measures that Democrats recently introduced in Congress -- and Republicans subsequently watered down. Who knows, Congressional Republicans may even pass their watered down reforms... but I wouldn't bet money on it.

All in all, it's a good book. Scarborough manages to praise Clinton for balancing the budget while simultaneously bashing him over long discredited stuff, he occasionally gets as self serving as he accuses Clinton of doing in his autobiography, and he still hasn't explained how that dead body got into his Congressional office. But it's a good read and a fairly honest assessment of today's Republican Party -- and a totally dishonest representation of today's Democratic Party. But asking any Republican to honestly portray the Democratic Party is asking too much. I expected that, and was pleasantly surprised by the rest of the book. Enjoy.