Fault Line

Yesterday I received a short email from an apparent Senate staffer. I don't know if the email is legit. It came from a personal account, but contained enough detail for me to judge the substance worthy of at least passing along. The emailer said that his office has been pressured to oppose the Fed audit to a degree that his boss considers unprecedented and highly inappropriate. I'll see if I can get more details and/or permission to repost the email. I know this blog has a good number of congressional staffers as readers, so maybe there are others with similar experiences to report. But the question is unavoidable now: why the frantic desperation about a bit of important but otherwise arcane, innocuous GAO oversight? What must be concealed at all costs?

One of the reasons the proposed audit is so interesting is the overt reaction it has prompted from some powerful interests that have always preferred the shadows and depended on secrecy. These interests have long been able to count on proxies in Washington to keep them in those shadows and to perpetuate that secrecy. As an indication of their reach, they have now flipped and co-opted a president who was elected after famously proclaiming, "In just 15 days, you and I can begin to bring some badly needed sunshine to Washington, D.C. Power concedes nothing without a fight."

The audit is a fault line, the ultimate battleground between that entrenched power and new post-crash political exigencies. The events and revelations of the past two years ruptured and rendered untenable a tacit dynamic that, except for brief periods like the early 1930's, had been in place for a large part of this country's history. Which politicians still don't fully understand that, or can be counted on or sufficiently intimidated to ignore it? Who will flout public outrage and risk electoral consequences by doing so? This is part of what makes this issue so fascinating and important.