Good faith is the glue that holds human relationships together. Can you imagine having a friendship where you were not confident your friend would act to support you rather than harm you, treat you honestly rather than dishonestly?
Human relationships also include the relationship between an individual and his government. If the individual does not believe his government will act honestly and in his behalf, he will not trust that government. Why? Because it’s not operating in good faith.
Government depends on voluntary compliance. If the public does not have faith in the government, believe in the government, it will no longer voluntarily comply with what the government demands.
But government depends upon voluntary compliance.
The judicial branch is a good illustration. The Supreme Court does not have an army. Like the other branches, it depends upon voluntary compliance. Of course, it has marshals who arrest those who resist, but that occurs only in a small number of cases. The criminal docket is tiny compared to the civil docket, notwithstanding what television leads you to believe.
Most litigants comply because courts are believed to be dispassionate, fair, balanced, unbiased, and because they offer a rationale for what they do in the form of opinions. The opinions explain why the court reached its result. One may disagree with the result, but even so, the litigant can see the reason for the decision. He believes the court is operating in good faith.
What about congress and the executive branches of government? “Not so much,” to use the current popular expression.
Congress exempted itself from insider trading laws and its members made millions by using their inside information to buy stock, run government projects through their real estate, and sell information to others who used it illegally. See, Schweizer, Throw Them All Out (New York, 2011). When that legal-but-scummy practice was made public, they wrote a new law forbidding the practice they had exploited. And then when the public thought it was safe, the leadership of both houses amended the new law to eviscerate the reporting requirements.
Then there is the whole way congress operates. Back room deals, log rolling, pork, patting each other on the back and celebrating each other’s patriotism, and funding projects that shouldn’t be funded but may get them re-elected. Good faith?
The executive branch is a bit more problematic. When Obama campaigned for office, he promised hope and change. He has been faithful to that promise. The problem, however, is that he was not straightforward about what the change would be. If he had said that he intended to make the country into a socialist state in which the Democratic Party controlled politics by packing the electorate with 20 to 30 million illegal immigrants, all of whom are to made citizens and given Obamacare and other state benefits, he would never have been elected. So he didn’t say that.
We could also talk about the lies in the IRS, Benghazi, Fast and Furious and AP scandals. For example, we could mention high IRS officials taking the Fifth Amendment rather than reveal how high the scandal goes, and we could consider the multitude of stories surrounding Benghazi and that all this occurred just before a presidential election and cost the lives of four Americans.
But you get the point. No one believes in a system operated by people who do not seem to be operating in good faith.
So what does one do, appoint a special prosecutor? Not really. The special prosecutor reports to the president, and we have already witnessed the spectacle of one president, Nixon, firing a special prosecutor he didn’t like.
Maybe we could have the president and congress investigate themselves.
I don’t know what to do, but I do have one suggestion. Let’s stop exporting our form of government around the world as a model of good faith.
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