A "Goo-Goo" ???

I learned that term this morning from Paul Krugman's excellent OpEd column and is a century-old term for "good government" types, reformers opposed to corruption and patronage. And according to Krugman, Franklin Roosevelt was a goo-goo extraordinaire. He simultaneously made government much bigger and much cleaner. I think we all have hopes the Obama will do the same thing.

Krugman also points out that the Bush Administration offers a spectacular example of non-goo-gooism, because the Bushies didn't have to worry about governing well and honestly. Even when they failed on the job (as they did and continue to do so often), they could claim that very failure as vindication of their anti-government ideology, a demonstration that the public sector can't do anything right.

Obama and his administration, on the other hand, will find itself in a position very much like that facing the New Deal in the 1930s.

Like the New Deal, the incoming administration must greatly expand the role of government to rescue an ailing economy. But also like the New Deal, Obama team faces political opponents who will seize on any signs of corruption or abuse -- or invent them, if necessary, in an attempt to discredit the administration's program.

Roosevelt managed to navigate these treacherous political waters safely, greatly improving government's reputation even as he vastly expanded it. As a recently published study by the National Bureau of Economic Research puts it "Before 1932, the administration of public relief was widely regarded as politically corrupt," and the New Deal's huge relief programs "offered and opportunity for corruption unique in the nation's history." Yet "by 1940, charges of corruption and political manipulation had diminished considerably."

So, how did Roosevelt manage to make big government so clean?

A large part of it is that oversight was built into New Deal programs from the beginning. The WPA, in particular, had a powerful, independent "division of progress investigation" devoted to investigating complaints of fraud. This division was so diligent that in 1940, when a Congressional subcommittee investigated the WPA, it couldn't find a single serious irregularity that the division had missed.

But the Obama administration and Democrats in general, according to Mr. Krugman, need to do everything they can to build an FDR-like bond with the public. Obama has a high standing in polls based on public hopes that he'll succeed. He will need that even more when things aren't going well.

The Democrats need to pay attention, the push for Caroline Kennedy as senator is just more fuel for the 40 years of conservative propaganda denouncing "liberal elites". And you can be sure that those same critics will be making a really big thing out of Obama's rented Christmas vacation beach home in Hawaii. Isn't it a little strange for those same conservatives who have supported Bush and all the other big spenders and who are responsible for the mess we find ourselves in now are so quick to point these things out?

Fixing the economy is going to take time and, yes, these are the early days, but as Krugman points out, that's precisely the point. The Obama team needs to be thinking now, when hopes are high, about how to accumulate and preserve enough political capital to see the job through.