For the better part of the last year and a half I have been baffled by the obsession with earmarks that has possessed the Republican leadership, conservative pundits and John McCain in particular.  To listen to these people tell it, earmarks are the legislative equivalent of devil-spawn–they are to be targeted for destruction, and they are the reason, perhaps the only reason, why the GOP lost control of Congress.  What is frightening is that I think some of them may believe this.  So, naturally, when McCain chose his soul running mate, a hatred for earmark spending had to be an important part of that person’s record, and this is what McCain and Palin have insisted on telling everyone about her.  There is just one small problem:

For much of his long career in Washington, John McCain has been throwing darts at the special spending system known as earmarking, through which powerful members of Congress can deliver federal cash for pet projects back home with little or no public scrutiny. He’s even gone so far as to publish “pork lists” detailing these financial favors.

Three times in recent years, McCain’s catalogs of “objectionable” spending have included earmarks for this small Alaska town, requested by its mayor at the time — Sarah Palin.

Reliance on federal funds is probably most acute in Western states, which are often among the largest net recipients of federal funding, so it is not surprising that a mayor and governor in a large Western state would look to Congress for appropriations for various projects.  McCain’s hostility to earmarking is typical of a consummate insider and long-time Washington pol who enjoys cultivating an image as a reformer by adopting boutique, process issues as his personal crusades.  In practice, this conflicts rather sharply with the demands of actual constituents, who still operate under the pleasant illusion that the federal government works for them and that it should occasionally return the money that it has confiscated.  In McCain’s eyes, this is wasteful spending, because it does not have anything to do with destroying parts of other countries, since we know that McCain would never be in favor of anything truly wasteful. 

No doubt there are many examples of earmarking that is wasteful and unnecessary, and it would be ideal if Washington had neither the power nor the means to dole out this money, but it would be refreshing if all of these “reformers” could work up half as much anger about the drain on the Treasury caused by unnecessary and unnecessarily prolonged wars as they do about small-scale grants for local infrastructure and transportation.