Tim Burke has a really good piece up this morning about what’s at stake in the presidential election. Here’s a sample:

Everything that works about institutional life rests on the habitus of professionals, bureaucrats, experts, on whether they are stewards or parasites, whether they recognize the fragile possibility of a better world or are just looting the till, whether they are humble in the face of wider and more distributed experience and knowledge or whether they are contemptuous of anything besides their own immediate power. We all know it: this is Arendt’s banality of evil. We do not need to fear the person at the top, but instead the mass force of institutional action.

Tim seems to argue, as I believe, that the last eight years have uniquely politicized governance. I would only add that part of the reason the last eight years have undermined the ability of the liberal state to govern disinterestedly in this country is that the reins of the state have been in the hands of ideologues who believe neither in disinterestedness nor in governance. One commentator on Tim’s blog argues that the administration previous to the last eight years was similar, in that “The Clintons specialized in . . . the politicization of government activity” as well. Only too true, but the Clinton administration still retained some respect for the liberal state.

Tim references a 60 Minutes piece, broadcast this past Sunday “on the case of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman, who very much appears to have been the target of a Karl Rove operation,” and a Harper’s essay, by Scott Horton, summarizing and commenting on it. I missed 60 Minutes on Sunday, and was glad to see the Horton essay. However, I watched a piece on Missouri public television that I think everybody who believes that the quest for racial equality is completed in this country ought to watch. It’s called “Banished,” part of the Independent Lens series on PBS. Here’s a trailer.

Read Tim’s piece, entitled “We’re Americans First,” here.