COLUMN LEFT/ LEONARD FEIN : Perot, the Privatizer of Government : We’re mired in the deluded belief that a good “mechanic” can fix what ails us.

The frustration and the anger of the voters are readily understood. But why Ross Perot? What is it about this man whom we scarcely know that has so suddenly commended him to so many as the one to fix what ails us?

It came to me recently, with the announcement of Benno Schmidt’s retirement from the presidency of Yale University to take charge of an ambitious schools project intended to prove that private industry can do what government has allegedly failed to do: Perot is merely the latest example of the world-wide rush toward privatization.

We have contracted the management of jails and the collection of trash, along with a hundred other functions, to private enterprise. Now, apparently, we seek to contract the management of government itself. Yes, there’ll be an election; the rules require it. But the election is essentially beside the point. What we want is precisely what Perot proposes to be--a hired mechanic to fix the faulty engine.

One might suppose that if it’s qualified mechanics of government we think we need, we’d be looking for them within the chambers of government, where most of them hang out. But since Jimmy Carter’s campaign of 1976, the winning candidates for President have run against the government, have maligned the “system” and its managers. You simply cannot tell the people quadrennium after quadrennium that the government is rotten without reaping the conclusion we now observe: a cynical belief that government is inept, bloated, corrupt, insolent; its personnel no more than venal hacks responsive only to sinister special interests. The public sector is inherently incompetent; our salvation cometh from the private sector.

This insidious teaching, raised to an art by Ronald Reagan, embraced so tightly by George Bush that, in a blatant example of chutzpah, he now prepares to use it again, was given a mighty boost with the fall of communism, widely interpreted as proof of the sanctity of free markets. So now “privatization” has become a global mantra, nostrum for the ills of Albania and Poland and Israel and Ghana and the United States of America alike.

We may infer that Ross Perot regards himself as qualified for the presidency, that “dirty, thankless job” (his words), largely as a consequence of these twin trends. Does he not promise that he will “turn our kids into taxpayers,” as if our children were profit centers for the business called government? Another candidate might have expressed the hope that our kids will become citizens, in something like the classic sense. Perot’s instincts evidently run in a different direction; given his own background and the current reverence for privatization, who can blame him?

The irony is that our disposition to turn to the private sector to fix what doesn’t work has little basis in our experience. The broken health-care system, after all, is largely a private-sector system. The automobile industry is the leaking flagship of the private sector. The fracture of our savings and loan institutions was compounded as government regulation eased. And, as to corruption, neither the Wall Street scandals nor the record of the defense industries gives us any reason whatever to believe that venality is more likely to infect and afflict our public servants than the captains of our industries.

On the other side of the ledger, there’s this: Are our public institutions of higher education notably less efficient and effective than our private institutions? No body of evidence suggests they are.

In short, there doesn’t seem to be any correlation, one way or the other, between which sector manages the task and a successful outcome. But if that’s the case, why not call a time-out and give Perot and the private sector a chance? Once the stables are cleaned, we can invite the donkeys and the elephants back in, resume the game.

Why not? Because the method of government is politics, not mechanics. There are no pit stops for a free and self-governing people, for the good reason that there is no master mechanic who can retune our engine while we stand aside. If there were, democracy would be a charade. Why bother with the messy drama of democracy if, just offstage, there stands one who already knows the answers for which we vainly grope, one who only waits our call to come and save us?

No, there’s only us: stumbling, fallible, contentious and free. For us to take Chapter 11 on the government--on our government, confessing its bankruptcy and asking that it be placed in receivership--would be a sorry concession of defeat by a people who would stay free.