Imagine, if you will, what would happen if a federal agency took it upon itself to spend taxpayer money to influence state-level elections, campaigning and spending federal money for partisan political objectives. Compound this with the fact that said agency would not only distort the facts on the taxpayer dime, but flout both the state’s election laws as well as federal prohibitions for agencies to engage in campaigns of “publicity or propaganda.”

One might imagine the reaction against such a rogue agency to be a severe reprimand of the offending individuals involved, if not firing them outright. Now instead, imagine the government’s oversight agency said that such practices were acceptable — and in fact were even part of the agency’s job.

Of course, one need not hypothesize at all — all of this has already happened. On Nov. 1, 2002, the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s Deputy Director for State and Local Affairs Scott Burns went on a taxpayer-funded campaign of politicking and misrepresentation, urging state-level law enforcement officers and prosecutors in a mass-mailed letter to “take a stand” against local-level ballot initiatives dealing with the reform of marijuana laws. His letter went to the heights of absurdity in attempting to make such claims as, “the truth is that marijuana and violence are linked.”

When Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) complained to the General Accounting Office about what appeared to be a gross impropriety by a federal agency by engaging in partisan campaigning, the GAO’s response — citing such precedent as a 1976 pro-nuclear pamphlet riddled with half-truths and misleading statements that was ruled by the GAO to be “propaganda” — was simply that such rules don’t apply.

Rather, they claimed the ONDCP’s statutory mandate includes “taking such actions necessary to oppose efforts to legalize certain controlled substances such as marijuana.” In other words, a federal agency’s proscribed mandate includes using taxpayer money to contravene the democratic process in order to maintain a specific political agenda.

Yet the GAO’s response does not stop there — they specifically respond to Paul’s objection to the ONDCP’s distortion by once again citing their congressional mandate — to do anything and everything within their ability to prevent changes in laws concerning “certain controlled substances” — even if it means distortion or outright lying to do so.

Such a response is, of course, beyond belief for anyone who seriously believes in the democratic process. A federal agency engaging in outright partisan campaigning smacks of the same kind of deplorable and corrupt practices routinely condemned in places such as Cuba and the former Soviet Union, where such methods are simply a larger part of engineering elections whose outcome has been determined by the state from the outset. For a federal agency to seek the same outcome by manipulating the democratic process hardly seems different in this respect.

Of course, there are those who see no problem with what the ONDCP is doing. Yet for political conservatives who would consider actions of the ONDCP unobjectionable, they may want to consider the consequences of such a policy when the shoe is on the other foot.

For example, what if a more liberal administration financed its own campaign through its own federal agency of choice to lobby against the passage of amendments defining marriage as a heterosexual institution in state constitutions, or perhaps sought the defeat of candidates opposed to abortion? Certainly then there would be outrage from conservatives — and justly so.

In both cases, the offenses are the same — outright hostility towards the tradition of federalism coupled with outright partisan campaigning by the government, financed without the consent and over the objections of those who would oppose its message, a practice more at home with the corrupt communist-era propaganda machines than the liberal democratic republic we are purported to be.

Whatever one’s opinion may be on the merits of the War on Drugs, to allow government agencies the unlimited mandate to spend taxpayer money with the intent of deception and partisan campaigning runs counter to the roots of what our democracy stands for. To turn a blind eye to the abuses of government power today when one may find it favorable is to invite abuses tomorrow on terms one may find much less agreeable.