The student audience, which at first clapped enthusiastically as Reich started to tell his unspeakable “truths” stopped clapping by the end. Reich had uttered the fundamental heresy. You really can’t have something for nothing. Pulling in one direction meant giving way in another. He went on to say that America was hopelessly addicted to fantasy; that anyone who got up on stage and reeled off the points he had made was politically dead.
Although I may disagree with many of the public policy positions that Robert Reich takes, his point that the truth makes piss-poor politics seems valid. Things come down to choices: lower costs versus death panels; torture versus intelligence; equity versus growth. And politicians, ever eager to garner votes, never want to say this. They will always try to have it both ways. Even when politicians choose one road over the other, they take pains to suggest they are simultaneously proceeding down two paths. One can disagree with the choices Reich makes but he is right to say that choices are unavoidable.
Yes, “progressives” do seem to be allergic to truth, and reality.
Look, I’d be the very first to admit that as individuals we all do, indeed, need to make tough choices. And if we, as individuals, bullshit ourselves like politicians into thinking we need not — we can have our cakes and eat them too — well of course that way lies disaster, and so not many people actually do it. People are often fairly realistic about the choices they face, as individuals.
Which brings me to the larger point. The real take-away lesson from the empirical fact that politicians always bullshit you is not to imagine that this proves we need a better class of politician. There isn’t one. We’ve got the best the human race can produce. Dreaming of the One True Party, dedicated only to selfless service, incorruptible, or the Dear Leader wise enough to talk everyone into lovely consensus, is just the usual tired old route to the sociological crack habit of Caesarism and, ultimately, self-destruction.
No, the genuine real lesson here, the lesson of Madison and Jefferson, is that you should never give politicians the job of making tough decisions, the decisions that you personally must make every day. Give them only “decisions” that have such obvious correct answers — Should we imprison murderers? Yes! Should we standardize weights and measures? Sure! What about an excise tax to pay for a Coast Guard? No brainer! — so that politicians have no need, really, to bullshit us, since only crazies would be on the other side of the issues.
Make all of life’s tough decisions, about life and death and going to college and what kind of job to get and how to save for retirement yourself, or in cooperation with those you know and trust, and you can be pretty confident you won’t be bullshitted. Farm them out to someone else and you will always be sorry. That’s the important message about the obvious and perennial mendacity of politicians.
This is the reason I would support a Constitutional amendment empowering 20% of Congress can repeal laws but require 75% to pass them. Especially tax laws.
My thinking goes, if you can’t get 75% of the people on board, it really isn’t in the national interest; and the same if 20% of the people think it’s a bad idea.
Brock, your numbers leave open the possibility that 75% of Congress will enact a law, which four-fifths of the remaining 25% will promptly repeal, which the aforementioned 75% will promptly re-enact, which…
Hmmm. They’ll be so busy reversing one another they won’t be able to get anything else done.
I like it.
Well, for most really tough issues, the Founders set up a basis for amending any and all parts of the Constitution itself–we could turn the country into a theocratic monarchy overnight if there was a broad enough support for doing it. Not satisfied yet, they also passed 10 amendments right off the bat–the last of which stated that any power that wasn’t specifically listed in the Constitution or its amendments, was outside the scope of the federal government’s powers. Period.
Unfortunately, the federal government itself has decided that those words don’t mean what they say, and has subsequently taken on a vast array of powers that are either unlisted or flatly contradicted by the Constitution.