Former Congressman, Lee Hamilton, has a good column in the Evansville Courier Press on the subject of contradictory constituent demands. Basically, they want more with less and, if sacrifices are necessary, they should be made by someone else. General lobbying demands are at odds with specific demands.
He singled out the Business Roundtable for using anti-deficit rhetoric while “it consistently lobbies for a higher deficit” in the form of corporate tax breaks and infrastructure spending. But the criticism applies equally to all the groups that lobby to help themselves and their members, usually through specific tax cuts or spending initiatives, while expressing concern over the deficit.
To help things a bit, he suggests:
We can do the basic work asked of us by our democracy: Learn our facts, know what’s fact and what’s opinion, keep a broad perspective, understand the overall problem legislators must resolve, remember that what’s good for us might not be good for our neighbors, and think through the implications of our positions.
Good luck with that.
I’ve had the good fortune to be able to spend a little bit of time with Mr. Hamilton this past year. He moved to Bloomington and I’m friends with one of his nephews. I doubt there is anyone in America who better understands the role of government, or what we should expect from those who choose to be public servants. Lee Hamilton is a great man.
The problem is that “facts” are not what we think that they are. Many of our issues are nebulous, at best. Facts are not clear, and there is not clear course of action.
I think that in such an environment, it is best to be very skeptical of political action in and of itself. It’s like trying to drive blindfolded. How’s that going to work out for you?
“Many of our issues are nebulous, at best. Facts are not clear, and there is not clear course of action.”
But honestly, couldn’t any generation in our nation’s history say the same thing and be correct? Yet somehow compromise in reaching solutions seems to have been a more regular part of the national way of doing things.
I’m as befuddled on this any everyone else seems to be.
As to the lack of compromise; it’s the Prisoner’s Dilemma. If the other guy isn’t going to punish you, the smart money is on behaving badly.
Don, the scope of what people wanted to do in the past was more modest, and the problems more clear.
And, let’s be honest, a lot of the compromises made in the past were poor. I mean, how did the War on Poverty work out for us? War on Drugs? War on Cancer? How many successes do we have there?
I’ll ever grant the liberals that the real wars of the last 60 years have not worked out the way anyone thought that they would. Perhaps we should be much, much more skeptical of military power as well.
We are very naive about what can be achieved through the political process. In most cases, I think we are better off letting problems solve themselves.