Monthly Archives: March 2013

Countdown

Warning: if you are in a good mood, skip this post, because I’m finding it very hard not to be depressed by the constant reminders of of American institutional dysfunction.

Everywhere you look, there are people who should know better engaging in self-defeating behaviors and magical thinking, fiddling while America burns. I’ve tried to examine the unease I’ve been feeling–the growing anxiety that I’ve been experiencing. Until yesterday, however, I couldn’t put my finger on it–couldn’t find an analogy that fit.

Yesterday, it came to me: we’re on the self-destruct countdown.

Those of you who are Star Trek fans will understand the reference. Spaceships in science fiction always come equipped with a self-destruct sequence, to be used as a last resort to keep the ship from falling into enemy hands. Typically, the captain and first officer will enter their codes into the computer, signaling their agreement to begin the countdown; the dramatic tension comes as the computer’s disembodied voice counts down the minutes until the ship will explode and kill all the crew and passengers.

On television, of course, the bad guys are thwarted in the nick of time, and the destruct sequence is aborted (usually with mere seconds to spare).

We’re not on television, however, and a real countdown clock is ticking. Unless we do something pretty soon to change our trajectory, we stand a good chance of destroying the America we’ve known–the America with a robust middle class, a functioning government and a belief in its ability to meet daunting challenges like those posed by climate change, technology and globalization.

Yesterday’s post was a pretty graphic demonstration of the way in which wealth is currently distributed in the U.S. There’s ample evidence that disparities of this magnitude are profoundly destabilizing–that left unaddressed, they are inconsistent with a functioning democracy. Too many lawmakers in Washington and state capitols around the country are partisan, inept, or lightly tethered to reality–and the result is government that is so broken that no one trusts it anymore.

This paralysis–this inability of American government to act on behalf of the common good–is our self-destruct countdown.

It’s maddening, because there are so many positive elements of American society. I look at my students, and I’d be proud to turn the country over to them; they are thoughtful, inclusive, determined to contribute to their communities. I look at what science and technology have accomplished, and I marvel at the human ingenuity that has made life better for millions of people. Our arts communities are vibrant. Our universities are adding to the sum of human knowledge.

The thing is, all of those social goods require a functional infrastructure: government. And ours is on self-destruct.

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While We Are Wringing Our Hands….

While we wait for the impact of sequestration to hit, we might ponder this: In an interview with Spiegel Online, a Harvard economist insisted that we could save an amount equal to the sequestration cuts every year  just by ending the War on Drugs.

“The prohibition of drugs is the worst solution for preventing abuse,” said Professor Jeffrey Miron. “Firstly, it brings about a black market that is corrupt and costs human lives. Secondly, it constrains people who wouldn’t abuse drugs. Thirdly, prohibiting drugs is expensive.”

I have made this point before.

The direct costs of our counterproductive drug war have been estimated at more than 60 billion dollars a year. And yet, in all the years we have pursued this war, we have not reduced the percentage of Americans using hard drugs. Instead, that sixty billion dollars a year has destroyed lives, incentivized criminal activity, increased police corruption, laid waste to several South American countries, and decimated inner city neighborhoods.

If our elected officials are really so intent upon reducing the national debt, wouldn’t it make more sense to stop spending enormous sums for a failed policy, and use at least some of the savings for treatment? Better still, we could legalize marijuana–which medical experts tell us is less dangerous than booze–and tax it.

I don’t know whether we’d save more than the sequester, but abandoning a failed, horrifically expensive program would be a far more rational approach than taking an indiscriminate, meat ax approach to the budget.

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Worthwhile Reminders

I finally got around to reading “Healing the Heart of Democracy” by Parker Palmer yesterday, and was struck by his observation that it isn’t disagreement that makes our politics so contentious–it is demonization.

Back in the day, as they say, I remember Dick Lugar responding to challenges by saying “That’s an issue upon which people of good faith can differ.” By the time he was attacked by Tea Party purists, that simple recognition–that otherwise good people can differ in their analysis of a situation–had become heresy in some precincts.

When we de-humanize those who disagree with us, we make conversation–and conversion–impossible. I’ll grant that some folks are so rigid, so afraid to consider facts that might be contrary to their own worldview, that reasonable debate is not possible. (As a friend of mine used to say, you can’t reason someone out of a position they never reasoned themselves into.) But those tend to be folks on the fringe. When we write off everyone on the other side of an issue, we abandon any possibility of productive discourse.

Alexander Hamilton addressed this very human tendency in Federalist #1: “So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy….In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.”

Later in that same essay, he points out that partisans are unlikely to sway others to their opinions or to increase the “number of their converts” by the “loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invective.”

As difficult as it may be in an era positively dominated by invective and loudness, those of us who care about the conduct of public affairs need to work on substituting vigorous but respectful disagreement for demonization. Otherwise, the public square will be entirely dominated by the “true believers” of all sorts who are so vested in labeling and attacking that they cannot participate in anything remotely resembling democratic discourse.

In an era where every ideologue claims fidelity to the Founders, maybe we should actually listen to one.

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Forgetting the Basics

Back when I first became politically active,and especially after I joined the Hudnut Administration as Corporation Counsel, I was schooled by then-County Chairman John Sweezy. John’s favorite admonition was “Good government is good politics.” For someone serving as the City’s chief lawyer, that meant hiring people because they were best qualified, not because the party “owed” them. A lot of people were disbelieving when I told them that party officials never interfered with such decisions, but it was true. That same adage meant that administrators and City-County Councilors alike should act in the public interest, as they saw that interest.

Much of the long run of GOP dominance in Marion County can be attributed to this very basic premise that voters will reward sound stewardship–that good government is good politics.

I thought about that adage, and my own experience, when I read Charles Blow’s column in this morning’s New York Times. Blow reports on recent Pew polling showing that most Americans have negative opinions of the GOP–62% say the party is “out of touch” with the American people; 52% believe the party is too extreme; only 45% think the party is looking out for the country’s long-term future, and even fewer–39%–believe the GOP is open to change.

There are numerous reasons for these dismal ratings, but the most recent is Congressional Republican willingness to allow the sequester to take effect rather than agree to “revenue enhancements” in the form of either tax increases or the closing of tax loopholes.

An insistence on protecting the pocketbooks of the very wealthy no matter what the consequences for the country as a whole (the Director of the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the sequester could cost 750,000 jobs in 2013) has become the primary image of the GOP. That image of fat-cats and influence-peddlers unconcerned with the circumstances of regular folks is not helped by the party’s other image as culture-war politicians hostile to women’s rights and dismissive of the claims of gay Americans, immigrants and minorities.

The Republican party I served in the 1970s and 1980s didn’t do everything right, but it understood that it was neither good government nor good politics to protect donors’ pocketbooks while disregarding the interests of ordinary citizens. While the party had its share of bigots and misogynists, both the Hudnut Administration and the County party rejected the politics of division and the extremism of the culture warriors, and actively recruited women and minorities. From time to time, I run into old friends from those days, and we bemoan the loss of that Republican party and its civic-minded leadership.

If it is sad to see the Grand Old Party devolving into a group of angry old white heterosexual men, it is profoundly dangerous for the country. The United States needs two reality-based parties. Neither the nation nor the Democratic Party are well-served by the absence of intellectually and morally honest conservative opposition.

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