Public Policy and Governance – Page 339

Hobgoblins of Little Minds

Emerson once declared a “foolish consistency” to be “the hobgoblin of little minds.” Depending upon your definition of “foolish,” I guess that means our legislature is populated by mental giants, undeterred by the inconsistencies that baffle us lesser folks.

On the one hand, members of the General Assembly are mightily exercised over supposed abuses of the power of eminent domain. The trigger for this sudden solicitude was a recent Supreme Court ruling, Kelo v. New London, that left the definition of “public use” up to state legislatures. While reactions to that ruling arguably misread it, the ensuing debate has revolved around the issue of protecting property rights against inappropriate exercises of government power. Reasonable people will differ over what is appropriate, but most of us would agree that protecting private property from government overreaching is important.

On the other hand, the legislature is poised to effect its own “taking,” by issuing regulations that will effectively require abortion clinics to close. They dictate such minutiae as hallway width and room size. Compliance would require clinics to rebuild or relocate, an expense most could not afford. Ignore for the moment another “foolish inconsistency”—i.e., why these “health” regulations, supposedly based on legislative concern for patient safety, are not being applied to other medical facilities, like hospitals or urgent care offices or surgical outpatient clinics. The immediate question that arises is: how can the same lawmakers who have been delivering pious affirmations of private property rights and the sanctity of free enterprise turn around and pass a measure that will put these particular enterprises out of business?

If one were cynical, one might conclude that neither position is principled, and that what we have here is a classic case of pandering to different constituencies, with little regard for the merits or long-term effects of either policy. But I really don’t think that is the explanation. I really think that our lawmakers are oblivious to the inconsistencies in these two positions.

When I was active in the Republican Party, it was the party of limited government. Republicans wanted to keep the government out of your boardroom, your bedroom, and your conscience. Pundits often opine that contemporary Republicans still want government to stay out of the boardroom, but are perfectly happy to regulate your bedroom and your conscience. I don’t think that’s true, either. Today’s GOP is also perfectly willing to infringe your property rights and overrule your business decisions in the interests of morality. Their morality, not yours.

If your moral code says businesses shouldn’t pollute, that is insufficient reason to regulate emissions. If your moral code dictates paying workers a certain minimum wage, that is unwarranted interference with the market. If your moral code says everyone should have access to health care, that’s socialism. But if their moral code says a legal medical procedure is immoral, it is entirely proper to overrule the professional judgment of doctors and nurses, and regulate that business out of existence.

I guess I’m just hung up on “foolish inconsistency.”

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Different Strokes, Same Folks

American public policy is schizophrenic.

I attribute this to our unique history: despite our tendency to think of America as a creation of the Founding Fathers, their generation was preceded by the Puritans and other religious dissenters who first colonized our shores. Constitutional historian Frank Lambert calls those initial settlers the “Planting Fathers,” and reminds us that in the 150 or so years that elapsed between Planters and Founders, the Enlightenment occurred, and dramatically altered prevailing beliefs about government and liberty.

The Puritans defined liberty as “freedom to do the right thing.” (And they, of course, decided what “the right thing” was.) The Founders—influenced profoundly by thinkers like John Locke—defined liberty as freedom to pursue your own life purposes free of state interference, so long as you did not thereby harm the person or property of others. While it was the Founders’ version that informed our constitution and legal system, our Puritan heritage remains alive and well. These two very different notions of what government ought to do have been duking it out in the body politic and even within our individual psyches ever since.

The Puritan approach—sometimes described as an overwhelming fear that someone, somewhere, might be having a good time—gives us laws aimed at making us godly and upright. The Founders’ approach can be seen in the equally wide-spread American attitude of “live and let live.” We still don’t seem to have noticed that the two approaches are largely incompatible.

The result of these warring impulses is a large measure of incoherence in our public policies. To be blunt, we keep shooting ourselves in the foot. On the one hand, most Americans have agreed with the Founders that government—especially at the federal level—should be limited in size and scope. But in order to deal with all those people who stubbornly refuse to do the right thing, we keep giving government new powers and building new bureaucracies. Historians note that, despite the conventional wisdom, big government didn’t begin with FDR and the New Deal; it began with the federal infrastructure we created to enforce Prohibition.

The disconnect is visible everywhere. Americans want freedom of speech—but not freedom to say that! We want freedom of religion—but maybe not for the Wiccans, or the Nation of Islam. We take pride in America’s scientific leadership, but stem cell research isn’t the “right thing,” so we send that research to competitors overseas.

Here in Indiana, some legislators are making noises about requiring schools to teach “Intelligent Design.” These are the same people who tell us that they support home rule and local control of public schools. They are the same people who have enthusiastically endorsed Administration efforts to recruit employers and jobs in the high paying fields of biotechnology and information technology—precisely the employers least likely to locate in a state seen as hostile to science.

One of these days, policymakers are going to have to choose between Enlightenment logic and their inner Puritans.

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Sing Kumbaya

American employers have come to understand that customers come in all religions, genders, races and sexual orientations, and so growing numbers of them have adopted employment policies intended to say "welcome" in whatever language or tradition will open those customers’ pocketbooks. And globalization of business has meant more interaction and familiarity with people who are different from, say, the folks back in Kansas. All this–I once naively believed–would eventually issue in a sort of "Star Trek" era of goodwill, where people of all sorts (eventually, perhaps, even species of all sorts) would live and work together in harmony. Kumbaya and all that.
Continue reading “Sing Kumbaya”

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Revolutionary Fervor

Maybe it’s because we are a country born out of a revolution, but Americans have a decided preference for dramatic change, and little interest in the boring details of our governmental processes.

I thought about that aspect of our national character earlier this month, as I listened to a variety of presentations at the annual Howey Political Forum. The focus was on economic and administrative challenges facing Indiana and proposals for meeting those challenges.

In a forceful speech, Governor Daniels emphasized his commitment to thoroughgoing change, and he ticked off a number of those he intends to pursue: continuing to close underused BMV license branches, privatizing prisons, consolidating school corporations, turning some state highways into toll roads, and several others. He added that “no one should be surprised” by his determination to enact sweeping changes in Indiana’s government, because he had run a campaign in which he’d promised to do just that.

Governor Daniels was absolutely right; he did campaign on a promise of sweeping change. And I suspect that the mantra of change was a very important element in his victory. “It’s time for a change” is a powerful and time-honored theme of American political life. Rather than analyzing what the proposed change will accomplish, and how it will be implemented, Americans have an unquenchable optimism that the new idea will be better than the one it replaced, and the bigger, the better.

This is not to speak to the merits of any of the Governor’s proposals. I agree with some, and disagree with others. But it was hard not to hear in his enthusiastic speech some disquieting echoes of former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, who was often quoted as saying about city government, “If it isn’t broken, break it. Then fix it.” I guess I just want to be sure that what we are undertaking to fix is really already broken.

I also think it is interesting that Republicans and Democrats alike prefer sweeping new measures to the sorts of admittedly boring, incremental improvements that everyone familiar with government thinks we need. During a later panel, Pat Kiely, a former Republican legislator widely respected on both sides of the aisle, talked about one of the enduring frustrations companies encounter when they do business with state government. Most state agencies are organized into regions. This makes sense: why should people in Northwest Indiana, for example, have to come to Indianapolis to deal with a government agency? But as Kiely noted, there is no consistency in either the number of regions or their number. The Indiana Economic Development Commission has six, Workforce Development has eleven, Tourism, six, the State Police, seventeen. There are nine Education Service Centers, four Indiana Housing and Community Development Offices, and three air quality regions. And so on.

Perhaps, before we embark on the really revolutionary changes—like turning our prisons and roads over to corporations—we could rationalize the haphazard mess through which we deliver state services. It wouldn’t be as sexy, but it’s already broken.

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Revolutionary Fervor

Maybe it’s because we are a country born out of a revolution, but Americans have a decided preference for dramatic change, and little interest in the boring details of our governmental processes.

Comments