Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

This is the time of year when I envy colleagues who teach math and science—courses where final examinations are filled with questions to which there are clear right and wrong answers. Students are comfortable with the certainties of such subjects; they have far more difficulty dealing with questions that are often answered—at least in part—with “it depends.”   

 

When undergraduates are told that the “right” answer consists of identifying and analyzing the issue—and not just choosing the correct outcome—they can find it positively disorienting. They tend to want clarity and bright lines–rules that can be memorized and regurgitated. That works when the question is two plus two; it’s dicier for most areas of real life.   

 

Despite all the rhetoric that gets thrown around these days about the differences between conservatives and liberals (whatever meaning those abused terms currently retain), I think it is this discomfort with the ambiguities of reality that best defines the contemporary political divide. Conservatives and liberals may be guided by different philosophies of government and different views of virtue, but most recognize the inherent messiness of life and acknowledge the dangers of too-rigid, too-doctrinaire approaches to our common civic life.

 

There are people of all political persuasions, however, who find the absence of moral certainty unbearable. We all know folks who began their civic life as passionate believers in one “ism” or another, and who reacted to disillusionment by embracing an opposing, equally extreme philosophy. Talk radio and shout television programs are filled with ex-communists who have fervently embraced right-wing dogma. Bookstore shelves display manifestos by former right-wing activists now devoted to unmasking the agendas of their erstwhile culture-war colleagues.

 

These are people who find the inevitable ambiguities of real life not just distasteful, but terrifying. Much like those ex-cons who can’t cope with life outside the predictability of prison structure and who purposely re-offend in order to be sent back, they need the psychic comfort that comes with imposed discipline—no matter how confining.

 

For better or worse, however, political and civic life requires compromise. Thoughtful conservatives, libertarians and liberals can generally find some common ground that makes governing possible. They understand that no one gets his own way all the time, and that an acceptable middle-ground is no small achievement in a society as diverse as ours. Zealots, however, find compromise not just distasteful, but evil. They don’t acknowledge the ambiguities; they not only don’t see shades of gray or moral complexity, they believe that people who do are the “real” enemy.

 

This dynamic plays out on both sides of the political spectrum, but in Indiana it has been most notable in the Republican primaries of recent years, where moderately conservative lawmakers have been defeated by people campaigning on the proposition that moderation itself is evil. Larry Borst and Bob Garton were not defeated by opponents debating the nuances of policy. They were victims of holy wars.

 

And even undergraduates understand that holy wars will ultimately victimize us all.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of our current political leaders is their willingness to lecture the rest of us on the importance of morality. Whether it is a self-righteous diatribe about a “culture of life” or an insistence on “abstinence-based” sex education, this fixation on our personal behaviors evidently consumes far more of their time and energy than trying to making health care affordable, or balancing the budget.

 

We’re beginning to see just how “moral” these people who’ve cornered the market on virtue really are.

 

I’m not talking about the morality of things like the war in Iraq, or efforts to deport all illegal aliens, or tax policies that line the pockets of campaign contributors at the expense of the most vulnerable, although those are undoubtedly appropriate topics of discussion. No, I’m talking about the garden-variety, “don’t lie, don’t steal” kinds of morality. How are the guys in charge doing on those homelier virtues?

 

In Congress, the Jack Abramoff scandal has put Republican Congressman Duke Cunningham in prison, and has led to the indictment of so-much-holier-than-thou Tom Delay. As many as twenty more lawmakers may be implicated before it’s all over. Bill (“Terri Schaivo looks fine”) Frist is under investigation for securities fraud.

 

In the Administration of our current moralist-in-chief, we have a bonanza: Scooter Libby has been indicted for felony obstruction of justice (and Karl Rove is still under investigation) in the Valerie Plame “outing.” Domestic policy advisor and self-proclaimed Christian conservative Claude Allen has been arrested for felony shoplifting. White House procurement officer David Safarian has been arrested for corruption. At Homeland Security, the agency created by the President to protect us all from the bad guys, not one but two high-ranking officials have been arrested—one for kiddie porn, and the other for trying to have sex with a 14-year-old he “met” over the internet.

 

These are the guys who have been lecturing us about godliness and morality!

 

Maybe these are just examples of age-old “do as I say not as I do” moral smugness. Or maybe these politicians are using religion and religious folks for cynical political advantage. (A recent study called “False Promises” accuses the GOP of deliberately using homophobia to win support from African-Americans; others have suggested that immigration fears are being used in 2006 in much the same way gays were used to mobilize the Republican base in 2004.) Whatever the explanation, the consequences for the country are nothing short of appalling.

 

These Republican leaders have used the language of morality to set American against American. The older rhetoric of “we the people” has been eclipsed by dark references to “them” and “us.” Now, as these favorites of the Religious Right turn out to be considerably less than godly, Americans are reacting by becoming more cynical. As GOP apologists claim “everybody does it,” many citizens assume that’s true. It isn’t—but the perception is profoundly corrosive of trust, and without trust, democratic government cannot endure.

 

It’s enough to give morality a bad name.

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If I were one of those Christians who believed in the Rapture, I have to admit it would be looking pretty imminent.

 Every time I think things can’t get any grimmer, they seem to: we’ve got global warming (yes, Mr. President, whether you think so or not—one aspect of that inconvenient thing called reality) melting the polar icecaps and threatening to inundate the coasts; more and more people are dying in Iraq, while the Iraqi “government of national unity” shows none of the characteristics of government or unity; the deficit is so big even my great-grandchildren won’t be able to pay it at this rate; Congress wants to round up all the immigrants (except for their grandparents, of course) and expel them; our shortsighted energy policies are getting ready to bite us in the you-know-where…and of course, all of these problems, and any others you can think of, are clearly the fault of the powerful, rich ho-mo-sexual (drool and sneer when you say that) lobby. (We’ve gotta do something about them queers, you know.)

 Sometimes, it really doesn’t seem worth getting out of bed in the mornings.

 I do try to look on the bright side. Honest. Okay, so the sea waters rise three feet—I always wanted to live by the ocean, and pretty soon, Indiana will have a beach! No oil? I always worry when my kids and grandkids drive, and pretty soon, they won’t be able to. What a relief! I don’t have to worry about war with China, because China obviously decided some time back to just buy America instead…..and now that they own all our debt, there’s no reason to invade. And the President assures us that things in Iraq are really just peachy—if the liberal media would just concentrate on covering school openings instead of suicide bombings, we’d all feel better.

 Okay—so I’m not too good at looking on the bright side.

 I would really love to live in the alternate universe that so many of our fellow-citizens evidently inhabit, but I can’t seem to summon up the will power to do that. I keep bumping into hard-working immigrants who just want a chance to make a better life for their kids, or gay neighbors who just want the same rights everyone else has, or people who just want the environment to be clean for their children to grow up in.  I keep encountering reality.

 A lawyer I worked with early in my career used to say that at the end of the day, everything boils down to one question: What should we do? I think that may be the question for our time.

 If you live in what some of us have taken to calling “the reality-based community,” what should you be doing? (Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that you have decided against just drinking yourself into a stupor, screwing yourself to death, or finding a deserted tropical island somewhere.) What are the options available?

 I think we have to send a message to the people who are running things. That’s not just the people who hold political office; it’s also the people who pay the lobbyists who bribe the people who work for the people in office. I think we send our message two ways: first, by refusing to spend our dollars—to the extent possible—with those who support the current regime; and second, by working as hard as we can to vote out the current crop of officeholders.

 Is Company A refusing to fill prescriptions for the morning-after pill? Okay—but I don’t have to shop at Company A. Is Company B supporting homophobic candidates, advertising on Pat Robertson’s television network, or otherwise enabling the dark side? Fine, but they’ll do it without my patronage.

 Is the Republican leadership in Congress intent upon dictating my religion, my sex life, my procreation and the way I express my patriotism? Are they supporting a President who routinely and brazenly breaks America’s laws? Are they contemptuous of the very people they are pandering to? Then let’s do our damnedest to throw them out—so we can start cleaning up the mess they’ve made.

 Now that would cheer me up!

 

 

 

  

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We have just “celebrated” the third anniversary of our invasion of Iraq.

 

Some wars, regrettably, are necessary. Iraq was not such a war. It was a war of choice, impelled by ideology and sold to Americans (wittingly or unwittingly) under false pretenses. Worse yet, it was justified by appealing to our fears—fears of “the other,” fears of terrorism, fears of impotence.

 

The choice to send our young people into combat in an unnecessary war of choice was reprehensible. But the incompetence with which the conflict was planned and executed was even more reprehensible.

 

Expert advice was disregarded. It’s obvious that none of the decision-makers in the Administration had bothered to learn what the region’s history had to teach. We sent courageous and patriotic young Americans into a quagmire that was eminently foreseeable to anyone who was not willfully blind—and thanks to criminally misplaced priorities, we sent them there without proper equipment and supplies. There has been plenty of money for Halliburton and other contractors, but not enough for bullet-proof vests or Hummer armor.

 

After each setback, the Administration and its apologists have said “no one could have known.” No one anticipated the looting that occurred in the wake of our initial attack; no one anticipated the insurgency; no one anticipated the civil war that rages there now. But people did anticipate every one of these things. They wrote articles and editorials warning about every one of them. I wrote some of them myself. Government experts wrote memos that warned about these dangers and many others in great detail. The Administration was warned about precisely what has happened—just as it was warned that Hurricane Katrina could cause the dykes to fail.

 

In his pursuit of some grandiose “crusade,” Bush has mortgaged our future, and diverted national resources that were desperately needed here at home. Our crumbling roads, our impoverished urban school systems, our embarrassing national health care system, and our neglected national parks all could have benefited from the nearly one trillion dollars his foolhardy, unnecessary and arrogant unilateralism has cost us. 

 

What do we have to show for the young lives and money he has squandered?

 

We are less safe than we were; Iraq was not a sanctuary for terrorists before the war, but it is now. Our standing in the world community has never been lower. Our citizens are angrier and more polarized than ever. And worst of all, our belief in our own inherent goodness—the belief that America is not an aggressor nation—has been profoundly shaken.

 

I don’t know what we do now. Colin Powell was right when he warned about “the Pottery Barn rule.” We broke it, and we have a moral obligation to help fix it. Whether that is best done by leaving immediately or staying longer, I simply don’t know. What I do know is that this “adventure”—undertaken by a fatally incompetent and uncomprehending President—has damaged our country profoundly, and it will take a long time to recover.

 

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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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