Happily Ever After

The last time I babysat my younger grandchildren, we watched one of those age-appropriate Hollywood fairy tales where the good guy defeats the bad guy and then the story ends because—it is understood by all, even five-year olds—that everyone will now live happily ever after.

 Many Americans apply that simple fantasy to politics: once we elect the “good guy,” the story’s over. If we’ve elected the “bad guy,” the story’s still over, but with an unhappy ending.  This childlike belief explains much irrationality on both the right and left a scant year after Obama’s election.  

 Tea party “patriots” and the right-wing fringe are screaming that health-care reform is a Nazi plot and Obama will single-handedly destroy America. Their left-wing counterparts charge Obama with “selling out” to the power structure because he has yet to fulfill all his campaign promises or solve all of America’s problems.

 This may come as something of a shock to both groups, but real life doesn’t work that way. Changing the course of institutions—particular large, entrenched ones—is extremely difficult. Systems matter, and they can favor or smother efforts to change direction for good or ill.

Constitutional constraints on government power are important in a nation that values the rule of law. As the old saying goes, one person’s accountability is another’s red tape. Achieving a workable balance is an ongoing challenge. But political systems also create roadblocks that are neither constitutionally required nor democratically sound.

Let me offer a very few examples.

Gerrymandering frustrates efforts to create a more competitive political playing field, and protects incumbents from constituents who want to retire them. In the Senate, filibusters—as we have seen—allow legislative minorities to frustrate the efforts of majorities, even when those majorities represent overwhelming percentages of the population. Our system gives every state, no matter how thinly or densely populated, two Senators. You can argue the pros and cons of such a system, but love it or hate it, it’s the system we have. As a result, a couple hundred voters from Montana have the power to frustrate a million from California or Texas. One Joe Lieberman can frustrate an entire nation.

The Senate also observes quaint and arguably indefensible “traditions” like the one that allows any Senator to put a hold on any Presidential nomination for any reason. Recently, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl decided to show his displeasure with a delay in the enforcement of internet gambling prohibitions. So he put a hold on six of the Administration’s pending nominations to fill positions in the Treasury Department. No one has a problem with the people who’ve been nominated, mind you. But because Jon Kyl wants action on internet gambling, the Treasury Department is operating without needed management personnel during a global economic meltdown.

The moral of this story? Systems matter, and many of ours are broken.

As a result, even when a “good guy” wins, “happily ever after” is likely to fall far short of our fantasies.

This Was a SCIENCE Teacher??!

According to the New York Daily News, a Brooklyn principal has reprimanded a sixth-grade teacher for selling students a book that tells how to “recognize those serving Satan and bring them to Jesus.”

Steven Arizmendi sold “He Came to Set the Captives Free” to four of his students at Junior High School 220 in Sunset Park for $5 apiece. The science teacher also loaned copies of the evangelical novel to eight students.

Fact-Check the Talking Heads

One of the most persistent complaints about broadcast journalism–a complaint that comes from both left and right–is the practice on shows like Meet the Press, Face the Nation, This Week, etc. of asking questions of their guests, allowing those guests to answer, and then moving on to the next question. The hosts rarely  challenge even the most obvious fabrications, exaggerations and spin. They rarely follow up a question with another, deeper one.

These exercises do little more than allow politicians to pontificate. They reiterate their talking points, confident that they will not be called out. Jay Rosen has a better idea:

NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen tweeted an idea about improving the Sunday morning talk shows. He says the programs, rather than letting politicians get away with distortions, should offer an online fact check each week of exaggerations and lies. For the guests, says Rosen, the format beckons them to evade, deny, elide, demagogue and confuse, but then they pay for it later if they give into temptation and make that choice. 

Something along these lines would certainly do wonders for the credibility of our increasingly feckless pundits.

Defining “Wasteful” Spending

The charge that government wastes money (or “throws money at problems) is a favorite accusation of politicians of all persuasions. Certainly, lawmakers should refuse to fund activities that have been shown not to work. But as Steve Benen points out, the definition of waste generally owes more to ideology than evidence.

A Perfect Storm

Sometimes, a “perfect storm” of problems forces us to make much-needed changes that are politically impossible in normal times. Perhaps—just perhaps—this is one of those times when we can use a few of the fiscal lemons we are being handed to make policy lemonade.

Storm number one is revenue. Indiana is in a world of fiscal hurt. Tax receipts are well below the levels that would allow us to keep state spending flat, and the cuts that have already compromised many essential services are now slicing education funding. Public universities are hurting, but by far the most damage will be done to public K-12 schools that are already struggling. As Matt Tully has reminded us in his outstanding series about Manual High School, these schools have virtually no human or fiscal resources to fall back on. They face enormous challenges, and we have an obligation to help them meet those challenges. It’s not only the right thing to do, our civic self-interest requires it.

Storm number two is costs. Which brings me to the Star’s recent report on the pay and perks of area school superintendents.  

Let me be clear: I’m not begrudging the superintendents their compensation, nor criticizing the school boards who are paying them. I understand the competitive pressures that have brought us to a point where a superintendent’s compensation package in even a small district runs upward of 200,000.

What I don’t understand is why Marion County needs eleven of them.

The entire student population of Marion County today is less than the enrollment of IPS in 1967. Logic says it should not take eleven superintendents, eleven assistant superintendents, eleven curriculum directors, eleven lunchroom operations, eleven bus systems and eleven school boards –together with the costs of clerical staffs and physical facilities to house them all—to educate those students.

I understand that the politics of consolidating these districts is toxic. The number of interest groups fighting over the diminishing supply of public patronage is huge. Even the Kernan-Shepard Report avoided addressing Marion County’s overabundance of districts, although the principles they endorsed elsewhere certainly apply. And it is certainly true that a legislature without the will to make even the most obvious adjustments to Indiana’s dysfunctional governing apparatus—a legislature unwilling to abolish 1008 unnecessary township trustees and meaningfully reduce the 10,000 plus public officials we pay with our tax dollars—is unlikely to consolidate the administration of Marion County’s schools.

Ideally, the Mayor would provide leadership on this issue. The public schools, as Matt Tully has convincingly demonstrated, are key to our city’s ability to succeed, key to our economic development efforts and our quality of life. Consolidating the bureaucracies—not the schools themselves, but their duplicative administrations—would allow us to free up millions of dollars that could be used to improve what goes on in the classroom. The benefits to the city would be profound, and the message sent would be inspiring.

Stormy times call for something other than patronage as usual.