"Is This What We Deserve? Can't We Do Better?"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“Is This What We Deserve? Can’t We Do Better?”

August 18, 2011

How do these guys sleep at night? There are those who argue that we get what we deserve in our politicians. If that is true, I have lost all self respect and you should too. A few vignettes serve to make the point.

Disagreeing with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s decision to continue the process of quantitative easing is one thing, but to infer that such action may be treasonous, as did Governor Rick Perry, is quite different. It may have been no more than a malapropism, but even so it demonstrates a lack of respect for the office, and indicates an amateur in the business of Presidential politics. He should read the beginner’s instruction manual for Presidential candidates. First, open mouth; second, remove foot; third, speak. Michelle Bachman’s list of misquotes runs from the dumb to the ludicrous. She mistook Concord, New Hampshire for Concord, Massachusetts and claimed the President “released all the oil from the strategic oil reserve” when the actual number was four percent. She also informed her followers that the Lord says to wives: “Be submissive” [Ms. Bachman, though, must have been granted dispensation from this requirement] and she claims gay marriage is an “earthquake issue.” If gay marriage is an earthquake issue, one wonders what she would have said had she been President on 9/11 or during the credit crisis of September-October 2008!

Mitt Romney has apparently decided that silence is golden. Like the Lockheed Nighthawk, Mr. Romney slips surreptitiously from caucus state to primary state with barely a murmur from the press. He might be recorded except that his audience is normally asleep by the time he gets to his second sentence. Were it not for Romneycare, nobody would know he was around. Then there is Congressman Ron Paul who makes the mistake of saying what he believes regardless as to who is listening. Voters, conditioned to the lying cynicism of politicians, have a hard time inserting this Libertarian into a hole designed for Republicans.

The President is certainly guilty of misstatements, even when his teleprompter is working. He assumes that the mainstream press will give him a pass, which it almost always does, including such “apolitical” outlets like Bloomberg. In that sense, his facile fabrications are more nefarious. They don’t make him seem mean or stupid, like Mr. Perry’s or Ms. Bachman’s; they are more calculating. The internet is filled with recordings of Mr. Perry’s treating of Mr. Bernanke like Benedict Arnold and of Michelle Bachman making inane comments like telling her followers that the U.S. 2010 census was a “plot.” But little is to be seen of the President claiming “we’ve had a run of bad luck” when referring to the Japanese Tsunami, the “Arab Spring”, or Europe’s debt crisis. It’s as though endogenous factors played no role in our slow economic growth and high unemployment. Mr. Obama seems never to be called out on the fact that he ignored Simpson-Bowles, had his budget in February rejected by the Senate 97-0, or that he has yet to present to the people a concrete plan for dealing with the deficit and tax reform. In contrast to Theodore Roosevelt, Mr. Obama speaks loudly and carries a wiffle bat. John Locke once said: “I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.” In the case of Mr. Obama, there seems little relation between words and deeds.

In Iowa and Illinois, while riding around in his $2 million Canadian-made bus, the President, unless he has had a divine revelation which has gone unrevealed, has been telling a couple of whoppers. After insinuating that he is the only reasonable person in the room (an assertion easily made, but not supported by the facts – there are no “reasonable” people in Washington,) Mr. Obama borrowed a line from President Reagan, suggesting that government should be there to make life easier for business, not impede it or make it more expensive. It was a statement with which most people would agree, yet the reality of Mr. Obama’s actions does not accord with the fiction of his words. The President neglected to mention the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, nor did he mention the Affordable Health Care Act, nor did he express any remorse over the Cap and Trade Bill he attempted, but failed, to push through Congress. And he certainly did not mention the fact that regulatory agencies have seen their budgets expand by 16% since 2008, or that employment within those agencies has risen 13% during the same time, or that 75 new major rules have been imposed in his first 26 months, costing the private sector $40 billion. Distance from the office, he must have determined, would provide cover for the disagreeable truths of his past actions. Of course, he may have felt that duping people is easily done and would warrant no rebuke.

As the secrecy surrounding the mission that killed Osama bin Laden demonstrated, Washington can keep mum when it chooses, but the advent of the internet has had the effect of placing public officials – and in fact all of us – in a fishbowl. Twitter and Facebook appear necessary components for most adults and certainly for anyone under thirty. Anything that we say or do is liable of being recorded. Certainly anything foolish that those on the campaign trail say or do will be on YouTube within moments. Matt Taibbi, in a scintillating but censorious article on Michelle Bachman in Rolling Stone, points out that she is a television camera’s dream – likely to say or do something insane at any moment, the ultimate reality-show protagonist. That raises an interesting question: was it happenstance or coincidence that reality TV arrived the same time as YouTube?

Presidents from George Washington on have had experiences they preferred to keep secret – Washington’s teeth, Jefferson’s dalliances, Lincoln’s depression, Kennedy’s girlfriends. For most of the first 200 years the press played Sancho Panza to the White House’s Don Quixote. However, with Bob Woodward outing Nixon’s lies in 1973 that “era of good feeling” came to an end. Candidates for office enter the imbroglio of a Presidential campaign knowing what may come – that their words and their actions will be available for all to watch. The fact that that does not deter them from dopey statements or outright lies says much about these men and women on whom we lavish millions. But it speaks volumes about us who get what we deserve.

However, with my Panglossian, and perhaps naive, optimism it always seems possible that we will get surprised and that a Jon Huntsman will come from behind, or that a Paul Ryan will pick up the baton.