Former congressman Tom Allen on the futility of trying to govern from a bipartisan center:
Our debates over particular budget and tax policies, health care, global warming or Iraq were not driven by the details of the legislation. Differences over health care reform became more about the role of government than the critical health care trifecta of cost, coverage and quality. To some, President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq seemed grounded in family history — the failure of his father to “take out” Saddam Hussein. . . .Taxes evoke intense emotions unrelated to their economic consequences. The Republican tax cuts were less connected to an established theory of economic growth than to convictions that tax cuts “pay for themselves” and the government is “too big.” Moreover, the proponents believed that individuals know best how to spend “their own money” — even though individuals don’t generally buy fighter jets or bridges, or spend their money on pensions or health care for people they don’t know.
When the ugly reality becomes too overwhelming, too many of us choose to become fools and retreat into ideological simplifications.
I wrote last year how politicians can be categorized in four ways: Fools, Primitives, Hacks, or Mensches. A fool is an idealist who sincerely believes, but refuses to make adjustments to his worldview to accommodate contradictory facts that refuse to fit into it. A Fool finds refuge in ideological simplifications. A hack is someone who might have started off as an idealist, but when confronted with the ugly reality, he accepts it and decides to stay and play on the ugly reality's terms. He has come to think of himself as a 'realist'. A Primitive is the adrenally driven Gordon Gecko type who revels in the ugly reality and whose narcissistic drives dominate its agenda. A Mensch is someone, often a former fool, who accepts the ugly reality but stays to work within it to do what he can to change it. Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was the story of a fool who grew into a mensch. I suppose you could add a fifth category, "Cynics", those who accept the ugly reality, don't care, and remain ironically disengaged. They're mostly in the media.
Washington and Wall Street are places whose agendas are driven by Primitives and Hacks and abetted by Fools. The mensches are few and rather powerless. It doesn't matter how much sense they make, their good sense never has a chance as long as the rest of us play the role of Fools who are conned into sending Primitives, Hacks, and other Fools back into office year after year.
Who are people that strike me as Mensches? Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Neil Barofsky, Diane Ravitch, Bill McKibben, Joseph Stiglitz. In the media Matt Taibbi, Chris Hayes, Stewart & Colbert. These are just the ones who are top of mind this morning. They're there. We just need more of them. Too often on election day we are only given the choice between two hacks.
I think in fairness, there are a lot of pols who are a mix of hackery and menschiness. Best case for Obama is that he's a Fool who hasn't quite decided yet whether to become a Hack or a Mensch. The guy has certainly surrounded himself with Hacks, that's for sure.
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