Ten Big Things

A little over four years ago, we were a nation united in the face of our greatest challenge in sixty years. Today we are divided and fragmented and talking at cross purposes like no other time in our history.



What happened?



People got distracted by the little stuff.



There is an old anecdote about a teacher and a class. He has a large jar and some fist sized rocks. He proceeds to fill the jar with large sized rocks, then asked if the jar was full, to which the class answered yes. The teacher then hauls out some thumb sized rocks, and puts dozens of them in the gaps between the big rocks. When it was full of that, he gets out some fingernail sized rocks, then sand, and finally water.



The moral of the story, for those who may not have heard the anecdote, is to fit the big things in first.



Going beyond that, we need to keep the Big Things foremost in your mind. Sometimes we get so distracted by the alligators we forget it isn't a requirement to exterminate them in order to drain the swamp.



We've been allowing ourselves as a society to lose sight of the big stuff in amongst all the little day-to-day stuff that goes on every day, rather than keeping focused on the end result of the big projects.



Not everybody has the same list of Big Things, and most of them tend to be personal, not public or political in nature. It can be hard to keep them in sight, especially when you're thinking tactically from day to day and you need to be thinking strategically. People whose list of big things are different from one another, whether different in priority on the same items or having completely different items in the list of Big Things, are predictably going to have intractable arguments between themselves, which do not often admit of a mutually satisfactory conclusion. Nonetheless, if both sides to an argument are aware of their differences on Big Things, they are far more likely to come to an agreement to disagree more or less amicably, even if one wins the voting and the other loses.



Big Things tend to be broad based, not specific issues themselves. It is rare that one vote on one item directly resolves a Big Thing. Big Things take dedication and years of work to resolve; on a day to day basis there are victories and defeats, some more important than others but few, if any, critical to the point of being a sure overall victory or defeat.



Here are my political Biggest Things, in order from top to bottom.



1. The War on Terror. This is it. The Big One, more important than any other thing, more important than all other things combined. The reason? If we lose this one, all of the others become irrelevant. All other bets are cancelled. There won't be a United States, period. Not to mention huge numbers of dead, wrecked economy, displaced refugees, etcetera.



It isn't that I'm a fan of the War on Terror. Quite the contrary. I'm abhorred by all of the lives and treasure we are pouring down this rathole to no long term economic benefit. If this is less, both in terms of lives and in terms of share of GDP than WWII, it's still not something I want us to be doing. But the alternative to spending them is worse. But the penalty for failure makes not trying hard enough pale by comparison. Yes, I would be happier if we didn't have to fight. That option simply is not on the table unless we're willing to cede our way of life. It's not as if the American people suddenly turned into fascist warmongers on September 11, 2001. The fact that we had been in a war for decades just became undeniable. Demonstrating in favor of "peace" and demonizing our "fascist" leaders is all very well and good. However if you think you're accomplishing anything positive, consider that in my forty-odd years, I have yet to find anybody who likes war, and that includes large numbers of military personnel and military contractors. But one determined, intractable antagonist makes a war. Peace requires everybody involved be willing to come to a mutually acceptable agreement. That is not the case now. In fact, our current enemies are far more refreshingly upfront about their goals than any others in living memory, and that includes our antagonists in World War Two.



The current administration gets an A on this one. Not that there's not room for improvement, but grading by every other leader we've had in the past century or more, George W. Bush has a clearer understanding of what we face today, and has shown more willingness to take the necessary steps, than any other leader since Lincoln. The opposition gets an F. Whether it's from wanting to score political points or a deeply held belief does not matter, because they are so incredibly screwed up on this most important of all considerations that it's actually a reason to pity them.



2. The Budget, or rather our lack of one. What good is it to have a legally passed budget if you do not allow it to constrain you? The deficit is the largest subproblem with this. The deficit slurps up investment cash, making investment cash more costly, so fewer real investments get made. But as a larger problem, our budget process is broken. Sane would be be decide what we have to spend, put some aside off the top for emergencies, and then divide up the rest by the relative priority, and stick to it. That's not what we do now. This has nothing in common with what we do now.



George Bush gets an F here, but so does the opposition. He's got a lot of help from Congress, but that's passing the buck. He's got a veto; he should use it until Congress restrains itself.



3. Government spending. The government spends way too much money, trying to do everything on everybody's wish list. It is a tragedy of the commons. Just like your average family, there are trade-offs to be made and some goodies we're going to have to pass up. Rather more things than we're used to in this case. I've heard a certain stripe on the political spectrum accuse others of wanting to starve the government. They say this like it's a bad thing. It's not. Until those in government are spending their own money to get the job done, government will be the least efficient of all possible ways to get a job done.



This extends to implicit and explicit market subsidies. Comparing things in context, our government is one of the best around at not explicitly subsidizing industry, but we have a lot of implicit subsidies, selling public assets for less than their real worth. Mineral, timber and oil, we allow it to be extracted from public lands sometimes for pennies on the dollar. This does not lower market prices in any significant fashion, so we the public don't get anything out of it, while it allows the entire economic process to be distorted. If the people of the United States got fully audited financial statements prepared to the same standards as is required of public corporations, I believe that we'd have an armed rebellion the next day.



George Bush gets a D here. There are some ongoing extenuating circumstances, and nobody has infinite political capital to spend. This is a systemic problem, but with that all said, our current president is hurting the situation more than he's helping. The opposition gets the same grade.



4. Government regulation. We've got way too much of it that serves no particularly good purpose. Actually, I want the government prevented from getting involved at all without a clear constitutional authority. Unless you have compelling reason to the contrary, allow the citizenry to make their own decisions, not the government. Once it has a toehold, the government takes more and more; it never leaves on its own. If this means we can't regulate a farmer raising wheat to feed to his own pigs as interstate commerce, so be it. We can accept exempting such small amounts from federal oversight as sufficiently insignificant. If party A wants to pay party B for sex, why is it the government's business? What harm has been done to any third party, especially as opposed to doing exactly the same thing for free as a result of meeting in a bar? If someone wants to consume something mind-altering, why does the government need to get involved, unless they do something while their judgment was impaired? How, precisely, is illegal marijuana different from legal ethanol? Why is the government involved in this? Nor are personal laws the only problem. Ecological regulations. Workplace safety regulations. Employment regulations. Accessibility regulations. What conceivable good does it to to require a startup business to spend tens of thousands of dollars on modifications to an old, existing building and delay opening so that handicapped people can patronize the business, when it means that the business doesn't open at all so that nobody can patronize the business? I don't know a single business that doesn't want every dollar it can get, and intentionally shutting people and their dollars out is stupid. "Maybe they are unaware of the problem," I've heard. So make the business aware of it. Which would you rather have: A set of government rules that costs ten to hundreds of thousands to implement or a couple people that come around and say, "You know, for a couple hundred dollars for a ramp and a couple hundred more to widen this door, you'd get 15 percent more business as people with mobility problems and those who have friends or family with mobility problems could come spend their money here." Sometimes they'll get the people who won't spend the money. Those people are already suffering the appropriate penalty. I see the necessity for Environmental regulations, but these should be of the nature that you're not polluting the everybody's environment. Nor do I see any kind of dichotomy between corporate uses of the environment and personal uses of the environment. If it is illegal for corporations to discharge pollutants that make people sick, it should be illegal for individuals to discharge pollutants that make those around them sick (got that, smokers?). At least the corporate use has a broad economic benefit. Condemning people's property rights because they have an endangered species of ragweed is ridiculous. You want to save the ragweed, you plant the ragweed on your own land, or you convince the owner it's worth saving.



I see the benefits of all kinds of regulations, actually. But we need to look at the overall cost of a regulation to see if those overbalance the benefits before it is implemented.



Because Government is never spending its own money, Government is slow and inefficient and cumbersome. It's easy to say "Let's have the government force people!". It requires approximately zero in the way of thought or creativity. It may be a lot easier for the people with that thought than going around and actually offering people compelling reasons for doing what you want them to. But government should be the solution of last resort, not first. But everybody needs to understand the concept that using the government for a job is akin to asking a poorly programmed giant robot with no provision for canceling instructions to swat this fly that's wandered into your house. It's going to take a while to get him to understand the problem, and when you do, he's going to use a Sequoia-sized crowbar that will knock your house flat - three years after the fly left. If it doesn't miss altogether and hit your car, which never had a fly problem, and once started, it continues to swat houses and cars forever. Government should never be the tool of choice, only of necessity.



George Bush gets a B minus here. As someone who's actually read the PATRIOT Act, it is very restrained and targeted. The things that everybody's objecting to are actually found mostly in other, older legislation. And while there is room to roll back previous regulation in all kinds of ways, nobody has infinite political capital to spend, and his is understandably tied up in the war on terror. The opposition gets a D.



5. Thinking things through. Actually, it's a measure of how messed up things have gotten that this is not number one. It's been said that people are lazy. This is never more true than when you're talking about mentally lazy. Many people who think nothing of working in the hot sun all day to put up a patio deck will never stop to think that they're building over the gas company easement. As soon as the average person has something that looks like it might in some way address something they perceive as a problem, they start screaming their heads off that This Is What They Want Done, and they usually get it because giving them what they want is politically easier than convincing them there's a better solution. We as a nation have a long history of going off half-cocked, with half-vast solutions of the moment which in fact make the problem worse, not better. This goes at least back to Carrie Nation in the 1870s, if not further. Making something illegal without dealing with the demand issue is guaranteed to create organizations outside the law which do not care about other legal niceties such as murder. Making guns illegal because criminals use them is circular logic at best.



Stop and think a minute, or a year. Outside of combat and natural disasters, there aren't a whole lot of problems that have to be solved now. Is there a cheaper solution? Something more narrowly targeted? Something less intrusive? What are the consequences likely to be? Is there something that doesn't involve the government that you can do? Is there an incremental solution so you stand a chance of figuring out that there is an unintended consequence before it bites you? Is it possible that all proposed solutions are worse than just living with the problem as it sits?



Nor can you think things through without numbers. If you can't express it mathematically, it's opinion, not fact. It may be art but it is not science. And polls are just facts about opinions, politically informative but having no reliable connection to real problem solving.



George Bush gets a B plus here. No, he didn't revive Kyoto, a fundamentally flawed treaty that his predecessor negotiated but couldn't submit to the senate, having agreed to concessions the Senate had unanimously informed Mr. Clinton in advance that it would not approve. President Bush went out and negotiated something better, and if you didn't read about it in US papers, it was reported by many other sources, including a note and a link here. If he's let opportunities pass in the War On Terror, that is because not even our military or other resources are infinite. By comparison with other US leaders in the last century, he's doing a better job at cleaning up messes in a real, lasting way that doesn't leave his successors (in other words, us) with more problems when his term is over. The opposition gets an F. Anytime I want to read something monumentally stupid, with no consderation of consequences, I have only to check the opposition mouthpieces.



6. Accountability for everyone. No excuses, no hiding. Nobody is perfect, but that's not a reason not to try. If we can't keep an eye on you, we have no way to tell if you're doing a good job or not. If you're employed in private industry, we still have the corrective instrument of the market, and some avoiding of the harsh light of scrutiny is understandable, although those in private industry have fewer protections than those in government. If you're employed by the government (directly or indirectly), then you being able to avoid scrutiny is intolerable. Whether you are President of the United States or an elementary school teacher, you are being paid and funded with taxpayer dollars - dollars that are taken at the point of a gun if necessary from people who have no other choice except leaving the country (and even that may not be enough in some cases). The least we as taxpayers are entitled to is to see that we're getting what we pay you for, and if not, we have the right and the duty to elsewhere. I fail to see how extorting taxes to pay for public schooling where the public schools are not doing their jobs and there are no other alternatives available for that money is morally different from the sort of dealings that Tammany Hall was famous for. It is political patronage at the point of a gun, plain and simple.



This also means federal judges should be subject to periodic confirmation (as they are here in California), or a lot more subject to impeachment. Why we can put up with our justices finding things unconstitutional due to rights nowhere enumerated in the constitution or legislation?



George Bush gets at least a solid B here. Remember, we're grading on a curve. When was the last time you heard any other federal level politician accept the responsibility for anything? (crickets chirping). The opposition wants to hold George Bush accountable whether he did anything wrong or not, but they want their own examples of incompetence and malfeasance in office ignored. F plus for them.



7. Authority for civil servants to do their jobs. It doesn't make sense to expect someone to do a job without giving them the authority to make the decisions necessary to accomplish it. If any NIMBY or busybody who doesn't like the either basic decision or any part of it can hold the whole process hostage for a decade or more while the courts unwind, we're not going to get a lot done. If you want anything to get done in a timely fashion, you've got to trust someone to do it. Whomever got there, whether by dint of hard work or political appointment, can be held responsible under the previous section. If people get hurt by the decisions unnecessarily, that's what Accountability is all about. But sometimes people get hurt by the correct decisions. We don't live in a perfect world. That someone may be disadvantaged in some way is not sufficient evidence that the decision is wrong. You have to show that there is a better alternative in order to show the decision wrong. This means that the pendulum of power has to swing back more towards the executive and legislative and away from the judicial branch. Presidents and Congresscritters and governors and legislators face regular elections, the citizens best shot at accountability, judges do not. Either that, or we have to impeach more judges for exceeding their authority or abuse of it, and I'm not certain that's constitutional.



George Bush gets an A minus here. By and large, he delegates well, and backs up his people completely, even when it would be immediately easier not to. How many times have the leftists called for Rumsfield to quit or be fired? He's still there. The opposition doesn't want to cede any authority that may gore any of their oxen, and they're not all that hot about administration appointees that actually do their jobs (Bolton, Rumsfield, The things they have said about Robert's previous work, Gonzales, etcetera). D minus.



8. We are all Americans first and foremost before anything else. Nobody gets any special privileges unless they have earned them as individuals. Nobody must bear any special burden under the law unless they have been duly sentenced as an individual. Race, sex, and religion based policies are an affront to our very nature as Americans. It is fine to be an American whose ancestors were from somewhere special; I'm rather proud of my Scottish ancestors. But I'm American first. It is not okay to be Scottish (or anything else) who happens to live in America unless you're really from there and haven't become a naturalized citizen.



This includes no class warfare. Just because somebody is rich is not an acceptable reason to deprive them of benefits that accrue to everyone else. Just because they are poor does not accrue them any special virtue.



George Bush gets at least a B plus here. He's proven time and again that race, creed, or sex is neither a barrier to advancement in his administration nor a criterion for special consideration. The opposition would accuse a stop sign of being racist or sexist, whether it was or not, as long as George Bush or a Republican had anything to do with it. Grade F.



9. Decisions should be made on the basis of the best interests of the whole country, first and foremost. This district or that special interest group or the other group of agitators is not as important as the long term benefit of the country as a whole.



The president gets a D on this one. Medicare drug benefit. $200 billion to rebuild Louisiana. More pork in the highway bill than you can believe and he didn't veto the thing. Except for fetal stem cells, I can't point to one special interest he's said anything resembling "no" to, and "no federal funding for fetuses you kill after today" isn't exactly the strongest condemnation going. The only reason it's not an F is the special interests he's said yes to include political opponents. The opposition is no better, they get the same D.



10. No intentional steps backwards. Baby steps forward are fine, and marking time may be necessary occasionally. But we can never afford to move backwards on individual freedoms, or anything else on this list.



The president gets a solid A here, for holding the line and enforcing it when it would be so easy to let it slip. The only time we've done anything vaguely shameful was Abu Ghraib, and he did the right thing in response to that. Abu Ghraib was not an atrocity or anything vaguely resembling one, but it was wrong and he has prosecuted those who may have done wrong as well as their superiors. Enemy combatants? It's legal, traditional, and intelligent to hold them until they are no longer a threat. USA PATRIOT? If you're griping about it, you haven't read it. Nor is it the primary purpose of the first, fourth, and fifth amendments, among others, to shackle the government and prevent law enforcement from doing their job. It is to force the government to allow political opponents to talk, to prevent the government from persecuting opponents or fishing for opposition wrongdoing. Teddy Kennedy, John Kerry, Joe Biden, Markos Zuniga, Cindy Sheehan, MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, ANSWER, even CAIR. They're all still running around free to spread their fertilizer to anyone who will listen. The Bill of Rights are not supposed to stop the FBI or other law enforcement from investigating if they have a reasonable belief that a law has been violated. If you do something wrong, you still deserve to get busted for it, even if you are an opponent of the president. You want to talk about serious wrongdoing here, talk about Lincoln suspending habeas corpus, FDR trying to pack the Supreme Court, Johnson and Nixon using the FBI as a weapon against dissidents. The opposition gets a B plus that would be the same A except that they're trying to subvert the system to keep the Evil Republicans from doing their jobs so that the opposition can win the next election, despite the fact that it would mean more recycled terrorists.



So now my big things are on the table. I'm not hiding my agenda. Put yours on the table too, and even if we cannot come to an agreement, it may be obvious why, and we may get along better because of it.



Notice, please, that even though I generally support the Republicans more then the Democrats, there is no reason why this cannot change; indeed I promise you it will if the Democrats start doing better at what's really important.



Now, to turn this into a meme. I'm looking for as much diversity of opinion as I can reasonably get, so I hereby tag Eric's Grumbles, Politburo Diktat, aTypical Joe, Louisiana Libertarian, and State of Flux. Approximately Ten Big Things, in order, and how you think the administration, congress, or the US as a whole are doing on them. Tag five more people each when you're done. Put a link to this post and a trackback when you're done, so everybody can find out what everybody else is saying. (You don't need to wait to be tagged if you want to speak up. If you don't have a website, put it in comments or email me if it's too big)





P.S. After I already started this article, I also read Michael Barone in US News & World Report.