Changing Perpectives

Once upon a time, a column written by a Stanford professor of economics would cause my eyes to roll up in my head and my head to snap backwards. This one, however, reads more like it was written by a blogger:

Pick Your Goal Then Change Your Data to Fit

It is almost impossible to be literate and aware in today's political arena and not have noticed the illogical numbers, the disconnect from data and the absurdity of promising much more service from much less contribution except for all of those penalties, fines and new taxes that the ruling class touts. They lie and they get caught at it but then they tell another package of lies and apparently we don't really care too much about it all.

But, what struck me was the last paragraph in the piece:

Squandering their credibility with these numbers games will only make it more difficult for our elected leaders to enlist support for difficult decisions from a public increasingly inclined to disbelieve them

For a government of, by and for the people to function there must be a modicum of trust in the representation. The old cliche about "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me," is operative here. Fool me continually and when the day comes that it is essential that you be able to fool me for my own good, you will fail.

In my American Government course we talk about the various roles of the President of the United States. The obvious ones are there such as chief executive, head of state, commander-in-chief, leader of his party, etc. But the one that is increasingly unlikely to make the cut in the future is Moral Leader of the Nation. What has happened?

Remember your early elementary school education and learning about George Washington inability to lie about the cherry tree episode? Remember "Honest" Abe Lincoln? Remember FDR's fireside chats to reassure the nation of our special position in the world and our resilience in the fact of adversity? For that matter, do you remember Ronald Reagan's "shining city on the hill"? We might not have agreed with his politics all of the time, but we always believed in the President's moral authority.

Then we saw "Tricky Dickie" Nixon painted as a scheming villain. We looked at Bill Clinton's waggling finger and assertion that "I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." We had changed significantly in those instances.

The media had coarsened. They once focussed on policy questions and international relationships. They might have had political bias but the mainstream media was not populated with tabloid muck-rakers and yellow journalists. Of course they would know when a political figure had feet of clay. They would be aware of dalliances and indiscretions, family spats and brother-in-laws that drank too much, but they wouldn't revel in their disclosures for the political advantage of their personal ideologies. All too obviously that is no longer the case.

We've heard about George W. Bush dodging the draft despite serving for six years as an Air National Guard military pilot flying single-seat, single engine jets. We heard of his stupidity despite his Harvard MBA. Conversely we saw Al Gore praised for his four month sinecure as a private in the Army working as a clerk typist. That was "military service" to be lauded. His washout from divinity school was apparently a more rigorous academic preparation for leadership.

Now we've got the Messiah and the hidden college record. We've got great scandals of governors, senators, congress-critters employing "wide stances" in airport toilets, flying for a weekend in Argentina with a mistress, and inevitably the payoffs and kickbacks either for personal gain or buying votes. Nothing is off limits and I'm ambivalent about whether it should be or not. I don't know if I need or want to know all of the sordid details.

The point of it all is that when we will need leadership to make a tough decision we will no longer have anyone we can trust. When we need to bring the nation together in a crisis we won't be able to discern whom to believe. When we choose our new leaders we won't be able to make informed voting decisions.

We've lost a lot.