1/28/10
There will be much yammering about last night’s State of the Union speech today and maybe tomorrow. Then the speech will be forgotten, as it should be. Despite its being one of the few specific presidential duties specified in our Constitution, the speech has of late, mimicking American society, descended into banality and pointlessness.
There was one telling line in last night’s speech which has garnered notice, but not for the right reasons. That line was
“To say no to everything may be good short term politics, but it’s not leadership.”
President Obama, like most politicians, is usually wrong; the modern day politician’s life experience, or, more properly, lack thereof, virtually dictates that s/he will be wrong the vast majority of the time. But, in this case, the President was monstrously wrong; in fact, the opposite of what he said is precisely true.
Any self-aggrandizing showman who wishes to ingratiate himself to an uninformed and self-consumed public can role out a long list of the things he can give to people, an extensive itemization of the requests he will grant with other people’s money, though few can do so with the eloquence that Mr. Obama displayed last night. But it is the true leader who can say “No” to the wishes of the public, or at least those elements of the public, who will, perhaps rationally, always demand “More, more, more” as long as someone else is paying for it. Playing Santa Claus isn’t leadership; it is pandering in its most egregious and shameless form. A true leader says, perhaps not literally, but nonetheless effectively, “No. You can’t have that because we simply cannot afford it.” Yes, I know that sounds strange, but that is only because we have not had leaders in Washington, or in most geographic centers of political power, for generations. That is why we are in the fiscal and financial soup in which we currently swim…until we drown.
The analogy, by the way, to parenting is obvious. A real parent does not see his or her role as wish fulfiller, but, rather, character former. Thank God that the politicians are not our parents, but, increasingly, the American people are coming to see their politicians, and their government, as a sort of sugar daddy, dispensing favors and generally allowing his children to avoid the painful decisions necessary in order to grow up.
Mr. Obama uttered the aforementioned whopper in response to a perception that the Republicans are the party that says “No.” Would that this were the case! The Republicans talk a good game, as did Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell last night. But when they are in power, GOPers act just like Democrats, seeing government’s role as favor dispenser, problem solver, and pain reliever, or avoider. Talk is cheap, action is difficult. When it comes to action, the differences between the Republicans and the Democrats amount to little more than details and, in some cases, direction; the Dems want to grow the government in one direction, the GOP in an ever so slightly different direction.
Incidentally, and way off point, the really good thing about Governor McDonnell’s speech was not so much the laughs it provided to the listener who took the time to contrast its rhetoric with the actions of the last GOP president and Congress, but its brevity, especially as that conciseness contrasted with the President’s long windedness. One of the things that came to my mind, besides the aforementioned yawning gap between GOP talk and action, was a fervent desire that Mr. McDonnell convert to Catholicism and pursue the priesthood. Our Church has a lot of problems, but many could be solved if we could find a few priests who, like Mr. McDonnell, can make a point in ten minutes or less. Of course, this, like the Dems’ awaking from their cluelessness, the GOP’s words matching its actions, or politicians’ actually showing leadership is a mere pipe dream. Dems from another planet, hypocritical Republicans, and long winded vacuous priests and attendant marathon Masses are facts of life that will be with us, in the case of the last, forever, in the case of the first two, until the Republic collapses, which may be sooner than most people think.
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2 comments:
Can't argue with your post, except to say that I thought another line line in the speech even more telling. Here's my take on what I thought was the OMG moment:
A generation ago, Chicago’s legendary newspaper columnist, Mike Royko, suggested that the official Chicago motto, Urbs in Horto (City in a Garden), should be changed to Ubi est Mea? (Where's Mine?). He was referring, of course, to Chicago politics, where the first question a successful politician asks when confronting an issue is “What’s in it for me?” Not, “What’s best for the City? Not, “What’s the right thing to do?” No, the correct question for the Chicago politician is “What’s in it for me?”
Barack Obama is, at his core, a Chicago politician. And nothing brings that home more clearly than his State of the Union confession with respect to health care:
I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people. And I know that with all the lobbying and horse-trading, the process left most Americans wondering, ''What's in it for me?''
His perspective is perhaps understandable. After all, the Chicago approach had proved successful with so many players: Mr. Obama bought cooperation of the American Medical Associatino with a $250 Billion House bill that would block imminent cuts to Medicare reimbursements. He bought the cooperation of the pharmaceutical lobby (whose ads in opposition to Hillary Care were said to have contributed mightily to its defeat) by agreeing to oppose having the government negotiate drug prices. He avoided a last minute big labor veto by granting unions an exemption from the tax on Cadillac health insurance plans. He bought Senator Nelson’s vote with an unlimited pledge to pay for Nebraska’s new medicaid recipients. Mary Landreau got a similar, but more modest, deal for Louisiana. And on and on, ad nauseum: the necessary players asked “Where’s mine?”, and so got paid for their support.
Hence, it was quite natural for Mr. Obama to assume that the American people opposing health care reform were simply asking “Where’s mine?”. But maybe that assumption was wrong. Maybe American’s weren’t asking “What’s in it for me?” Maybe they were asking “Should we create a new, trillion dollar entitlement in this economic environment?”, and saying no. Maybe they were asking “Do we really want the federal government to play an even larger role in our lives?”, and saying no. Maybe they were asking “Is it smart to let a partisan group of politicians and special interests reorder fifteen percent of our national economy behind closed doors?”, and saying no.
Maybe, just maybe, Americans were asking not “What’s in it for me?” but rather “What’s the right thing to do here?” Such a thing would not likely occur to a Chicago politician.
JoeyG
That certainly seems a telling pronouncement from Mr. Obama. His background is showing; very few people in Chicago politics ask "What's the right thing to do here?" Since Obama grew up in that environment, and is further sullied by his "government as ATM machine" mentality, it's no surprise that he's thinking "Ubi Est Mea."
Thanks, Joe, for reading and commenting!
Those of you who want to learn more about the “Ubi Est Mea” approach to politics that fellow former south sider Joey G. and I are discussing are directed to my book, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics, (Mark M. Quinn) available at Amazon.com and at independent book stores throughout Chicagoland.
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