Maintaining our morality in austere times
It is a marvel that anyone should strive and sacrifice to be a legislator in a period of austerity. Perhaps it weeds the field to the most cynical and the most public-spirited. A few demagogues thrive by feeding divisions and then leading factions. But the best leaders in lean times share certain attributes:
●A sense of proportion. Good leaders focus the most attention on the things that matter most. In our case, the main problem is not simply public spending — it is entitlement programs on a path of accelerating, unsustainable spending. Those who devote their main attention to cutting food stamps or soaking the rich are grinding ideological axes, not confronting fiscal realities.
●The courage to take on large interests. If the largest voting bloc or the most organized pressure group always prevails, then public benefits and burdens become a function of political influence, not need or merit. So politicians, at various points, will be required to resist AARP and Americans for Tax Reform, public-employee unions and tea party activists.
●A sense of humanity. Cuts that are equally applied are not equally felt. The reduction of a malaria program that saves the lives of children is not the same as the reduction of a highway program. Across-the-board cuts are an attempt to avoid political choices, but they do not avoid human consequences.
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Whose austerity? The government’s? ha ha Whose morality? The Left’s? Yeah, good luck with that.
DaydreamBeliever on November 30, 2012 at 8:59 AM
If the malaria program is redundant or unnecessary, why shouldn’t it be cut?
Blake on November 30, 2012 at 9:07 AM
So, trying to reduce/prevent theft is ideological?
OldEnglish on November 30, 2012 at 9:08 AM
If we had maintained morality, austerity wouldn’t be required.
tom daschle concerned on November 30, 2012 at 9:11 AM
All we have to do is raise taxes on the rich to keep the middle class morality up, according to Warren “I Got Mine” Buffett.
Flange on November 30, 2012 at 9:11 AM
Since FDR Republican’s have fought to shrink Government social programs, and Democrats have fought to expand it (LBJs Great Society, Expansions of Medicare Medicaid Social Security Disability to include those who never paid in and/or are here illegally, ObamaCare). Democrats have mostly won, and according to Gerson “it’s no one’s fault?”
I didn’t realize that Gerson had a medical condition that requires medical marijuana.
LincolntheHun on November 30, 2012 at 9:13 AM
@LincolntheHun: You obviously know mostly different Republicans than I do.
Seth Halpern on November 30, 2012 at 9:23 AM
I agree.
Newt Gingrich is the only one that worked to cut government down to size. For it, he was hated by Democrats and Republicans. They tossed him out of leadership in order to prevent him from successfully getting a Balanced Budget Amendment to the states. Ever since, he has been marginalized as much as possible by the Republican party and Democrats. They rightly fear him. He has a way of finding conservative ideas that have wide public support and using that support to force politicians to vote for them.
astonerii on November 30, 2012 at 9:33 AM
.
I am talking historically, and I did say mostly but as a recent example, remember when Pres Bush tried to allow people to shift 3% of their contribution to the stock market?
Remember the “end of the earth, people are going to be dying in the street, brown trouser moment” that occurred?
Lots more examples of attempts to make even modest reforms that failed.
.
The bigger point is when it comes to why are we in this mess, the fault is the Baby Boomers and Democrats
LincolntheHun on November 30, 2012 at 9:50 AM
Medicare part D.
Yeah, he made the gesture, and it went down hard, but he went down easy with it.
astonerii on November 30, 2012 at 10:07 AM
Indeed.
txhsmom on November 30, 2012 at 10:07 AM
Godly values are always on the cutting edge. Godly values are never out of style or old fashioned or out of date. Morality always works.Morality is the real thing. The lasting thing. We may not see the results until the next life… but the results are real.
When your whole life you live in a 9×12 darkened hole, you tend not to realize how big the sunny blue sky above really is.
JellyToast on November 30, 2012 at 10:08 AM
LOL, what austere times? Those’ll come after the welfare checks run out. Then we’re going to have to maintain morality with firearms and whips, assuming we can maintain any morality at all.
MelonCollie on November 30, 2012 at 10:24 AM
I hate to say this, but in 20-20 hindsight I think the supply-siders made a mistake 35 years ago in shifting the GOP’s emphasis from the old-school balanced budget approach (which arguably accounted for the party’s rather frumpy Midwestern image) to a near-obsession with reducing taxes (which doubtless brought in more revenue but also created a pretext to spend royally and make up any shortfall with borrowing). I’m not saying they all did it deliberately – though some claimed they wanted to “starve the beast” – but let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to get votes when you banish pain from the political lexicon. The new, upbeat conservatism appealed to a lot more people than the old, sour kind. But eventually the price came due.
Seth Halpern on November 30, 2012 at 10:51 AM
What morality? That column is both hilarious and sad at the same time.
Ward Cleaver on November 30, 2012 at 10:57 AM
So is the irony created by you posting that with your username.
It’s hard to believe there was a time when it wasn’t as easy to get coke the drug as Coke the drink, and even nastier stuff for only a little more effort. Or that a mother would have to worry about her daughter getting pregnant with some useless pimple farm and then killing her grandchild all without her knowledge.
MelonCollie on November 30, 2012 at 11:11 AM
It surely exceeds either my ability or patience to put it properly in words, but garbage like this from Gerson, in its own different way, is as idiotic as the normal output from an airhead like Dionne or Rich or Dowd or Cohen. Wow.
“Nobody’s fault”? You’re kidding, right?
Back when I labored in the legislative vineyard, the incredibly small character of so many members was the first and lasting impression. The follower-ship instead of leadership, the cowardice. “Why are you here?” was heard from many on the staff – in private – as the depressed response to the senator’s lack of spine or sense of responsibility. And this was one of the better senators at the time.
And here’s Gerson whining on behalf of these puny half-men in the Beltway (the Soviet poet Mandelstam’s reference to “half-people” in his satirical poem about Stalin comes to mind, sadly). I’d give a body part to be able to aggressively and substantively disassemble the airhead media on live TV, or the cowardly/clueless/irresponsible members of congress, or the farcical “cabinet” members. One of the few times I’ve seen TV “news” for years, I happened to catch a former friend and very high-ranking Dem House member making a fool of himself trying to explain make-believe economics of “health care reform” to Bret Baier on Fox. Surreal. The guy has not Clue One about anything economic or financial.
We are being ruled by non-entities, whose travails are documented by pathetic little figures like Gerson seems to have become. Long way from the greatest speech by a US president since JFK.
IceCold on November 30, 2012 at 11:59 AM