The Disastrous vs. the Unpalatable

Nearly a century after Otto von Bismarck famously said that politics is the art of the possible, economist John Kenneth Galbraith contradicted Bismarck in a letter to President Kennedy, advising that, "Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable." This is a worthy companion to Churchill's quote about democracy being the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. These celebrations of the least bad option should be taken as signposts that might guide us back onto the path to sanity. We have become deluded by ridiculous expectations of all imaginable rewards without a trace of sacrifice or cost, and we need to abandon childish fantasy and face reality.

When all of our options are fraught with shortcomings, we have to choose the best of the flawed bunch and ignore the hysteria that will accompany endorsing something that isn't godlike in its perfection. Let's take the example of health care reform. For generations we've identified problems in our health care system, yet we've been unable to solve them, try as we might. Based on our impressive history of innovation, we can rule out the possibility that we are simply ineffective problem solvers, and conclude instead that we have failed to fix the system because there simply is no good solution that will satisfy everyone and we're hesitant to pick among the conspicuously flawed choices. We faced the following problem: Millions of people were uninsured because they either couldn't afford health insurance or couldn't obtain it from the market because of an existing health problem. More to the point, some of these people will need life saving medical treatment, so what do we do?

After being put through the legislative sausage grinder of compromise and special interest appeasement, we ultimately decided on a package that would, among other things, force insurance companies to cover those with pre-existing conditions, in exchange for which we would require people to carry heath insurance so they couldn't cheat the actuarial tables by waiting until they needed care before buying insurance. Americans by nature despise having the government tell them what to do, but what was our better option? We could have maintained the status quo where the uninsured receive needed care despite their inability to pay. The costs are then paid by everyone else. Alternatively, we could deny care to those we believe will stiff us on the bill, but is that really a world in which anyone wants to live? Should we tell someone in desperate need of medical attention I'm sorry, but you have to go across the street and stand behind the L.D. (line of death) right behind the hysterical woman holding the convulsing child and screaming "Oh God Oh God! Won't someone please help my baby?!"

I'm fascinated and amused by those who are enraged because this insurance provision represents communism, socialism, etc. Let me see if I have this straight: The current situation in which the cost of the medical care for the uninsured is absorbed by others who can pay (to each according to his need, from each according to his ability) is NOT considered communism, but having people pay their own way by padding the bloated coffers of giant profit-making private insurance companies IS communism? What?!

Finally, we can't discuss the ranting about communism/socialism/fascism without talking about the bailouts and other actions taken to rescue the economy. By all accounts, the economy was facing imminent collapse if we didn't act quickly and decisively. The bailouts are perfect examples of the unpalatable being preferable to the disastrous. Some may rail against the extraordinary efforts to rescue our economy from utter devastation, but if they could peer into the world in which we would be living had we listened to them and kept the government out of it, they would sit down and shut and shut up in a hurry.

Is the Tea Cup Half Full of Half Empty?

As a political junkie, I've watched various trends and movements come and go, but I find the Tea Party oddly fascinating because, like so many other observers, I still don't quite know what to make of them. They have certainly generated more buzz than their size would seem to warrant. It's entertaining to watch commentators and journalists spending inordinate amounts of time discussing this group, if only to tell us that journalists and commentators are spending inordinate amounts of time discussing this group. The Tea Party movement seems to be something of a political Rorschach test that different people look at and see very different things.

The Tea Party was essentially formed from various factions of the political right although there are exceptions. The most obvious constituency are those who think that the government has grossly overstepped its mandate, and the processes through which it has illegitimately seized power and insinuated itself increasingly into our lives must be reversed. They believe in a very strict and narrow interpretation of the Constitution and they wear three-cornered hats to celebrating the patriots of the late 18th Century, the era in which both the original Boston Tea Party took place and the Constitution was framed. If this were the movement's only core group then they would be garden variety small government conservatives. However, there are other elements that make this movement different.

If those wearing the felt three-corner hats represent one core Tea Party group, then another part of the its base should be wearing hats of any shape as long as they're made of tin foil. This is the crazy conspiracy theory lunatic fringe. The final group I want to discuss should be wearing hats made of any material as long as they're tall, pointy and fashioned to be worn over a hood. These groups are undeniably a part of the movement, but the bone of contention between supporters and detractors concerns their relative size. Advocates say that you will find kooks and bigots in any group and this one is no exception. They should be no more stained by these elements than the local Elks Club, union hall or bowling league. Opponents argue that while any large organization will have some bad apples, the share of teabaggers driven by hatred is so disproportionately high that without these people the movement would be dramatically reduced. This is the crux of the disagreement. Those who see the unsavory characters as a fringe to be found in any group praise the movement, and those who see them as one of the main pillars of the Tea Party condemn the movement. As is often the case, the truth may lie in the middle.

At its best, the Tea Party can be to politics what Paddy Chayefsky's 1976 satirical masterpiece, Network was to TV. They both essentially implore the masses to run to their windows and shout, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore!" With 30 years of reckless deficit spending putting our future in hock, someone needs to sound a clarion call. At its worst, the Tea Party summons humanity's baser side, promoting the fear and hatred that will shame us once we return to our senses. Yes, if the policies of this administration were being advanced by a president who was a blue-eyed Mayflower descendant named James Wellington, there would still be strong and vocal opposition, but we wouldn't see the level of insanity we're seeing now. Too many people who were already uneasy about having insufficient control over their lives see the election of this president as their "Leave it to Beaver" world being preempted by "Soul Train" and they've gone stark raving mad.

The claims that President Obama is essentially the living embodiment of Leon Trotsky, or that he's a Kenyan born Muslim, or other nonsense coming from teabaggers destroy the Tea Party's credibility and that's a shame because someone does need to speak up about the troubling gap between the government's spending and its revenue. Speaking of which, they also lose credibility when they claim their rage comes from big government spending piling on debt, but they applaud George W. Bush's presidency. Likewise, they can't be taken seriously when they roundly support Medicare (a system where the government seizes your money through taxation to fund a single-payer health care system) while simultaneously saying that a mandate to carry health insurance is a cataclysmic socialist nightmare that reminds them of Hitler. If they stuck to a legitimate argument against big government, they could potentially have an important voice.

Something Is Rotten in the State of Vatican City

After Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope by the College of Cardinals, he chose as his papal name Pope Benedict XVI. It would have been more fitting if he chose to be called Pope Chapter VII, because his elevation to pope coincides with the church's bankruptcy with respect to moral authority. We can no longer ignore the mountain of evidence that the Catholic hierarchy deliberately chose to protect the church from embarrassment and whatever retribution justice would demand, rather than protecting the most vulnerable and innocent victims of heinous abuse. I'm also satisfied that when we seek to identify all the guilty parties in this despicable web of callous inhumanity, we find a metaphorical smoking gun in the hand that now wears the Ring of the Fisherman.

My indictment of the church is not based on the deplorable actions of some disturbed priests but rather on the deliberate cover up, done in the cool dispassionate light of day, by more senior church officials. When some bishops and cardinals learned of the abuse, they were forced to confront a choice. They could either do the decent thing and protect innocent children from being raped and scarred for life, or they could circle the wagons, essentially aiding and abetting the continued unspeakable abuse. The church opted for the latter. It's not hard to understand the calculus underlying this decision, but it is hard to imagine how anyone can be so cold hearted and indifferent to the suffering of children. Taking steps to defrock the offending priests, or even suddenly reassigning their duties so they are kept away from children (i.e. additional victims) would certainly raise questions and could ultimately cause trouble for the church. If the truth were brought to light the church could face damaging lawsuits, lose members and face diminished power even among the faithful who remained. Also, while this is admittedly nothing but my own conjecture, I suspect the biggest fear for the church hierarchy was that this could be, for some Catholics, the thread that when pulled unravels the entire garment.

As blind faith is extremely important to a religious organization, the church has an understandable interest in taking a page from the Wizard of Oz and presenting their clergy as something more magnificent than the mere men behind the curtain that they are. Since the horrific moral failings of some priests can hamper the church's ability to perpetuate that illusion, the church has an incentive to conceal the abuse and allow more children to be violated. If those on the altar were exposed as being every bit as flawed, or in the case of the offending priests far more flawed, than those in the pews, bishops and cardinals could have nightmares of Catholics saying things like, "Yeah right, this guy is telling me what my penance is for having impure thoughts about another adult? Maybe you should get Tiger Woods in here to tell me how to be a good and faithful husband!" or "Sure, it's easy for the church to condemn birth control - 10 year old boys don't get pregnant." While such sentiments would be unfair, they're also predictable, and from the church's perspective, they are apparently to be avoided at any cost.

To make matters worse, the Vatican continues to act shamefully, marginalizing or dismissing the agony suffered by the victims by characterizing the scandal as "petty gossip" or saying the outrage is contrived, and those pursuing this matter are only doing so because they differ with the church on its teachings. There is a perverse irony that something called the Holy See could be so blind. If a superintendent of schools who learned that a teacher had been accused of raping students had acted the same way as senior church officials, he or she would have no chance of remaining employed. Even hardened prisoners know that those who abuse children are the worst of the worst and no agenda or parochial interest (pun intended) should trump protecting such innocent victims. Until the church takes full responsibility for its actions, it will remain putrefied, rotting from the mitred head down.