Making predictions is a risky business except when it comes
to projecting into the future how a debate may proceed. And my belief is that a
thorough review of what constitutes good government will follow the upcoming
mid-term elections (in a few days) no matter the outcome.
In fact, the discussion, with name calling and all – not a
real debate – has been ongoing since the election of the current President,
Barack Obama. It happened because he was thought to be a socialist by those who
think of themselves as capitalists. And so they took pot shots at him because,
they said, he favored big government whereas they favored small government.
Faced with the question: “Where to from here?” the
participants will have no choice but to pick-up what they view as valuable
pieces from the wreckage they have been causing during the past six years, and
construct with that a real debate on the subject of good government. You
already see an attempt at jump-starting such a debate in the article that
Charles Krauthammer wrote under the title: “A Referendum on Competence” and the
subtitle: “An anemic economy and sense of national decline portend a bad
Election Day for democrats.” It was published on October 30, 2014 in National
Review Online.
After listing and elaborating on his views as to what he
believes are the failings of the Obama administration, Krauthammer points the
finger at the real culprit in all of this. He does it in the following manner:
“After all, they represent not just the party 'now' in government but the party
'of' government.” In other words, he says that Obama did badly because he
believes in big government, and has governed accordingly.
While acknowledging that this is only a politically
motivated and partisan discussion, not a real debate on the subject of good
government, you look into the rest of the article to spot the valuables that
the author might have left in the wreckage. And sure enough, you see that he
specifically mentions both the economy and the question of competence. And when
you look at the core of his argument with regard to these two points, you
discover that there may potentially be not just a regular valuable hidden
inside them, but a jewel that will stand as cause for a real debate.
Look what Krauthammer says: “here is a president who
proclaims the reduction of inequality to be the great cause of his
administration. Yet … the 1 percent are doing splendidly in the Fed-fueled
stock market, even as median income has fallen.” Undoubtedly, the author
believes this is one area where Obama has demonstrated incompetence along with
the other areas which he lists separately … ranging from the rollout of the
healthcare website to the failings of the Secret Service.
Well, here is the big question: Can the little that he
mentioned about the economy be turned into a real debate that will yield great
insight and perhaps help shape a strategy to serve the nation; maybe even the
world? Yes it can. The first thing we do is note that the 1 percent are doing well,
courtesy of a central bank that is independent of the government. So the
question now becomes: What could the government have done to offset that trend?
There is only one answer: Redistribute the income to the extent that you can,
which means big government.
I call this the paradox of interlocking issues. It boils
down to this: You can solve a problem by taking measures that will tend to
aggravate the problem they are meant to solve. Whoa! This sound vicious. Is
cracking that paradox, and solving it an impossible task? Should we not just
throw our hands in the air and walk away? No, we should not do that.
In fact, most problems in life have an interlocking
component in them. The solution consists of finding out what the right amount
of medicine will have to be. The idea is to make the medicine contribute the
most toward the solution while contributing the least toward the side effects.
This means finding the right balance to every problem. In
turn, it means exhausting the debate, agreeing on a course of action, getting
all parties together and cooperating toward the solution of the problem rather
than try to score political points.