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The Responsibility Deficit

From the NY Times.

"One of the oddities of the current moment is that the country wants a radical change in government but not a radical change in policy."

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"The result is that over the next two years we’ll probably see gridlock on stilts."

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"Unable to do anything in the short term, both parties will devote their energies to nothing but campaign gestures for 2012. The rhetoric will fly. Childishness will mount. Public nausea will hit an all-time high.

Somewhere in the country, though, there is a politician who is going to try to lead us out of this logjam. Whoever that person is, I hope he or she is listening carefully to what the public is saying. Because when you listen carefully, you notice the public anger doesn’t quite match the political class anger."

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"The heart of any moral system is the connection between action and consequences. Today’s public anger rises from the belief that this connection has been severed in one realm after another."

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"What the country is really looking for is a restoration of responsibility. If some smart leader is going to help us get out of ideological gridlock, that leader will reframe politics around this end.

Philip K. Howard has thought hard about the decay of responsibility and what can be done to reverse it. In a series of books ranging from “The Death of Common Sense” to “Life Without Lawyers,” Howard has detailed the ways our political and legal systems undermine personal responsibility.

Over the past several decades, he argues, a thicket of spending obligations, rules and regulations has arisen, which limits individual discretion, narrows room for maneuver and makes it harder to assign responsibility."

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"What’s needed, Howard argues, is a great streamlining. He’s not calling for deregulation. It’s about giving teachers, doctors and officials the power to actually make decisions and then holding them accountable. Some of their choices will be wrong, Howard acknowledges, but it is better to live in an imperfect world of individual responsibility than it is to live within a dehumanizing legal thicket that seeks to eliminate risk through a tangle of micromanaging statutes.

Howard proposes expanding specialized health courts, which would be more predictable than the malpractice system. He would lift controls on teachers and civil servants — giving them more freedom but then ending tenure and holding them accountable. He would create commissions to eliminate obsolete laws. He would expand judges’ discretion and end mandatory sentencing."

From what I've seen of the Tea Party candidates and their own personal spending habits (and walk-away habits), you can bet there will be no joy there. I suggest carefully doing research on the candidates in YOUR state, finding the one(s) who can take care of business at home as well as at work, and voting for that person or persons, regardless of party affiliation. Then remember to vote the incumbent out, and start the process all over again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Posted by Cute at 7:22 PM

Labels: politics