Thomas Jefferson is credited with the saying “The government you elect is the government you deserve.” Author and satirist H.L. Mencken one-upped him: “People deserve the government they get, and they deserve to get it good and hard.”
Well, we certainly got it good and hard from Congress with the debt-ceiling “deal.” I’m left wondering what the hell we did to deserve that.
But maybe, just maybe, we needed it. Perhaps we needed to see where not only being divided, but electing divided and encouraging divided got us. Maybe, just maybe, there’s some small portion of our number that understands that there is price to pay for sending people to Washington who have a whole lot of “principles” but not a lot of, let’s say, “brains.” Congress is not Sunday School, nor is it the company softball tournament or a soup kitchen. It is a body tasked with governing the most powerful nation that has ever existed – the largest economy, the mightiest military. This cannot be done by amateurs, no matter how noble their intent, nor can it be done by those unwilling to admit that there might be some part of their opponents’ argument that makes sense.
We watched our government fail us over the last few months. There was a deal, yes, but it was still a failure. Our best hope is that we, not our lawmakers, learn something from this debacle. But if that is to happen, we have to look for the truth ourselves. The Republicans and Democrats began blaming each other for the failures of the debt ceiling deal before the ink was dry. TiVo or DVR “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC and “Hannity” on FOX News on the same day. Watch both and then try to understand that they are actually talking about the same things. It would be hilarious if it weren’t for the fact that these are the opinions provided for us to choose from among.
We want better government, we need better government. But we have to deserve it first, and that means as voters (and you’d better be voting) have to get past the talking points that we’re inundated with whenever we try to pay attention to politics. It isn’t easy, but we can deserve better.