My Congressman's mad prose stylings.
Our awesome Congessman in absentia, Rush Holt, was blogging last week at TPMC's Table for One. Holt is such a total geek, he once introduced a bill in the House to establish National Chemistry Week, "Whereas chemistry is at the core of every technology we enjoy today". That, being a former Jeapordy champion and being probably the House's prime mover on voting reform. What's not to love?
I didn't like everything Holt wrote during his tenure at Table for One, but even that's a good thing. It's easy just to publish standard Democratic opinions that won't offend any of your liberal constituents. My Congressman is gutsy enough to post up opinions that even a yellowdog might disagree with here and there. The commentators were right to praise him for being brave. Anyway, in addition to his great contribution on intelligent design, one thing I really did like was what he wrote on the lessons of Katrina last Friday:
This failure of government over the past week should not be taken as a repudiation of government, but rather as a reminder of our great dependence on government. After all, government is just another word for doing together those things that we can do better collectively than separately. A hurricane is a dramatic reminder of the danger of the philosophy that has been gaining such currency in recent years--that you are on your own and better off on your own--with your own retirement savings account, your own medical savings account, your own approach to workplace safety and protection, your own school vouchers, your own environmental clean-up, and your own disaster escape plan-- without any need for the government. The American dream is built much more on community that on individualism, much more on helping each other get ahead than on leaving each other behind. Yes, if we never forget that we are in this together, America will be.
Judging from the president's rhetoric last night, he and and his K-Street speechwriters have rapidly re-learned the political appeal of offering up a robust government that hands out goodies and provides 1-877 numbers to an upset public. The difference is that Holt believes in activist government implicitly, as a philisophical thing, as the essence and prime medium of civil society. Bush believes in working government as a political tool, sort of like an inflatable tent to be hauled out onto the lawn and pumped up when necessary to serve the public, and the rest of the time to store the lobbyists and campaign flacks and other various patronage IOUs in. But it takes a long time to dump out the flacks and reinflate the tent, and hopefully Bush's nice Bull Mooseian words won't wipe away too many memories of how long that process took when the hurricane hit.
Of course, the Bushies' own spite -- a pretty common reaction to having to keep saying things you don't believe all the time -- might end up doing them in anyway. Bush is in too precarious a situation to be playing with the symbols so soon. And as we all know, nothing says "helping each other get ahead" in the great American family like promising to cut other domestic spending -- $200 billions worth; do they even think about what they're saying? -- to pay for reconstruction. (And this is to say nothing of ugly but less politically dangerous digs like legalizing the paying of sustanance wages in federal contracts or suspending environmental quality laws). And of course, nothing screams "disinterested professional competence in serving the public good" quite like appointing Karl Rove to oversee reconstruction efforts, even informally. Talk about playing with fire. When the indictments come down from the Plame case, does Bush really want the spotlight to land on yet another unqualified, unethical, political crony assigned important civil service tasks for which he's totally unqualified? Do they really not think continued scandal will hurt the prospects of Bush's successor? Or do they really just not care?
I didn't like everything Holt wrote during his tenure at Table for One, but even that's a good thing. It's easy just to publish standard Democratic opinions that won't offend any of your liberal constituents. My Congressman is gutsy enough to post up opinions that even a yellowdog might disagree with here and there. The commentators were right to praise him for being brave. Anyway, in addition to his great contribution on intelligent design, one thing I really did like was what he wrote on the lessons of Katrina last Friday:
This failure of government over the past week should not be taken as a repudiation of government, but rather as a reminder of our great dependence on government. After all, government is just another word for doing together those things that we can do better collectively than separately. A hurricane is a dramatic reminder of the danger of the philosophy that has been gaining such currency in recent years--that you are on your own and better off on your own--with your own retirement savings account, your own medical savings account, your own approach to workplace safety and protection, your own school vouchers, your own environmental clean-up, and your own disaster escape plan-- without any need for the government. The American dream is built much more on community that on individualism, much more on helping each other get ahead than on leaving each other behind. Yes, if we never forget that we are in this together, America will be.
Judging from the president's rhetoric last night, he and and his K-Street speechwriters have rapidly re-learned the political appeal of offering up a robust government that hands out goodies and provides 1-877 numbers to an upset public. The difference is that Holt believes in activist government implicitly, as a philisophical thing, as the essence and prime medium of civil society. Bush believes in working government as a political tool, sort of like an inflatable tent to be hauled out onto the lawn and pumped up when necessary to serve the public, and the rest of the time to store the lobbyists and campaign flacks and other various patronage IOUs in. But it takes a long time to dump out the flacks and reinflate the tent, and hopefully Bush's nice Bull Mooseian words won't wipe away too many memories of how long that process took when the hurricane hit.
Of course, the Bushies' own spite -- a pretty common reaction to having to keep saying things you don't believe all the time -- might end up doing them in anyway. Bush is in too precarious a situation to be playing with the symbols so soon. And as we all know, nothing says "helping each other get ahead" in the great American family like promising to cut other domestic spending -- $200 billions worth; do they even think about what they're saying? -- to pay for reconstruction. (And this is to say nothing of ugly but less politically dangerous digs like legalizing the paying of sustanance wages in federal contracts or suspending environmental quality laws). And of course, nothing screams "disinterested professional competence in serving the public good" quite like appointing Karl Rove to oversee reconstruction efforts, even informally. Talk about playing with fire. When the indictments come down from the Plame case, does Bush really want the spotlight to land on yet another unqualified, unethical, political crony assigned important civil service tasks for which he's totally unqualified? Do they really not think continued scandal will hurt the prospects of Bush's successor? Or do they really just not care?
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