Admitting ignorance is important. Whether studying astrophysics, Zoroastrianism, or anything in between, really, a good place to start is knowing what you don’t know and by extension what you need to know.
Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, gets this half right.
The boy-band politico and presumptive 2020 candidate has a lot of opinions and criticisms of what President Trump is trying to do to secure the border. O’Rourke just doesn’t have many solutions of his own. He said as much.
When asked what should be done to address visa overstays, the method by which most immigrants come here illegally rather than scurrying across the southern border, O’Rourke admitted as much.
“I don’t know,” he said, pausing in a lengthy interview with the Washington Post’s Jenna Johnson.
This honesty is refreshing. It is certainly preferable to the normal nonsensical boilerplate that politicians regurgitate when caught in questions they can’t answer. But this honesty is also alarming because O’Rourke has spent the last six years representing a border district in Congress.
Certainly, the man who stole a million progressive hearts, almost snatching a Senate seat in the process, has some idea? Not really. According to WaPo, the best O’Rourke can offer is better cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico — hardly the innovative stuff expected from a potential 2020 savior.
“That’s an answer,” he said, “but that’s something that we should be debating.”
Debate is good, of course. But people who run for office usually have proposals. What’s more, and in case O’Rourke didn’t notice during his congressional tour, there isn’t a lot of actual debate going on in Washington.
One might suspect that O’Rourke isn’t so much admitting ignorance then as much as he is dodging the question. Again, as WaPo notes, the Democratic wunderkind calls for debate on the stump, on Facebook, and on Instagram. He just doesn’t do the debating.
Who has time, anyway? O’Rourke is too busy skateboarding and road-tripping and rocking the air drums to learn anything.
This empty call for debate works, so long as O’Rourke is charming donors and glad-handing voters. It will work until O’Rourke finds himself calling for further debate … on a debate stage during the Democratic primaries. The boy politician who would be president had better get smart, and fast.
