I’ve never aspired to be what the intelligentsia calls a “thought leader,” an all-encompassing thinker who seeks omniscience and then explains it by referencing people who have been dead for 200 years. Some would call me lazy. I would say I’m too busy.
Washington and the people who make it, cover it, analyze it, and eventually ruin it before we do it all over again in two years have too many thoughts. They’re available in such surplus that we’ll soon be buying them with a Costco card. And they’re usually so gourmet that they’re microwaved.
I am more concerned with the right thoughts, or the right ideas, the ones that take a little bit of time to cook and are served on a .pdf and not a bed of tweets that I forgot about 10 seconds ago. These are the sorts of items that are on the menu of one Mike Lee, a young senator from Utah who has actually done his job and not been harassed or fired for it, frequent outcomes for lawmakers who have an original suggestion. Lee has taken conservatism, which unfortunately is often interpreted as more of an attitude choice than an ideology, and applied it to policy issues that are not Made For TV. He understands that the government is too big. More importantly, he understands that the government is too stupid. He waves a sign that reads, “I didn’t build it, I’m just trying to fix the damn thing!” He’s been hired at more than minimum wage to do it at a crowded intersection, to America’s benefit.
One of Lee’s notions is that college shouldn’t all be stately stone buildings and mall areas and school brochures that pretend to promote diversity. He wants to move the classroom off-campus, but not necessarily online — how about the city’s symphony hall, where an aspiring violinist could earn credit for studying under a world-class first chair? Lee has a college accreditation proposal that’d help it happen. It’s a truly free-market idea that can be couched in such palatable, apolitical buzzterms as “expanding opportunity.” It’s exactly the kind of agenda item the GOP should promote now that Democrats can accurately complain “the Republicans control Congress.” 1
It’s also exactly the kind of agenda item that represents true “thought leadership.” Washington, D.C. has entered a cycle of cynical politics that has gone on for too long, about 225 years. But we can break it by avoiding Bob Barker’s advice and leaving our elected leaders enabled. Americans have chastised the nation’s capital — I know, because I am one of them — for further elevating talking points and media wars and triviality and Chuck Grassley’s Twitter account above issues. What will make us stop whining is how we choose to focus the most interminable of debates, the “national debate,” on something other than politics. The politics-first mentality has to stop, if only because I’m out of Advil.
The eternally concerned are concerned that Republicans will continue it, based on such texts as this National Review editorial: “Supposedly it is up to Republicans to ‘prove they can govern’ even though they do not have the White House. Senator Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) told NPR listeners that Republicans could do this by moving on trade-promotion authority, the immigration bill the Senate passed in 2013, and corporate tax reform. With all due respect to the senator and like-minded Republicans, this course of action makes no sense as a political strategy.”
… makes no sense as a political strategy seems to be politics-first, and must be painful for readers who do what Internet readers usually do and stop reading after a sentence they don’t like. But what the editorial implies is that Republicans should not just legislate for legislating’s sake; to show the American people that Congress is capable of doing something without there being a deadline for it. They should rather put up an agenda and own it, even with the near certainty that Senate Democrats will block it. This perspective is understandable, given a reality such as this one: Republicans believe comprehensive immigration reform begins with border security. Democrats believe it begins with amnesty. These are irreconcilable worldviews.
“[B]uilding the case for Republican governance after 2016,” the editorial continues some paragraphs down, “means being a responsible party, to be sure, just as the conventional wisdom has it. But part of that responsibility involves explaining what Republicans stand for — what, that is, they would do if they had the White House. And outlining a governing agenda for the future is a different matter from trying to govern in 2015.”
No doubt. And Republicans can do both, achieving consensus where possible and appropriate, which isn’t subjective in the least. It’d be dandy, too, if they promoted officeholders like Lee and the measures he’s put to paper, because the election strategy of foghorning how awful the president is had its day on Tuesday. They need a new one come two years from now. And even if Democrats were disinclined to participate, we’d all benefit from exposure to ideas that are more conservative in thought than conservative in “I feel like arguing with you on Twitter right now.” Besides, for the perpetually aggrieved consensus-builders, measured discussion produces more agreement than indignant obstinacy. The histrionic national conversation needs to sober up a bit.
Some would call me old-fashioned. I’d reply by saying that’s a fine drink. (— probably said by Ben Franklin more than 200 years ago.)
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1 Congress is not interchangeable with House, it never has been, and anyone who does it will be jailed at the urging of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, because it’s misleading.
