After last Tuesday’s elections, President Obama has stepped forward to take responsibility for Democrats’ loss, saying: “I’ve got to do a better job.”
It’s true: The president does have to do a better job. Look closely at the timbre of the elections, though: America has called loud and clear for politicians to work smarter, not harder.
Politicians have a choice in how they approach their demographic. They can assume everyone is basically helpless, or they can assume people are basically self-sufficient. Politicians who believe that people are basically helpless approach their relationship with their constituents from the position that the people want someone to make choices for them.
Many people would rather elect someone they believe is smarter than themselves. They would prefer to leave decisionmaking power up to a political stranger.
The only problem with this choice is that it makes little sense to hand over governance unilaterally to one person. It makes even less sense to unilaterally hand over decisionmaking to an active stranger.
Sure, it’s nice that kids are now protected from classrooms that smell like smoke. But it’s a little ridiculous to protect people from smoke in outdoor spaces like Central Park. And how ridiculous does it sound to pass a Happy Meal toy ban? What about “protecting” people from…gay marriage?
Everything is controversial! So don’t let some omnipotent central planner decide what you can and cannot do!
So yes, Mr. Obama: You do need to do a better job. But the message you should have gotten from these elections is not that you should work harder to “deem-and-pass” more control-centralizing legislation in the lame duck.
What politicians should have learned from the midterms is: This is not about you! This is about us!
Government is a collective tool that helps insure against the worst case scenario. Through government citizens fund minimal public goods like national defense, inasmuch as it’s necessary to keep interference out of people’s private lives.
By making governance about them — what they can pass, what they can do, how much of our lives they, the politicians, can touch – they forget that in this country it is government’s powers that are enumerated and citizens’ rights that are only marginally curtailed.
In the Nov. 2010 midterms Tea Partiers won big. The Tea Party is not a true political party, but rather a contract to keep politicians in line. At least five of the Tea Party’s eight tenets explicitly contradict what Obama has accomplished in his first two years in office.
Do a better job, Mr. President. But remember that “doing a better job” means keeping hands off!
