2centsworth.info

A lot of us are depressed at the current “State of the Union.”

The reason I feel some optimism is that, historically, the US has always gone through political cycles and there have been times in the past when the level of political and business corruption was easily as bad as it is today. But eventually there was a public backlash and a general housecleaning and things improved for a decade or two until the rot started setting in again. My hope is that we are approaching the bottom of one of these cycles and that at some indiscernable point in the next four years things will start to improve.

The really brilliant concept that the Founding Fathers built into the constitution was that of checks and balances. Their basic assumption, based on a good hard look at history and the contemporary world they lived in, was that you cannot trust anybody… Not politicians, not government officials, not the clergy, and not even the people. And they set up a system whereby different people and organizations with differing interests provide a check on each other. We have a Judicial System which can review and block actions by either the Executive Branch or the Congress. The President can only sign legislation that both Houses of Congress have already passed… And we have a Free Press that watches all of them. And then you have an electorate that gets to vote people in or out of office every few years. And it really does work albeit slowly, imperfectly, and with built-in delays.

The last election was a triumph of ideology and marketing over commonsense. But the levels of corruption, incompetence, and irresponsibility will bring an inevitable backlash two years and four years down the line.

One of the great dangers for people in positions of power is that people tend to tell you what they think you want to hear. To some extent this is inevitable but if one compounds it by punishing dissenters and “shooting the messenger” then it will eventually have disasterous results.

In the current climate where the CIA is being purged of professionals suspected, not of spying for our enemies, but rather of disloyalty to the President it is interesting to remember a quotation from Teddy Roosevelt…

“The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.“

Theodore Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star – May 7, 1918