My Plan for Shrinking Government

Been thinking a lot about the “solution” to the Fiscal Cliff fiasco that Washington finally hammered out. It’s a solution nobody likes much, and apparently it doesn’t solve the issues it was supposed to solve anyway. Mostly it is one more sign that our government is pretty dysfunctional.

I wrote a whole “rant” about what’s wrong with Washington, but I will spare you the burden even of skimming it. You’ve heard it all elsewhere. So here’s what I am thinking about, which surely you will hear here first:

It’s hard to remember that people in the public eye are people pretty much just like you and me. They only have 24 hours in each day, and should sleep for at least 8 of them. In those waking hours they tend to do the kinds of things you and I do...good, bad, and in between. They may be surrounded by all kinds of advisors and p.r. experts and spinmeisters, but at the end of their days they have to sleep with what they have said and done. And, because they are public people, we have to sleep with that, too.

But people can learn to be better people by getting in touch with who they are and knowing what it is to be members of the human race. People, even hardened, cynical, crafty political people, can strive to become more like Abraham Lincoln, of whom Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, recently said: “[Lincoln's] political genius was rooted in his remarkable array of emotional strengths, which enabled him to form friendships with rivals who had previously disdained him, to put past grudges aside, to assume responsibility for the failure of subordinates, to share credit with ease and to learn from mistakes.”

The things Goodwin claims Lincoln was good at do reveal a “remarkable array of emotional strength.” Convinced that what our political leaders most need is emotional health, I believe “we, the people” should recruit, assign, and pay for a therapist/psychologist/pastoral counselor for each person we send to Washington. It would be healthy for them–and for us.

Friends, let’s shrink this government.