March 3, 2010

 

Heah, Wait-a-second, I know that guy...

A few weeks ago, a couple of talk show hosts were giving a local politician a hard time about being the only one on a local city council who had any integrity. The talk show hosts were asking, in effect, 'why don't you call those other idiots out on the carpet?'

"Because," said the councilman, "I have to work with them everyday."

C.S. Lewis once observed that a father, negotiating a dispute with the neighbors, faces the unpleasant balancing act of contending with two sets of really angry people--the rabble next door, and his own family. We may all yell from the sidelines, but when we have to bear the message personally, we don't easily embrace calling our colleagues, and our neighbors, and our friends to task.

Our inability to do this, even gently, is crippling. The odd truth about our system is that when we send legislators away to a distant capital, to take up full time work as permanent, professional legislators, with permanent professional staffs, and long time friendships across all sides of the aisle, it isn't anything like papa walking across the street to have a heart to heart with the neighbors. It's something like sending papa off to live with the neighbor's wife in a distant city. At some point, we start to feel, well, a little lonely and abandoned.

It's hard to imagine, and my research on this point is not systematic, but prior to the early 1930s, Congress only sat for about two months a year. My uncle, who was a state senator, only had about 30 days of duty in January of each year.

So...where were these legislators the rest of the year?

At home, of course, with their constituents.

One of the abiding truths of the tea party movement is the focus it has brought to bear on politicians who feel more at home in Washington, or Sacramento, than they do out here with us. If these politicians had to live, side by side, with neighbors who endure the effects of high taxation and burdensome regulation, as opposed to living side by side with those who get paid to impose those burdens--our economy, and our public policy, would be cleaner, more fair, and less byzantine.

Remember those two radio DJs who wondered why an honest man couldn't call his colleagues to task? That honest man was serving on a city council, a FULL TIME city council.

Don't just vote them all out.

Keep them home.

 

More of the Farm Journal --February 14, 2010