Yes, we have no magic

“I can’t really criticize the Tea Party people, because I came into the White House pretty much on the same basis that they have become popular. That is dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Washington and disillusionment and discouragement about the government.” It may surprise many readers to learn that this quotation is from former President Jimmy Carter.

At the time when we elected President Carter, trust in government was very low. We had experienced the Watergate scandal which forced President Nixon to resign from office for spying on political rivals. His schemes included an “enemies list” of opponents to be targeted with IRS audits or malicious prosecutions.  His predecessor, President Johnson, made up stories about attacks on American forces in order to justify the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that allowed him to start the Vietnam War.  We also learned that the FBI had been tapping the phones of civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King. There was suspicion that President Kennedy’s assassination was part of some conspiracy. There were plenty of justifications for mistrust of government.

“I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I’ll never avoid a controversial issue.” Those were promises that President Carter made. And to the best of my knowledge, he kept them. He dealt with an energy crisis by urging us to become more energy efficient. He talked about national initiatives to develop wind and solar power. His fiscal policies were disciplined, leading us away from the deficit spending of the Vietnam era and toward a balanced budget. He championed zero based budgeting which meant that no government agency would get money next year just because they had it this year. He offered leadership toward building our nation at home and keeping us out of wars.

It seems that voters want to hear about painless solutions to national problems from candidates who have magical cures for whatever ails the nation. In the very next election, the voters chose easy money and the cheerful countenance of President Reagan. He created economic stimulus by cutting taxes without cutting spending, leading us along the path to our current massive deficits and debt. He wanted to overthrow the democratically elected Sandinista party government of Nicaragua but congress forbade that. President Reagan then secretly sold arms to Iran (which had been holding our citizens hostage) and used the off-the-books proceeds to finance Contra rebel insurrection in Nicaragua. We became accustomed to disclosures of covert actions that congress never authorized. Since then, we have fought two wars in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, all paid for with borrowed money and American blood. Many Americans suspect the Bush-Cheney administration of making up the evidence for the second Iraq war, just as President Johnson did for Vietnam.

We have recently learned (through illegal disclosures) that the FBI, NSA, and CIA are running immense espionage programs, some directed at our allies and American citizens. The principal government response is to try to prevent disclosure of information rather than to honestly examine the proper role of government. Big financial institutions are suspected of improper influence on elected officials and regulators who created the opportunity for the 2008 financial meltdown – and with good reason. Deregulation of campaign finance is allowing the very wealthy and the biggest businesses to pay for massive campaigns to influence voters, often drowning out the voices of citizens, science and reason and subverting the “one man, one vote” principle.

As in 1976, when President Carter was elected, the mistrust of government is palpable; and the people are divided between left-leaning and right-leaning ideologies. Here is a more recent quotation from President Carter, “I don’t want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He’s a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.” That may not be the best politics but it is the best public service.

My hope is that regardless of ideology we will elect candidates who insist on integrity. Even if we disagree with their conclusions, their statements should always be factually true and above reproach, never designed to mislead us. If that is to happen, the candidates will need the courage to make voters uncomfortable by telling us things that we do not want to hear. We will need to learn, for example, how our spending for health care and defense compares to other nations and then decide how much we are willing to spend. Whatever we spend, we will have to decide who is going to pay enough taxes to collect more than we spend, so that we can begin paying down our debt. It will be our responsibility as voters to turn down any smiling faces who tell us that they have magical ideological solutions to our problems. Perhaps we have learned by now that they don’t exist. President Carter jokingly also said, “I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can’t get my wife to go swimming.” Candidates who mislead us with smiles and magical ideologies will drown us all if we continue to swim with them.