The Anatomy of a Train Wreck

It was hard to not notice the train wreck on the news today for Congressman Weiner. As I watched that hideous thing unfold, I was watching a guy (could have been any guy...or girl) who came to that heart-sinking realization that no matter what he did, he was not going to get out of this jam. The decisions he made, freely and of his own volition, and a little bad luck (some might call it karma) invariably led him to this moment of crisis in his personal and public life.

And while it is supremely easy to pick on this guy, and his particular actions, I'd rather focus today on a couple broad principles that I gleaned from his press conference.

First, he alluded to this activity as a personal failing that he had paused on occasion to consider the wrongness of, but proceeded anyway. I found that remark absolutely fascinating, and filled with information about the nature of this guy's problem.

Personal failings: we all have them. Weaknesses, I mean. If we're all really honest with ourselves, we all have things about our personalities, attitudes, habits, etc. that we would rather no one else find out about. Some of these are different in levels of social acceptability and severity. Pride, exaggerating (i.e. lying), lust, greed, laziness, gambling, etc.

If we're "good", we're working on those weaknesses. Actively resisting them, and perhaps even taking steps to turn them into strengths. We may even enlist the assistance of close ones to help us work on them. If we're "not good", we give into them. Actively working to improve our weaknesses is a purposeful decision, and often a difficult task. Giving into them, in my observation, is rarely a conscious decision, but rather the result of a series of seemingly insignificant compromises, rationalizations, and deferments of serious soul searching. In the short run, improving ourselves is hard, deferring or giving in is easy. The long run results, however, are always brutally obvious.

We are a habit forming people. If we indulge in good behavior, we tend to continue that pattern. If we get bumped off that track and indulge in our vices and weaknesses, we tend to continue that pattern. The difference between the two is that, again, the former is harder in the short term, whereas the latter is easier. So, taking the path of least resistance leads us to bad habits which, of course, lead to long term habits (a.k.a. addictions; be they habitual, substance, or psychological addictions) and brutal consequences.

So, on the level of a guy indulging in a behavior that he knew was not good, and getting caught in doing it, lying about it, humiliating himself, his wife, kids, family, friends, staff, etc.; on that level, as I watched him bear it all out in the public square, I felt bad for the guy. Everything he said about his sense of shame, his panic upon discovering that he had been discovered - that all struck me as brutally honest, painful, and true.

However...

Second, the statement: "I take full responsibility for my actions" followed on in the next breath by "I will not resign." What does taking responsibility for one's actions really mean?

I learned it in the simplest of terms when I was a kid: if I stole a candy bar, I'd pay for it. If I messed up the living room, I'd have to clean it up. There are a couple steps in these examples: confession and restitution. Paying back the price of the candy bar, and cleaning up the room. Those forms of restitution are fairly obvious.

But what about those actions that damage things less tangible, like the trust between a husband and a wife, an elected official and his/her voters? How does one assign a value of restitution to those intangible damages? That's a little more challenging, I think.

I think there are two ways of approaching this one. The questions one has to ask are: "Am I sorry I got caught?" or "Am I sorry I did what I did?" If you're sorry you did what you did, the self-imposed price of restitution is high. There's no easy away around it, nor does the offender look for one. They seek out all the possible ways in which to take on the consequences, and they take them on to an almost self-sacrificing degree.

To the person who got caught, and is sorry they got caught, when there's no other way around it, they'll admit it, apologize for it, then try to walk away from it all hoping there are no real consequences other than embarrassment.

Congressman Weiner did the latter, and I feel sorry for him and especially his wife and kids. Because the degree to which he is truly sorry for his actions (as opposed to getting caught), he will want to pay the price of restitution. Reconciling with his voters - whom he lied to - means resigning, in my mind. More importantly, part of the price of restitution is taking his weakness on, head on. He punted on accepting the consequences of lying to his voters, so I think he'll punt on dealing with this weakness. Which means he'll still indulge (perhaps in other forms), and he and his family will suffer as a result.

That's a shame.

"Government Mandates" and Shallow Thinking

During my time in college, I was fully engaged in the passion of political debates. I remember going to my first college republicans meeting excited to hear the debate on the club's platform. The first proposal out of the box was to "eliminate all entitlement programs immediately." I listened with amusement as folks were advocating this position with zeal, passion, and fervor.

I was blown away.

Setting aside my belief that there will always be a few folks out there in need of some level of government assistance (e.g. folks who aren't able to provide for themselves, have no family to help, and aren't plugged in with various churches and community non-profit organizations); setting that aside for a moment, a categorical elimination of all entitlement programs was simply ridiculous. It would never get votes on the floor of the House and Senate, and signature by the President. It would never happen. Yet these college republicans were spending so much time and emotional capital on it. And the proposal was adopted.

I walked out of the meeting never to return.

This college-era recollection was brought to my minds as I caught coverage today of the press gaggle around Mrs. Palin at her bus stop just a few clicks away from Mr. Romney's announcement party. Mrs. Palin repeated several times that while she conceded that then-Governor Romney's health care plan for Massachusetts was better than a federal plan, her opposition to "Romney-care" was based in her opposition to "government mandates." She repeated this non-qualified opposition to government mandates several times.

I kept listening for some sort of qualifier to this position, and each time she repeated this belief (or talking point - because it was repeated so often in the exact same words), she never hesitated or qualified it.

The irrationality of this thought process is as mind boggling as those college republicans. If she opposes the plan because of certain components or features of it, I can understand that. I can even understand opposition to the plan because she doesn't think government should be involved with health care at any level (which, if I'm generous, I could assume is her actual belief). But her opposition - stated over and over again - is rooted in her unqualified opposition to government mandates.

I think just about everyone on the conservative side of the great debate would agree that, in general, government mandates should be alternatives of last resort in most cases, or alternatives of no resort in some cases. However, her apparent belief is that there are no cases in which a government mandate is good.

Safety standards for highway overpasses and bridges? Registering with Selective Service? Drivers licenses? These are all government mandates. And I think they're good ones. There are a laundry list of other good and worthwhile government mandates. There are also a whole slog of counter-productive government mandates. But listening to Mrs. Palin's unqualified opposition to them reminded me of the lunacy I witnessed at that college republicans meeting.

Now, it's certainly possible that she does believe there are some government mandates that have value, but she should have said that, and made her point of opposition specific to government health care.

So, either she's a lunatic on the level of a person the person who thinks they are a poached egg; or she didn't take the few moments necessary to think through the implications of the talking point she crafted and repeated over and over again at this particular bus stop.

Either way, I'm blown away.