Mother Jones magazine<\/a>, “If you raise [the national debt ceiling], it’s just like getting a new credit card,” she said, arguing that families have to live within their budgets and the government should too.<\/p>\nThat view was echoed Time columnist Fareed Zakaria, the widely respected pundit, who declared point-blank in an October essay that “Complexity equals corruption.”<\/p>\n
Romney has also drawn fire for changing his\u00a0 mind on some major issues, reflecting the notion held by many conservatives that there are hard and fast correct answers to every question.<\/p>\n
The attractions of simplicity and consistency are understandable, especially to a people who have always loved plain-speaking.\u00a0 We prefer bumper stickers to treatises, catch-phrases to tomes.<\/p>\n
The problem, of course, is that we live in an incredibly complicated society, with more than 300 million citizens, a never-changing palette of challenges, and a political system that works well precisely because it is so complex.<\/p>\n
What’s more, we are now blessed by the fact that we live in a wildly intricate global economy, one that affords more humans on the earth a better standard of living than at any previous time in history.<\/p>\n
In order to make this immensely byzantine clockwork society function, we have developed a sweeping matrix of laws, regulations, bureaucracies, rituals and institutions.<\/p>\n
The truth is that we love the benefits of this muddled global architecture.\u00a0 It has meant fewer wars, more open trade, gradually expanding human rights, and more economic opportunity for more individuals.<\/p>\n
But it also offends our sensibilities.<\/p>\n
We don’t like the fact that the Federal Reserve’s Vatican-like machinations probably saved the United States’ financial sector from ruin.<\/p>\n
We grumble about the fact that a series of interlocking and shadowy political decisions certainly saved the now-prospering US auto industry from unraveling, saving an entire region of the country from a full-blown depression.<\/p>\n
We mutter darkly about our complicated tax scheme, even though it allows millions of us to send our kids to college, buy homes, and find health insurance, while shifting most of the costs to those Americans who can most readily bear the burden.<\/p>\n
Our political system — with its bickering lawmakers, feuding politicians, and 24\/7 cable TV coverage — is infuriating.\u00a0 But it is also more transparent, fair and accessible than at any previous time in our history.<\/p>\n
Our economy is, for better and for worse, one vast foreign entanglement, binding our fates permanently to the fates of all the world’s people.<\/p>\n
Perhaps understandably, we declare ourselves shocked — shocked! — when this wondrously complex human society shows its warts, its flaws and, yes, its corruptions.<\/p>\n
From the Occupiers who flame against Wall Street to the tea partiers who roar against the White House, there is a general conviction that because the system is flawed and shady and grudging and grubbing, it must be beyond salvage.<\/p>\n
The fact that politicians and businessmen are so often carted off to jail is viewed as a blight, a sign of decline and corruption.<\/p>\n
Surely, there is a simpler, purer, cleaner America to be had?<\/p>\n
Surely we can abolish the Fed or take up the gold standard or embrace a flat tax or purge the judiciary or get rid of big banks?\u00a0 Surely we can make Congress part-time or squeeze all the money out of our politics or take an anti-tax pledge?<\/p>\n
I’m skeptical.<\/p>\n
I think it’s time to question the romance of the frontier.\u00a0 It’s time to kick the tires on the notion that we can talk honestly about America in a catch-phrase or in a homily.<\/p>\n
It’s time to push back against the idea that running a society as fascinatingly complex as ours is as simple as managing a family’s business.\u00a0 Or that there are right and wrong answers that stay right and wrong even as circumstances change.<\/p>\n
It’s time to embrace the notion that we live in a mature, modern global society, where ideas zing and movements pop and products and technology change almost daily, while cultural and political attitudes shift at breathtaking speed.<\/p>\n
It’s a society where we accept that self-interest will shape a lot of our individual decisions, which means that a certain amount of regulation and oversight is needed to protect the larger good.<\/p>\n
It’s a society where gradual, common-sense reforms almost always accomplish far more civic benefit than sweeping, visionary ideas.<\/p>\n
(Ironically, those reforms often add even more layers of complexity, more regulations, more rules.\u00a0 Which may seem like a vice until they begin to produce tangible benefits, like cleaner air and water, or more protections for our civil liberties.)<\/p>\n
So whatever you think of the specifics of Romney’s 59-point plan, and his well-documented changes of heart, he is at least attempting to\u00a0 wrestle with the fascinating, confusing and (yes) occasionally distressing muddle that is modern America.<\/p>\n
As always, your comments welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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