Failure

From Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt newsletter:

In your life, failure is not an option. If you don’t pick up the kids from school, they’re stuck there. If you don’t go shop for groceries, the kids don’t eat. All around you, every day, you see things that have to get done, and you do them. You don’t tell the kids, ‘well, our intentions were good. We tried. We had some glitches.” You don’t get to blame your predecessor or the opposition party. You don’t get to tell them, or your spouse, or your boss, that the situation is the same, as normal, and that they’re “just noticing now because of social media.”

Where is this “get it done” attitude in Washington? Every time you turn around, it’s some new excuse. Americans do not accept this kind of incompetence and unaccountability in their personal and professional lives. Why should they accept it from Washington?

We shouldn't. I'd like to say we start by voting against incumbents -- ALL incumbents -- every primary. Unfortunately, I've come to believe that the system has become too perverted by the party elites for that to have any real and lasting effect.

So what's the solution? I don't know, but history may lend us a clue. In the 1850s, the business-as-usual elites in Washington ignored the corruption, cultural resentment and economic manipulation which had been running out of control since just after the Constitutional Convention. The result was... ugly. And if you've bought the party line that slavery caused the Civil War, you're part of the problem.