Hump Day open thread: On sausage making
Prinz Otto von Bismarck, Minister-President of Prussia, Chancellor of the German Empire, and all-around scoundrel, has this well-known quote attributed to him: "To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making." Now it's generally agreed that this was misattributed to him, but the point is still a valid one.
By the time this post is a couple of hours old, we might have an agreement on the Build Back Better plan. As of this writing, the senator from Arizona is reported to have agreed to a minimum corporate tax rate, which completes the funding part of the bill.
There's been a great rending of garments and gnashing of teeth over the length of time it's taken to get this done. And I understand the frustration. We've been through four of this country's darkest years. We want a Hallmark movie ending to all our travails. We want a heroic ending, with all things set to rights, wrapped up neatly in a bow.
Of course, that's not real life. Nothing ever works that way. There's always some delay, some struggle, some compromise before things are agreed to.
The problem is that we now live in an on-demand world. Those of us in the developed nations expect that we can meet our needs and desires with a few taps on our phones. Anything we want is at most a couple of days away via Amazon. Patience has gone out the window. We haughtily demand immediate gratification, and if we don't receive it we stamp our feet and click our teeth. We angrily call the manager and say we'll never shop here again.
Politics don't move at the speed of light. And what we're seeing now is politics, practiced as it's always been practiced. The GOP isn't even a factor in this. This is the differing factions of our Democratic Party finding a way forward. It's going to be messy. It's going to be slow. But it'll get done.
No, we won't be getting everything originally promised. But that's the case with any legislation. Lawmaking is an act of compromise. Compromise is not a dirty word. Seventy percent of something is better than 0%. And that 70% we're about to get will prove to be transformative. It'll be something we can take back to voters next year. And when we do, we can elect more Democrats, and then get more done.
Those who think we have a finite amount of time to get anything done are missing the point. Getting something done will give us more breathing room. It'll be a selling point to voters, to give us their votes so that we can then go back and get all those other things left out in this bill. Those who don't see it that way are fools and not serious. They are more concerned with ideology than results. They are pundits unfortunately elected to Congress.
We are on the precipice of enacting the most transformative social legislation since the 1960s. That's something to be celebrated. Take the win, then build on it. It's the way a mature democracy behaves.