The XX Factor: What women really think.

Not Putting My Eggs in the Government Basket

Hanna, you may well be right that government is the only thing that can save us from this financial crisis. But like Abigail and Bobby Jindal and many of my fellow conservatives, I'm going to maintain a healthy skepticism. Because even if government is going to be our savior, I am not convinced that our government has yet taken the right steps. The stimulus package might indeed have some provisions that actually stimulate, but they're buried among the hundreds and hundreds of pages of pork and years-old Democratic Christmas wish lists. Only 23 percent of the money in the stimulus package will be spent in 2009 and 2010 (by estimate of the Congressional Budget Office), but it was so urgent to get it passed that members of Congress had no time to read it? The market tanked earlier this month after our new treasury secretary announced a bailout plan with no details, apparently because at the last minute he scrapped the plan he'd been working on for months. Chris Dodd—the chairman of the Senate banking committee—had to apologize earlier this week after claiming that maybe banks would be nationalized, causing the market to tank last Friday.

Believe me, I'm not rooting against the economy. I want nothing more than to see my friends and family who've been laid off find new jobs and for things I used to take for granted, like a modest summer vacation, no longer to seem like inaccessible luxuries. But unlike those poor folks who gave all their money to Bernie Madoff and watched it disappaer, I'm not going to put all my hope and faith in the government to sort this out by itself.

Private Lives

That's a good point, Dahlia—if I understand you correctly, the argument would be that human nature is constant, in high places and low, and that the proportion of wrongdoers and plain idiots is bound to be the same among politicians (even moralizing ones) as it is among private ones. We're just a lot more likely to hear about a governor and former prosecutor when he is found to have been visiting a prostitute than an ordinary person.  

I don't know if I entirely agree, though, that it's unreasonable to expect public figures to behave with more decorum than the average citizen. I don't fraternize with powerful officeholders, but living in Washington, I know lots of ordinary people who work for the U.S. government. While they are not public figures, many do consider themselves public servants, and it does affect their personal lives. Many have security clearances. In part because of their clearances—and the way their careers will be impacted by any significant ethical or legal problems, not just prostitute visits but, say, drunk-driving arrests—and in part because they feel they are vested with a public trust, they are, often, more careful about what they do and say. They are less likely to download bootleg music files or drive 30 mph over the speed limit, and more likely to pay their nanny taxes. I do, sort of, expect more of public officials. They have taken oaths of office and promised to uphold the law. For many people I know, this does result in a certain amount of behavior modification. They aren't exempt from human frailties, by any means, but they do have an extra incentive to try to be.

That said, Marjorie's point is brilliant, like everything she wrote. Maybe the trust invested in powerful public officials is offset by the temptation that more often comes their way, and so it all evens out.