Whenever I hear someone say, “Washington needs to be shaken up!” I imagine a patient walking into a doctors office. “Doc,” the patient says, ” I’ve got no energy and my plumbing’s off. My right leg trembles, my left is weak, and I’ve got aches and pains all over. Can you help me, Doc?” The doctor replies confidently, “what you need is to be shaken up!” Then –Loony Tunes fashion – he hits the patient over the head with a large frying pan.
The idea that shaking up Washington will improve government is a cartoonish fantasy of a prescription that is no more effective in politics than it would be in a doctor’s office.
“America needs to be shaken up” — It’s a buzzword, a slogan that expresses voter frustration with government gridlock and economic sluggishness. But it’s not a solution.
Shaking up a system produces chaos, and Washington’s got enough of that. Chaos in government is gridlock. It’s paralysis. It’s dysfunction. It’s Congress failing to give the CDC what it needs to fight the Zika virus. It’s failing to fill the vacant Supreme Court Justice seat in a timely, orderly manner.
Americans want change, and in their frustration they elect outsiders who are not politicians — who lack either the will or the skill to craft wise compromise. When the outsiders prove disappointingly unable to govern, the political shakeup is followed by more government dysfunction … and more voter frustration, anger, and contempt.
In recent years, the vilification and demonization of all politics in general and of Washington in particular have reached pathological proportions. It has created a monster that simply can’t take care of business.
But shake-up is not the answer.
Ted Cruz and associates demonstrated shake-up strategy back in 2013 when they shut down the government for more than two weeks. The stunt turned out to be bad for Mr. Cruz, bad for the Republican Party, and bad for the American people.
Washington needs reform, not revolution. It needs people who can cooperate, compromise and be constructive.
Let’s elect people who can do the work of governing.
And leave “shaken” (not stirred) to James Bond’s martini.
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