All too human government

The government—especially the federal government—is comforting and scary at the same time. You like the protection it gives you, but you don’t want to get on the wrong side of it.

Government seems omniscient, and that’s scary too. I send in my tax return and a few weeks later they tell me I was off by $1.59. When I was a graduate student in Boston on an international visa, I was careful to stay “in status.” Otherwise I was sure the INS would come knocking at my door and punt me back across the northern border. But on 9/11, I discovered, along with everyone else, that the government really doesn’t know very much about who was where doing what.

Barack Obama came to power in 2009 determined to reverse that powerful dimension of the American character that views government with suspicion. But his efforts have shown us more clearly the limits of what we can expect to accomplish with that divinely established but human—all too human—instrument.

We think of the federal government as a massive, sprawling, unified entity, something like a god or an intergalactic mothership filling the sky. In fact, it’s a network of people, connected institutionally and administratively, with seemingly innumerable tasks, sometimes at odds with each other. Some of those people are quite gifted, but most are just like you and me. In some ways that’s reassuring. At times, it’s frightening.

Our government undertakes, with the kindest motives no doubt, to reorganize our private affairs and insert its services where we should be taking responsibility ourselves. The destructive blundering that ensues would be comical on a sitcom like Gilligan’s Island, but it’s tragic when big government causes mayhem in real lives. Consider the reach of the Obamacare system into most people’s personal affairs and the utter incompetence of its rollout and execution.

Last week we learned of colossal blundering in an area that is properly the task of government, namely, the work of the Secret Service in protecting the president. In 2011, it took a maid to discover bullet holes in a White House window four days after shots were fired. Agents heard shots at the time, but supervisors assumed it was a backfiring vehicle. Last month, agents allowed an armed security guard with a criminal past to get into an elevator with the president in Atlanta. Most recently, a crazed man hopped the White House fence, crossed the lawn, entered the front door of the executive mansion, and ran around inside before he was finally tackled. No dogs. No sniper. And the alarm system had been muted because it had been sounding off a lot and bothering the White House staff.

To the human fallibility you can add the human tendency to self-serving abuse of power. Running a hospital system for our veterans seems straightforward. But people died and others languished in pain so administrators could claim they met their legally mandated turnover rates. Public servants pursue their interests and cover their tails.

Yes, these people are all too much like you and me. It seems reasonable to conclude, therefore, that the more of each of our lives that can be left to our own fallible discretion and the less that is entrusted to people in government of ordinary competence and all too ordinary self-regard, the better it will be for all of us.