Too many people are talking these days in Missouri.
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“It was hard to have a conversation, too many people were talking,” said Yogi Berra.
Leave it to one of Missouri’s best known, home-grown philosophers to provide the perfect commentary on today’s social, political and economic cultures.
The St. Louis Hill’s contribution to baseball legend, Yogi Berra, might have been a perfect politician, following in the footsteps of several of his relatives who did make a lasting contribution to local and state politics. But it is entirely possible that the one-time catcher and then later manager of the New York Yankees wasn’t exactly suited to public service, given his outspoken, if sometimes convoluted, honesty.
Today many would find Yogi’s candor, his proclivity for thinking out loud and some of his highly amusing observations (“You can observe a lot by watching”) very much out of place, even irrelevant, in our modern political climate.
Candor is virtually unknown today. It disappeared almost completely by the time another Missourian, Harry Truman, returned to Independence in 1953 after spending two decades in Washington. Thinking out loud is almost outlawed by contemporary politicians and their consultants who counsel clients never to appear undecided or seem to be searching for an answer to an important issue of the day.
As for being amusing, today’s politician risks seeming out of touch with reality if he makes a clever remark, risking the wrath of highly critical opponents and the sensibilities of numerous minorities. Scorning counsel, such political figures as Bob Dole and Alan Simpson found it almost impossible not to inject some lighthearted humor in discussions of grave matters. While Dole and Simpson amused constituents, their words were often received with umbrage and their counsel was lessened.
Thou shalt not be frank, honest, undecided nor amusing might just as well be a part of both parties’ commandments to their members, whether they find themselves in Washington, Jefferson City, a county courthouse or a city hall.
Instead the advice is to hedge while seeming decisive. You are to be a serious statesman who both recognizes a problem and is the only one who has the perfect solution.
Much of this highly overpriced advice is based on the assumption that voters don’t want to be told too much about any subject, particularly one that is overly complex. But the truth is, if the subject isn’t complex, it probably isn’t highly important. There are few major pending political questions today that don’t have reasonably acceptable arguments on both sides.
Whether the problem is tax cuts versus rainy-day reserve accounts, free trade versus reasonable domestic goods protection, public versus private education, crime prevention versus tougher sentencing laws, freedom of speech versus campaign spending restrictions, environmental protection versus property rights, public services’ regulation versus marketplace competition, right-to-life versus right-to-choose, taxation equity versus graduated levies, or social rights versus individual freedom, there are almost always extenuating, even exacerbating, conditions that defy easy solutions.
And it is the difficult decisions, which ultimately will have to be decided in a constitutional democracy, that are most often avoided by those persons who promised, during earlier campaigns, to represent the best interests of the majority. Yet often they prefer the obfuscation that has become so much a part of today’s political process.
Asking for a straight answer, accompanied by a clear-cut logical explanation, is not demanding too much, even if it is so often avoided.
Yogi is right…there are too many people talking for a conversation to take place between the public and its servants. Worse still is many of those talking aren’t saying anything.
by Jack Stapleton