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Enlarge the problem

By David Schlosser, candidate for U.S. Congress

Week of 26th July 2006

http://www.schlosserforcongress.com/media-press/op-ed/060726_Enlarge_the_problem.php

The legendary Jack Welch advises that you can find unexpected solutions to intractable challenges if you enlarge the problem.  Something that seems so counterintuitive is difficult to comprehend until you accept that most problems are a function of the context in which you examine them.  Trying to calculate fractions using only whole numbers will make a problem appear unsolvable – no different than trying to drive a square peg into a round hole.

Likewise, if our only context for solving political and public policy challenges is Republican-Democrat, we ignore a universe of possible solutions.

This is particularly true when considering the odd contradiction of their philosophies of government.  Republicans believe you should be free to spend your money as you choose.  Democrats believe you should be free to conduct your personal life as you choose.  But Democrats believe that freedom stops working when it comes to making decisions about spending and saving money – government, they believe, is far better qualified to choose for you.  And Republicans believe that freedom no longer works when it comes to making moral choices – government, they believe, should make those decisions for you.

As a Libertarian, I believe that freedom works in both realms – economic and social.  I trust individuals to make the same wise decisions about their lives that they make about their checkbooks.  The Republican-Democratic frame of reference, which extends that trust to only half of the decisions you make, prevents us from taking Welch’s advice about enlarging problems to find solutions.  Perversely, it forces us to do the exact opposite.

Reframing the context of a problem opens up a range of political and policy alternatives.  For example, instead of considering immigration as an issue of sealing the border or creating a new “guest worker” status, we could welcome immigrants who want to become law-abiding American citizens, rather than driving them out of the country or into the black market economy.  Instead of the mutually exclusive strategies of “cut and run” versus “stay and pay” in Iraq, we could allow our military professionals to design and execute a strategy to bring our troops home as fast as possible, rather than dragging out the political management of Washington’s military adventurism.  Instead of locking ourselves in a titanic struggle to do nothing about retirement and health security, we could analyze the demographic realities of these failing programs to preserve Social Security and Medicare for the citizens to whom we’ve promised those benefits.

Today’s left-right dichotomy precludes such alternatives, despite the fact that it’s more important to solve problems than to win political battles.  Most Americans – the vast middle ground of citizens who are turned off by politics as usual – consider themselves fiscally conservative and socially tolerant.  But the solutions presented by the two major parties disenfranchise so many Americans that barely more than half register to vote.  And barely more than half of them actually bother to vote.

The conservative-liberal battles raging across our nation forsake nearly three-quarters of Americans who find today’s constrained solutions so irrelevant to their lives that they no longer participate in the political process.  The simple math of a closely divided red-blue country means that our elected representatives, who should be answerable to all American citizens, are today advocating on behalf of only about 15 percent of the population.

And because the nation is so closely divided, the distinctions between the two parties grow increasingly narrow: stepping outside the acceptable boundaries simply poses too great a risk.  As a result, the two sides occasionally switch places.  For example, Republicans initially advocated for the creation of so-called 527 committees, which independently finance candidates or causes.  Democrats opposed 527s because they believed wealthy Republican 527s would outspend Democrat 527s.  After a few years, when it became clear that Democrats exploited 527s far more efficiently than Republicans, it was the Republicans who advocated getting rid of 527s and Democrats who fought to save them.

This is just one example of the hypocritical contradictions that emerge from two parties that are beholden to the same small group of influential citizens and financial backers.  This is the curse of what President Bush calls “small ball.”  The thinking of our legislative representatives is so narrowly defined that they cannot escape the bureaucratic maze and find solutions to our most challenging problems.  In business, we refer to this as a failure to think outside the box.

Oddly enough, Americans trained in the ways of consumerism accept this tragic state of affairs among their political rulers, even though they would accept no such limitations at the mall.  When Americans shop for a breakfast cereal, they choose among hundreds of alternatives … or they have some yogurt.  When Americans look for a car, they choose from scores of models made by dozens of manufacturers … or they ride a bike.  When Americans turn on the television, they choose from hundreds of channels … or plug in a video, open an Internet browser, play a game, or listen to the radio.  Today, Americans can even choose blue jeans manufactured to meet their personal tastes and fit their particular curves.

In a world of unlimited choices, our political system boxes Americans into an either-or choice that 75 percent find so distasteful that they would prefer to do absolutely nothing.  Even worse, when the choice they make disappoints them, their only alternative is virtually indistinguishable from their original choice.  So, we and our political rulers muddle along, failing year after year to solve any of the problems we know are important.

It’s time to enlarge this problem.  If we cannot find the solutions we need between the choices we have, we need more choices.  In the same way that the dizzying selection of denim creates a universe of competition, alternatives to the sclerotic politics of Washington creates a universe of possibilities for change and progress.

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Libertarian candidate for U.S. Congress David Schlosser, 38, lives in Flagstaff, Ariz., where he is a public relations manager for a global microprocessor company and has been a part-time instructor in the School of Communications at Northern Arizona University.  He brings nearly a decade of political experience to his campaign for Congress, and is a graduate of Trinity University and the University of Texas.  His wife, Anne, is a corporate training and development professional.  For more information about Schlosser and his campaign for Arizona’s First Congressional District, visit www.SchlosserForCongress.com.

Authorized and paid for by Schlosser for Congress, Scott Gude, Treasurer

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