Winning In Politics Is About Caffeine

In politics, the spoils go to those who drink the most coffee.

Not long ago I met with a lawyer who had drafted a special needs trust for a member of my family. The trust was 24 pages long. After 55 minutes of working our way through the document, I noted, with complete exasperation, that we were only on the fourth sentence: we were still on Page 1, §1, ¶1. Death could not come soon enough.

A day or two later, I arrived late for our local school district's annual meeting. And I mean LATE: about an hour and fifty minutes late. Not that it mattered; my wife was already there and I am not the most interested voter on items budgetary. Regardless of when I arrived, the meeting had not progressed far when I presented myself to the checklist supervisor. Alas! Here it was, somewhere after 8:45 on a school night, and we're just discussing a second motion on the second amendment to the first article in a warrant consisting of 13 articles!

Oh, the pain of the legislative process.

But it is this very pain I think describes the legislative process exactly: Whoever has not collapsed in exhaustion wins. It's as simple as that. Legislative and political successes are not a measure of moral or intellectual excellence; they are not a signal of what is right or true or best. They are just a plain marker of endurance.

I personally oppose the Obama health care plan, if you can call it Obama's (considering he's largely farmed it out) or even a health care plan. But I am SO SICK OF HEARING ABOUT IT I am tempted to simply surrender and capitulate: go ahead -- HAVE YOUR WAY, you petulant brood! Indeed, there is no doubt the torturous push for a political goal is in part meant to weaken and tire the opposition. And drafting a colossal and arcane bill -- one full of abstruse language and even esoteric references -- creates not only an expert, interpreting class -- our elected officials -- but a dependent, even helpless class, namely, the citizenry who've not the time to know what is in the bill or the resources or energy to challenge it (and one can add to this class those elected officials who haven't the time, energy or resources to pore over 2100 pages of linguistic mash). And health care is not the only issue where we can see the "beat down-wear down" strategy at work. The gay marriage debate is a recent example of this sort of thing: Let's beat them down to get our way, or we'll make them so sick of it they'll just flop down in exhaustion.

Seriously, after sitting with a lawyer who takes an hour to expound on four sentences of legal language, I'll give him my house if he'll just shut up and tell me where to sign. So, too, with most things political: I'll vote yes -- or just present -- if they'll just let me go home. I mean, there are different ways to filibuster; one way is to just talk about nothing other than your political goal everywhere and every moment, jamming the airwaves and newspapers with jabber, jabber, jabber. Even criticism works in your favor: if the critics talk long and hard enough, PERHAPS the effect will work toward your goal, as listeners and viewers will simply grow weary, satiated, stumbling dumb in ennui. To beat down, I believe, is also the very nature of bureaucracy: to render an individual impotent before the bureau itself has to change or do any real work. There's no moving a well-caffeinated leviathan. Please, just give me the papers so I can go hang myself. ("I'm sorry, sir, but that will require a permit. $30 please.")

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FATIGUE, CASE IN POINT: The CBO

It was really no surprise the numbers presented this week by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) came out so favorably to Mr. Obama's health care plan. What was surprising to me is that the Democrats in Congress didn't immediately vote on the bill so as to prevent objective number crunchers from having enough time to determine where the CBO's mathematics strayed from reality. Interestingly, there may be evidence the CBO itself is a victim of political fatigue, or so reports Politico in "CBO crumbles under health workload":

CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf told House Appropriations Legislative subcommittee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) that his staff has been working “100-hour weeks” and cannot keep up with the budgetary and economic impact queries lawmakers have about health care.

“Analysis of competing health care proposals absorbed a huge share of the agency’s resources, and CBO analysts in that area have worked flat out for more than a year,” Elmendorf said today. “…Considerable congressional interest in analysis of health care issues is likely to persist and …the almost round-the-clock schedule maintained this past year by CBO’s current staff cannot be maintained much longer...."

The budget office is responsible for providing Congress nonpartisan analysis and cost estimates for legislation, but the CBO has been in the limelight in a much greater way as Democrats desperately try to keep the cost of the health care bill in check.

But the CBO admits that the quantity of analysis hasn’t been enough to meet the needs of Congress.

Wasserman Schultz said she was concerned that Elemendorf’s office had recently sent a scored legislative summary to a House office that later needed to be significantly amended.<

Wasserman Schultz’s aides wouldn’t specify where the error occurred, but one aide said that the cost estimate differences were “significant.”

“Can we be sure in the future that’s not going to happen again?” Wasserman Schultz asked Elmendorf, noting that factual errors are a “big concern. This was a dramatic change…That, to me, should be avoided at all costs.”

“I wish I could guarantee that,” Elmendorf said.

If America really opposes the sort of changes that are imminent, it's time for the country to order a lot of double espressos. It's going to be a long, long night.

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