Political Malpractice

My wife Linda Treiber and her colleague Jackie Jones, both of whom teach at Kennesaw State University, have been doing research on medical error. Among their more interesting findings is that most nurses feel very guilty when they make a medication error. Even years after a relatively minor transgression, they agonize about giving a patient the wrong drug in perhaps the wrong dosage.
Nurses know that their mistakes can be a matter of life and death, hence they fret about the harm they might have done—even when they have done none. Similarly, doctors in training are regularly reminded about how serious their errors can be. While it is assumed that they will make some, they are also urged to learn from these so that they are not repeated.
How ironic is it that politicians who today presume to remake our health care system seem to have no such qualms. Many appear to feel no guilt when they make a mistake and a great many appear to learn nothing even when they make the most horrendous blunders. Whether this is from naiveté, incompetence or malfeasance, they persist in repeating their errors, irrespective of how damaging these have been.
Exhibit A is congressman Barney Frank. As the economist Thomas Sowell has amply documented, Frank was largely responsible for our late financial crisis. His insistence that lenders make mortgages available to under-funded homebuyers was indirectly at fault for the subsequent wave of defaults.
Yet Frank is unrepentant. He is still urging that home loans be made to improvident borrowers. Because he believes that everyone deserves to own a home, he sees no reason why an inability to make a significant down payment should hamstring their efforts to obtain one.
His colleagues in congress are as bad. They have recently voted to impose draconian regulations on financial institutions. Eager to find a scapegoat for their own malpractice, they had no difficulty in sloughing the guilt over onto a likely whipping boy. Who, after all, has sympathy for bankers?
Not long ago Frank himself had an embarrassing, and revealing, moment. When his male partner was discovered with marihuana, Frank expressed astonishment. He wasn’t aware of this indiscretion because he was utterly unfamiliar with the substance. Despite his nearly seventy years, he had apparently never encountered the stuff.
Still, is there anyone who believes that Frank is this unsophisticated? If so, they must be the same folks who thought that Bill Clinton never inhaled. By the same token, does anyone believe that Democratic members of congress are unaware of their role in the financial crisis? Or is it just that they are too naive to realize the consequences of their actions?
Even more significantly, do members of the liberal establishment seriously suppose that an escalating federal deficit will have no negative effects? Do they really believe their rhetoric about how spending additional trillions of dollars will save us money? Have they never heard the dire warnings about potential national bankruptcy?
Or is it that they feel completely innocent no matter what harm they impose? More probably they have idealistically convinced themselves that they have done none. Many apparently believe that their shenanigans will actually do the country good.
In which case, they are more than naïve. They are guilty of willful ignorance. Unlike doctors and nurses, they refuse to learn from their mistakes. Nor do they learn from the mistakes of their predecessors. Whether they acknowledge it or not, Franklin Roosevelt did not get us out of the Great Depression by spending money like a drunken politician. In fact, he extended the national agony by a full decade.
So the question is: Does the current crop of national Democrats intend to do the same? If so, they are indeed guilty of political malpractice. In contrast to doctors and nurses, however, they cannot be sued for negligence. They can only be retired when they next come up for re-election. Let’s hope they are.
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University