Correcting Mistakes

My father was very strict. He did not allow his children to make mistakes. We were supposed to get things right the first time and every time thereafter. He also insisted that we learn from his mistakes. We were to do as he told us so that we did not have to repeat his errors.
As an adult, I have discovered that Dad was wrong on two counts. First, mistakes cannot be avoided. If we are to learn new things, we must expect stumbles along the way. Second, almost no one learns from the mistakes of others. We seem to have a need to learn from our own. Only these drive home the lessons that must be internalized.
Which brings us to President Barack Obama. His spending binge has been a colossal mistake. Whatever his aspirations, he is in the process of driving the nation into bankruptcy for the sake of economic and social policies that are destined to fail.
He could, of course, have realized this had he looked back to the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s Keynesian programs, far from lifting us out of The Great Depression, extended it for nearly a decade. Millions remained persistently unemployed until WWII came along.
But Obama did not look back. So convinced is he of his left-liberal ideologies that he continues to celebrate the creation of millions of non-existent jobs. But neither does Obama learn from his own experience. He continues to blame George W. Bush for our economic woes a year and a half after he passed his own stimulus bill.
The question is how bad do things have to get before the president recognizes he has made some blunders. How many people must remain unemployed for how many years? Likewise, how high do health insurance premiums have to go before he acknowledges that ObamaCare will not bend the cost curve down?
Given the president’s demonstrated obstinacy, the answer may be never. But what of the Democratic politicians who walked over a cliff on his behalf? Couldn’t they have foreseen a downside to voting for an unpopular health care program or an equally disliked energy program? Wasn’t what happened to Bill Clinton during his first term sufficient warning?
Then too couldn’t they have recognized that they might be mistaken by observing the political tempest aroused by their actions? The anger of the tea party crowd was there to be seen, but it was dismissed as Astroturf. It was declared artificial and therefore unworthy of being taken into account.
For many congresspersons, this is a mistake from which they will not recover. It is likely that dozens of them will be forced to take an early retirement come November. For the sin of keeping their eyes closed because they wanted to believe their party leaders whatever the evidence showed, they will be denied reelection.
Finally, we come to the public. Millions of people trusted Barack Obama when he touted “change you can believe in.” They assumed he was a moderate who sometimes exaggerated his promises because he was a politician. They could have looked back the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter for proof that too much idealism can be dangerous, but they didn’t. They too wanted to believe.
Many moderates are beginning to regret their choice, but a majority of Democratic voters have yet to reach this conclusion. The fact that taxes are going up, not down, isn’t yet on their radar screens. That the president’s energy policies will result in exporting jobs, not in creating millions of good ones that remain here at home, continues to strike them as implausible.
People cannot learn from mistakes they do not perceive. Some moderates have had their eyes opened, but many members of the president’s party have not. Their aspirations continue to be governed by their hopes rather than by the evidence of their senses.
Let us hope that this does not apply to the electorate at large. Obama is an expert at rationalizing his errors, but let us keep our fingers crossed that most voters can see these for what they are. Unacknowledged mistakes have a way of making things worse, whereas those that are admitted can be fixed.
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University