It’s far too easy to be cynical nowadays — especially when it comes to your opinions about politics and the government.
Can you blame someone for being skeptical about campaign promises, legislative initiatives and politicians’ actual ambitions? When you watch the IRS scandal, the Benghazi scandal, the botched Obamacare rollout and the blown-out-of-proportion Bridgegate scandal unfold, you begin to feel cynical yourself.
But this newly found cynicism is not necessarily a bad thing. In a culture of too-good-to-be-true promises and too many out-of-control expectations, a dab of skepticism may not be negative.
At the beginning of the football season, when some said the Gators would win the whole shebang in a glorious fashion, don’t you think we should have managed that expectation?
Skepticism, especially when talking about politics, brings with it reserved expectations and certain weariness — which will come in handy during the 2014 election cycle.
When talking about the role of government in our lives, skepticism shifts the conversation from “What should the government do?” to “What can the government do?” More specifically, “What can the government actually do well?”
Government simply cannot do everything — but it tries. Obamacare now controls one-sixth of the economy. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg believed the government should control your eating and drinking habits. And if you want free birth control, just ask the government for it.
We should cast doubt upon a government that cannot control its spending, cannot control its bureaucracy and cannot use our taxpayer dollars efficiently. Having this doubt in what government actually has the ability to do tears away at the long-held liberal belief that government can and thereby should do everything. I would say that discrediting this liberal belief is completely healthy and quite reassuring.
Now, I’m not saying that there is no place for government in society. Government does have a place. Government is in place to protect us in foreign and domestic affairs, to make the marketplace free and competitive and — to a degree — care for those who have fallen on hard times. And the government should work well and produce efficient pieces of legislation and plans of action — I completely reject the culture of nihilism that some politicians hold.
But when you go beyond that basic rendering of what the government should do, political programs and institutions will produce disastrous results.
New York Times columnist David Brooks penned an article that describes the new movement on the right as skeptical reformism. This is a winning strategy for those on the right and for the country. The skeptical reformers do believe that the government has a role to play in society. They see what the government does both efficiently and inefficiently. In order to make government work, the reformers want to make government institutions work effectively while maintaining the belief that government simply cannot and should not do everything.
The skeptical reformers would manage people’s expectations. Do you think a skeptical reformer would have promised a complete overhaul of the health insurance marketplace, promised exuberant enrollee numbers and made untrue promises?
By taking a step back with our new skepticism, we become able to properly govern and properly manage our expectations. We realize what agencies and institutions we have and what they should and shouldn’t do. We see the world and our government as it is, not as what it should become. Then we will be able to tackle gripping national problems, devoid of promising unrealistic expectations like defunding Obamacare and having the ability to keep your health care plan.
Now for the larger question at hand: How many points will the Gators score in the 2015 BCS National Championship?
Michael Beato is a UF economics sophomore. His column appears on Wednesdays.
A version of this column ran on page 6 on 1/15/2014 under the headline "What voters need in 2014: skepticism"
