The rhetoric of "do it now"

I saw this in a political email message:

"But what the media and Congress seem to forget is that it's not just about politics or policy minutiae. It's about real people who are really suffering under our broken health care system—and can't afford to wait any longer for real reform."

Aside from the usual usage of "politics" as a dirty word, I'm not entirely sure what they're expecting. The above can basically be broken down into:
1. We don't want you to think about details.
2. Do it now.

Should the government start shooting things in the dark and push out reform full of random clauses?

Of course any reform will be riddled with "policy minutiae" because it is those very minutiae that make things so complicated. When dealing with something as complex as health care -- financially, logistically, morally, economically (and many of those aspects are themselves intertwined!) -- you need to be very careful lest you end up crafting something that at best does little or nothing and at worse decreases efficiency and usefulness, causing more harm than good.

It's one thing to say that times are tough, but it's another to say that an incredibly complex issue should be solved right now regardless of pesky details. Of course, there's a difference between dawdling about and being cautious, but such nuance is unfortunately disappearing from political rhetoric. After all, it's a lot easier to get all excited about sound bites and hyperbole than it is about the nitty-gritty details of actual problem-solving.

Posted on 09/02/09 at 13:26:47 by dchaley .
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