Measles issue: Can you trust government, science?

The argument over measles shots is really about bigger questions – if citizens are free to reject government authority and if science merits the public’s respect.

By now, most people are aware of the political debate about the proper role of government.  These days, it focuses on the size of government budgets, taxes and the effect of government regulation on private enterprise.

The measles controversy, caused by the unwillingness of some people to let their children get shots and the willingness of some politicians to support them, goes far beyond that familiar debate.  It goes to the core question of the relationship between individuals and their government.

This question was at the heart of the American Revolution, caused to a great degree by British suppression of Americans’ human rights and freedom.

Take the Third Amendment to the Constitution, which just about everybody likes.  It bans the government from lodging soldiers in private homes in peacetime, and only by law in wartime. Previously, the British, when short on barracks space, had simply required soldiers to be lodged on private property.

The British imposed government demands over people’s rights.  The Bill of Rights was meant to deny government such excessive power.

One reason that some parents fight measles vaccinations is simply the historic opposition to governmental power.  With all the political campaigning against big government, some people have come to see the requirement for measles shots as just another example of its excesses.

Government exists to protect public health and safety, and it alone can carry out that responsibility.

Conservative advocates say people should not get government aid, but should be left to sink or swim economically in the marketplace.  But public health and safety cannot be a matter of sink or swim.

The initial reaction of some potential Republican presidential candidates, saying that parents ought to decide on measles shots independent of government control, amounted to pandering to GOP primary voters who oppose “big” government.

These same Republican leaders backed off, at least to some degree, perhaps because they realized there are many parents whose children might be unnecessarily exposed to measles carried by unprotected school mates.  Maybe they also recognized that government has a legitimate and necessary role to play.

Resistance to government requirements results not only from a desire to limit government but also from distrust.  If you believe it is bloated, corrupt, all about self-enrichment, and, worst of all, consciously seeking to substitute socialism for freedom, can you trust anything it says?

Having grown to distrust government authority, some may end up distrusting any authority whose word they must accept. Good science, which does not do government’s bidding, gets the same lack of deference as government itself.

In good science, ideas are advanced and tested, and the results of carefully designed tests are used to reach conclusions.  In addition, any finding can be challenged by new discoveries and research, and challengers are encouraged.

Some findings are continually tested.  Did dinosaurs walk the earth millions of years ago?  Is the universe getting larger? Are measles shots effective and do they cause other illnesses?

One of the benefits of good science is that scientists spend years learning how to design and conduct reliable tests to make sure they are correct. They often collect massive amounts of data and subject it to careful analysis. That ensures that scientific findings are not a matter of opinion, but an effort to get as close to absolute truth as possible.

If people worry about the side effects of measles shots, science must try to find out if there is any basis for these worries.  No problems have been found and the benefits of the shots are well known, so they continue being given.  The known and proven benefits far outweigh the unknown and unproven risks.

The problem with measles shots may have been caused by one study of 12 children in Britain years ago.  Based on phony data, it sensationally claimed the shots caused autism.  The author sought fame, but, while it took years, he was finally caught in his lies and his conclusions rejected.

The unfounded prejudice against good science is fostered by politicians whose stock-in-trade is causing distrust and who are willing to assert their politics-based opinions as having equal weight with research-based science.  People may get to pay the price.

Government and science each have legitimate and necessary jobs to do – public health and safety and searching for the truth -- and, to that degree at least, both are worthy of respect. 

Right now, that means children should get measles shots.

“First 100” votes: Congress’ conflict continues

Political life is often marked by milestones.  A president’s first 100 days are often regarded as a forecast of his ultimate success in office.

This year, the Republicans took control of Congress with solid majorities in both the House and Senate.  During January, they were in charge for one month out of the 24 months in this Congress, and there had been 99 votes in the two houses combined, close enough to the “first 100” milestone.

And these votes may signal how Congress behaves through its term.  They offer little reason to hope for bipartisan compromise.

In its 49 votes, the Senate has dealt almost exclusively with the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.  After an initial failure to cut off debate, the bill faced a myriad of amendments.  The Keystone votes provide a good picture of how the Senate is working.

The GOP wants to force approval of the pipeline to run from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, because President Obama has failed to take any action either way.

In the previous Senate, controlled by Democrats, Majority Leader Harry Reid blocked the consideration of amendments to bills.  He feared the GOP would propose amendments to embarrass any Democrat who opposed them in an effort to prevent the bill from being watered down.

Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised he would take a different course and allow amendments, and he has kept much of that promise.  The Democrats could offer amendments and to try to embarrass Republicans, who wanted no changes to the bill.

The Democratic strategy seems not to have worked, suggesting that Reid was wrong in the first place.  Amendments ranged from protecting funding for home heating assistance to mandating that use of Keystone oil reduce dependence on Middle East supplies to requiring only American-made materials in the pipeline.  They were defeated.

Only rarely would a Republican senator break ranks.  On the home heating amendment, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire voted with the Democrats, because of the heavy reliance on home heating oil in their states.

On the final Keystone vote, nine Democrats lined up with the GOP.  Almost all came from states where they could be vulnerable to a GOP challenger.  They would not risk their seats out of loyalty to the president. 

Only in a couple of cases did two senators from the same state and party split – all Democrats.  In states where the senators were from different parties, like Maine (independent Angus King votes with the Democrats) and New Hampshire, senators predictably split on the final vote.

The Democrats’ defection is not unusual.  Their party has a long history of members freely departing from the party position, unlike the far better disciplined GOP.

Does the Keystone XL vote suggest the development of greater bipartisanship?  Probably not, because Democratic support likely resulted from pressures caused Obama’s failure to act more quickly.  And their resistance to amendments shows the GOP is unwilling to compromise when it sees no need.

But Obama still gets the last word.  The Keystone majority lacked the two-thirds vote necessary to override his promised veto.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives, which easily limits debate on bills, churned out 50 votes on several issues.  On Keystone, 28 Democrats joined the Republicans in support, but no Republican defected to the opposition.

The truly symbolic bill so far was to ban federal government funding for abortions, which is already part of the law.  Only three Democrats and one Republican among the 435 representatives, voted against their party.  It’s uncertain if and when this bill will be considered in the Senate.

In bill after bill, a few Democrats might defect, but the Republicans held remarkably firm.  The expectation that new GOP House members, elected from swing or Democratic districts, would be forced to depart from strongly conservative positions has not been realized.  Maine’s two representatives always voted along party lines.

The House GOP, just as it did in the last Congress, continued to pass bills that have no chance of becoming law.  These proposals might not make it through the Senate and almost certainly could not withstand Obama’s veto. 

Instead of trying to prove it can govern by passing compromise bills, the House seems to be determined to continue as the conservative stronghold.  That could sustain continued partisan wars through the 2016 elections.

Bipartisan compromise would depend on some Republicans breaking ranks, but GOP majorities make deals unnecessary and compromise unappealing.  The new Congress’s first month suggests only more of the same partisan conflict.

Partisans mistakenly seek constitutional reform

The American system of government, enshrined in the federal and state constitutions that are two centuries old, is challenged.

 

Is change needed?  Do Americans want a stronger legislature or more powerful executive?

The federal system, with Congress and the president elected separately, is unlike the British parliamentary system where the prime minister is a member of the legislature.

At the time of the American Revolution, King George III shared political power with parliament.  The United States rebelled against the British system.

The Founding Fathers wanted a chief who was not a legislator, yet not one with royal powers.  Congress, which predated the Declaration of Independence, was meant to play a major role.

Because the trusted George Washington was to be in charge, the new Constitution gave the president some real authority but often subject to congressional oversight – the famous checks and balances.

In the years since then, the president has gained powers, often given by Congress or the courts.  Congress is an equal branch, but usually lacking the party discipline characteristic of the parliamentary system.

Newt Gingrich, when he was GOP Speaker of the House in the 1990s, came the closest to changing the system to a parliamentary regime.  He induced his party to accept a unified and disciplined approach with leaders doling out penalties for non-compliance.  That made Congress a stronger negotiating partner with Bill Clinton, a Democratic president.

What has held the Republicans together in recent years is their common conservatism.  Now, political pragmatism is undermining the GOP try for a parliamentary system.

Ever since the Gingrich quasi-parliamentary system was installed, the popularity of Congress has declined.  Strict partisanship has brought fewer and fewer results, though many voters want results more than ideological purity.

The big GOP win in the 2014 congressional elections brought to Washington many Republican representatives elected from districts that would usually be expected to choose Democrats.  To keep their seats in 2016, some newcomers and even some old-timers will need to become more moderate.

Strict discipline is already slipping.  The GOP House leadership wanted to pass a bill, sure to be vetoed and thus only a political gesture, to outlaw abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.  But GOP women representatives balked, forcing the leadership to back off in a single day.

It is now possible that the all-but-invisible moderate group in Congress will return.  Composed of Republicans from states that could elect Democrats and Democrats from states that could swing to the GOP, this group might be large enough to force Congress to compromise and deal with President Obama.

All of this may reflect the political will of the electorate and not be caused by any constitutional reform.  The country’s most sacred document is general and flexible enough to accommodate the changing political system.  It could be better, though different definitions of what’s “better” would be sure to arise, but it continues to work as the country evolves.

Meanwhile, Maine Gov. Paul LePage would like to move the state constitution away from a parliamentary influence more toward the federal, presidential system. 

The drafters of the Maine Constitution limited the governor’s power and sought to buttress checks and balances.  Gov. LePage does not like living with constitutional officers – Secretary of State, Treasurer and Attorney General – elected by the Legislature, a system involving real sharing of political power.

Because of his frustration in dealing with an attorney general elected by legislative Democrats, he would prefer either to appoint the occupant of that office, removable like any department head, or have the person popularly elected.  An elected attorney general could produce the same conflicts LePage dislikes.

Over the years, there have been many political party splits between Maine governors and attorneys general.  They found ways to work together and rarely required the governor to hire his own lawyer using taxpayer money.   

LePage is also worried that, if a state chief executive left office early, his or her replacement, now the Senate president, could be of a different party, rejecting the elected governor’s program.  He wants a governor to pick his own lieutenant governor.

In 1959, a Democratic governor, who died after less than a year in office, was replaced by a Republican.  Back then, the governor had a two-year term, so the voters soon chose again.  

If LePage’s worry merits concern, Maine could go back to two-year terms, like New Hampshire and Vermont.  Or it could require a new special election for the rest of the governor’s term.

Still, the current system, nationally or in Maine, really isn’t broken, so why fix it?

U.S. “exceptionalism” requires better focus, symbolism

Recently, a French television program, featuring political humor, called on its viewers to inundate Fox News with emails about its obviously false reports, made since 2006, that there were “no-go zones” in Britain and France, where Muslims controlled.

Thousand of emails flooded Fox, and the station apologized, admitting that such zones do not exist.

Meanwhile, the French government took steps to ban the publication on “racist” commentary, a form of government censorship.

All of this came in the wake of the terrorist killing of French cartoonists, whose drawings of the Prophet Mohammed offended Muslims.

The American government cannot censor Fox News if it makes false reports, and virtually nobody believes it should.  But Fox can and, in this case, did react to pressure from thousands of people in the United States, France and Britain, finally retracting and apologizing for its phony news.

The “no-go zone” story proves a point about the U.S.  When it comes to freedom of expression, probably no country in the world comes close to the broad protection against government power provided in the First Amendment to the Constitution.  Of course, there are limits, like “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater,” as the Supreme Court once said.

At home and in many places around the world, people believe in American “exceptionalism” – the special place occupied by the U.S. in the world.  The First Amendment provides support for that belief.

The Obama administration has been criticized, though not by France, for failing to send a high-ranking representative to Paris to march with other world leaders in support of free expression in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.  On the scene, that representative would have had to link arms with hypocrites on free speech issues.

But, because of America’s special role, it should have been in the line of march.  Given America’s special standing, the presence of a U.S. representative would have elevated and emphasized the value of free speech.

While the United States continues to play the leading role in the world, it has lost influence because of a lack of understanding of the symbolism of leadership.

President Obama recognizes that limits exist to American power and that the United States does not always live up to its own values.  His beliefs on these points and his laid-back personal style undermine the symbolic role that gives hope and encouragement to people both in the United States and abroad.

Of course, belief in American exceptionalism can go too far.  Sen. John McCain, Obama’s GOP rival for the White House in 2008, seems to propose U.S. military involvement to resolve conflicts just as soon as they pop up.

That suggests the United States is the world’s policeman, responsible to impose order and democratic government, whenever a repressive regime is challenged by some of its own people.

It is true that, almost alone, the United States has the ability to project its power anywhere in the world on short notice.  The American dollar remains the standard world currency, a sign of its economic strength and reliability.  That makes it a powerful symbol.

But limited finances and incomplete understanding of situations on the ground can lead the United States to attempt more than it can reasonably accomplish.

For example, the American response to Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack was appropriate.  Going into Afghanistan to punish Al Qaeda, its leadership and Taliban supporters made sense.  But trying to impose a unified, democratic government in Afghanistan, a country with no real history as a nation and with a tradition of warlord rule, led to America’s longest war without a clear result.

Invading Iraq and intervening in Libya may have seemed to some as an appropriate use of American power, but, as in Afghanistan, the U.S. had little sense of where events would lead.

These conclusions do not mean the U.S. should abandon its leadership role in the world.  That’s not desirable or practical.  But in projecting its power, it could better define its objectives, ones that would stand a reasonable chance of success.

Instead of attempting to bring about wholesale change abroad, usually by trying to turn every rebellion into revolution, the U.S. might focus more on fixing problems rather than on complete political reform.

For example, in Syria, by jumping to take sides in a conflict in which it could not project much force, the U.S. lost the ability to bring an early halt to bloodshed and destruction.

Defining American goals better plus a more forceful assertion of our values could be the best ways to reflect the country’s exceptional role.