For too long, Republicans have denied the inescapable: We can only solve our most pressing existential problems by intelligently harnessing the power of government. One can debate the size and scope of the federal role. But only government can protect our climate; renew our infrastructure; assure our national security; preserve the rule of law; strengthen public safety; blunt the threat of terrorism; extend opportunity to struggling communities; monitor the quality of our food, water, drugs, cars and roadways, and secure the civil rights of all. And a government degraded by the incompetent and malicious endangers these imperatives — and every one of us.
The immediate peril of the Trump shutdown is that Democrats cannot give him what he asks — lest he inflict yet more damage through another shutdown, then another, further destabilizing our society. But the deeper lesson is this: Government is not the problem. The problem, ineluctably, is America’s president ― and the unreasoning party which spawned him.
Richard North Patterson is a New York Times best-selling author of 22 novels, a former chairman of Common Cause and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The immediate peril of the Trump shutdown is that Democrats cannot give him what he asks — lest he inflict yet more damage through another shutdown, then another, further destabilizing our society. But the deeper lesson is this: Government is not the problem. The problem, ineluctably, is America’s president ― and the unreasoning party which spawned him.
Richard North Patterson is a New York Times best-selling author of 22 novels, a former chairman of Common Cause and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
