Chameleons on Plaid
by David Schlosser, candidate for U.S. Congress

My wife and I spent part of the Memorial Day weekend hiking in Arizona’s Coconino National Forest.  In addition to the spectacular scenery that’s familiar to anyone who’s ever spent any time among Arizona’s red rocks, we also saw a lot of speedy little lizards, the plateau striped whiptail, which pet stores usually call chameleons.  It reminded me of Herbert Hoover’s description of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “a chameleon on scotch plaid.”

Although we do not recall Hoover as clearly or fondly as his opponent in the 1932 Presidential election, he claimed that Roosevelt’s constantly shifting political platform was unworthy of the American public and had no hope of dealing with the challenges of the Great Depression.  Roosevelt managed to turn the alleged inconsistency to his advantage and served as President until his death in 1945.

If Hoover was wrong about America’s readiness for Roosevelt’s reaction to the Great Depression, he was right about its troublesome shiftiness.  Roosevelt’s diverse policy responses to the economic collapse of 1929 set our country on a generations-long course as confused as a chameleon on plaid.  Instead of identifying the economic causes of the Depression and prioritizing a disciplined response, the Federal government treated the symptoms with vastly expanded public spending.

Ultimately, it was not Roosevelt’s New Deal that rescued the United States from its depression, but the unprecedented economic response to World War II.  However, it was Roosevelt who launched our country down the road of more government programs, more bureaucracies, more taxes, and more regulations.  Decades later, the descendants of the New Deal prompted Ronald Reagan to remark that “[g]overnment programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!”

Today, we continue to reap the fruits of FDR’s chameleon-on-plaid approach to government.  With virtually every aspect of our lives already regulated, taxed, and overseen by someone, somewhere, the Federal government must justify its existence by constantly identifying new and increasingly obscure aspects of our lives to regulate, tax, and oversee.  One delightful example is that as we observe the opening of hurricane season, we learned that the Army Corps of Engineers failed to build levees in New Orleans that would withstand an entirely predictable hurricane, and that the Corps of Engineers is essentially using the same standards to rebuild the levees that didn’t work the first time.  Meanwhile, our Congressional representatives passed the Pet Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act, which would require states to account for pets in their disaster plans.

Anne and I love our dogs.  We spoil them rotten, and would never want anything bad to happen to them.  And yet, when considering hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, forest fires, tsunamis, volcanoes, industrial accidents, and terrorist attacks, I would prefer that our federal, state, and local leaders applied all their attention, time, resources, and creativity to ensuring -- to the extent possible -- prevention, followed by efficient plans for either evacuating citizens or responding to their immediate needs in as short a time as possible following a natural or man-made disaster.  Instead, Congress is more interested in finding a new and less accountable color to blend in with.

Instead, as is increasingly and sadly typical of Congressional representatives panicked about plummeting public opinions, they’re debating legislation about pets.  Instead of representing the frustration of citizens who want a clear end game for our military presence in the Middle East, they’re considering President Bush’s plan to cut tens of millions of research dollars for advanced prosthetics that could replace the lost limbs of our injured troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.  Instead of identifying solutions to the financially unsustainable entitlements of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, they’re trying to spend 700 million of your dollars to ensure easier access to casinos by relocating a recently-repaired train line in Mississippi.  Instead of figuring out why our children get relatively dumber every year that they’re trapped in America’s public school monopoly, Congress is plotting to add another $390 million to milk subsidies that already cost American taxpayers $500 million every year.  Instead of exercising an iota of budgetary self-control to eliminate half a trillion dollars in annual deficits, they’re finding new and exciting ways to spend more and more of your money.

The apocryphal story is that a chameleon on plaid will die.  The sad probability as that it just goes slowly insane.  The solution is not to find more colors or smaller patches on the plaid.  The solution is to move to a single color so our Congressional chameleons can focus exclusively on what’s important to Americans: balancing our budget and finding solutions to the critical issues of immigration, defense, education, and health care.

Editor's Note: While the Congressional action concerning the evacuation of pets may sound frivolous at the outset, Katrina taught FEMA and other rescue agencies that some people wouldn't leave if they couldn't bring their pets with them (I'm one of them, though I'd frankly hope I'd plan well enough from the outset that I wouldn't need rescue in the first place). The Pet Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act is in reality another bill geared toward evacuating as many human being as possible, including those who won't leave without their pets.

Contact David Schlosser and learn more about his campaign on his web site.