Many years ago, I had a dream of the Rolling Stones planning a party. It was really quite simple. They rented this large old home or castle, put up no decorations at all, but made sure there were plenty of beds and sofas, lot of wine and liquor, and loud music. All their bases were covered. They had been doing this for many, many years, and knew what the basics were. You get the women there, dance, get drunk, and screw. Nothing fancy. They had neither more nor less than needed.
This may seem like a strange way of approaching the idea of professionalism, but it is the most salient, for me, affectively. A true professional will penetrate to the heart of a matter quickly and with little effort. A good police detective will have a good hunch who did the crime the first time they meet them. A talented animal groomer will know very quickly how to calm an animal down.
Or, to take a story I’ve long been fond of telling, there was once a boiler that wasn’t working. It was a large, ungainly machine, that none of the on-staff people could figure out, so they called in an expert. He looked at it for about 5 minutes, then tapped one valve with a hammer. Instantly it started working again.
When they got the bill for $5,000, the owners were outraged. “How”, they asked, “could ten minutes work warrant a bill for $5,000? That is $30,000/hour” They asked to itemize the bill.
So he did:
Examimation of machine: $20.00
Labor to fix machine: $10.00
Knowing where to hit it: $4,970.00
They paid the bill.
The point I’m making here is that in life most of what we see is fluff. Most words really don’t matter, particularly if they come from politicians.
What we need to see from the Republicans in 2011 is that they GET IT, that they are in the same State, if not zip code of solving problems. Competence is not making sure you get credit for every little spot of grease on your well creased trowsers. It is GOING AFTER IT–the solution, a solution, anything that has at least a shot at working.
What I expect is much less than that. So much the worse for all of us. We’ll see. I see little cause for hope–except to the extent they will at a minimum make things worse more slowly–but never cause for quitting.
This post is written in that spirit, of never forgetting the Alamo, nor the sacrifices of our betters to get us to our hand-wringing, intellectually mediocre present.