The once hallowed hall

Earlier this week, America witnessed perhaps the oddest whistle-stop tour in its history. Gov. Rod Blagojevich, while he was being tried in his home state of Illinois, decided to make a stop on Good Morning America... and The View... and Larry King Live... and just about everywhere else. And he started off with a bang: Oprah Winfrey for senator! And that's where his show ended. No one really cared about what else Blagojevich had to say. But the idea of Oprah as senator was quite novel.

Of course, the jokes would be the first things to come to mind. During one of her speeches on the floor, would Sen. Winfrey suddenly announce free cars for everyone in the chamber? Would C-SPAN just become an Oprah channel?

But these jokes simply highlight an aspect of our government that we would just rather not face. A lot of people, myself included, think that Oprah could be a wonderful senator. She built herself up from poverty and a harsh childhood, braving those events in life we can only hope to survive. She is one of the most powerful women, if not the most powerful woman, in the world, with a media empire stretching the globe. She works with less fortunate communities and takes on some of the most important issues of our time. And, when she was interviewed by Gayle King on the radio, Oprah responded to the potential Senate spot: "I think I could be senator, I'm just not interested."

And why should she be interested? Oprah is more powerful than all 100 senators combined. She tells us what to read, eat and believe. She exposes the moral underbelly of society, shames us into doing the right thing and picks us up when we are down. She even built a school, while many politicians still can't get their heads around the No Child Left Behind Act. For anyone interested in government service, the relatively low pay, post-government service restrictions and the intrusion into private life can be too difficult to overcome.

Just this past presidential election, we saw one of the most qualified people in the United States refuse pleas that he run. Al Gore was a vice president, congressman (both House and Senate), serviceman, investigative journalist, forecaster of the Iraq war, environmental activist and a Nobel Peace Prize recipient. But he didn't run for president, citing his influence as an activist. According to a Time Magazine article from May 2007, "The Last Temptation of Al Gore," the former politician said he had "fallen out of love with politics." Gore thought he was better positioned to fix the world not being the president.

So, today, we are left with Rod Blagojevich, Kwame Kilpatrick, Ted Stevens and countless others who are steeped in scandal--and those who have yet to be discovered. Sure, there are many good people in government today, but can we really tell the crooks from the saints? So when we pass a stimulus bill worth almost $1 trillion, we are putting our money in the hands of both the thieves and the honest politicians. In his Jan. 22 Wall Street Journal column, "Government Spending is No Free Lunch," Robert Barro, an economist at Harvard, opposes the stimulus package. He cited his own research, finding that, during even the most efficient periods of government spending, for every dollar the government spends, the economy grows by 80 cents. That means we lose 20 cents in the deal. During peacetime, Barro found that this number was actually closer to zero. Maybe his opinion is just that of a pessimistic anti-Keynesian, but when Troubled Asset Relief Program money (our money) may have been spent by recipients on exorbitant bonuses, or when government officials use their sway to defraud the American people or push government funding toward their friends in the contracting business, is it any wonder that we'll have to spend more than $800 billion to build a bunch of stuff that may be worth less than what we're paying?

So what can we do? How can we get good people to go into government? Just to make everything more complicated, we don't really know who would make a good politician. Maybe Oprah wouldn't be able to handle the pressure of senatorial life. Who could have known that President Herbert Hoover, a former commerce secretary, would preside over the beginning of the Great Depression? Maybe the virtual unknowns, like President Barack Obama was, should be given a better chance. Maybe our world has changed so drastically that the once honored position of public servant is just not that honorable anymore, or just not as effective. In the end, we have no choice but to place our faith in the people of this country. We'll just have to keep playing the guessing game and hope our best and brightest still find some virtue in staffing our government. It's easy to be pessimistic now, having gone through too many years of disappointment and scandal. But we have to keep our faith. It may be all we have to hold onto.

Elad Gross is a Trinity junior. His column runs on Fridays.