The Rostrum
By MICHAEL J. BAKALIS
Visiting professor of public affairs, Sangamon State University

FOR THE Founding Fathers the only sure safeguard against the abuse of power was to limit and decentralize it. Thus constrained and diffused, the potential for the tyrannical exercise of power was minimized.

Through the system of checks and balances, and by providing for a multiplicity of offices at various levels of government, we have created a governmental system which is distinctive for the numerous ways in which political power is divided, dispersed and diluted. Such a system would seem to offer protection against hasty or arbitrary decisions. It is a system which places a premium on caution and deliberation. For what we have given up in terms of speed and efficiency, the Founding Fathers would argue, we have gained in terms of protection against arbitrariness, tyranny and the despotism which inevitably accompanies the concentration of political power. It is a system that assumes we are not, indeed that we should not be in a hurry. It is a system that assumes a patient people.

Now, some two hundred years after their work, the system created by these Founding Fathers attempts to function in a world they never made or could hope to comprehend. Technology in all its facets has made the America of Jefferson and Madison unrecognizable. The America of 13 colonies has become America, the world power. Rural, agrarian America has become urban, industrialized, multinational corporate America. Today, in such a changed environment, two powerful but contradictory trends move through our society, each in its way challenging and complicating the assumptions upon which the Founding Fathers constructed our governmental structure.

Two trends

The first is that the complexity of our times and the incredibly complicated nature of the issues that confront us demand a more thorough, detailed and careful analysis of the problems, the options and the potential solutions than ever before. The issues are so difficult, the stakes so high, that we can afford nothing less than careful, thorough deliberation before decisions are made. Problems of nuclear power, inflation, taxes, education, welfare and health are billion dollar issues that directly or indirectly affect millions of lives. If ever the nation begged for thoughtful answers to difficult questions, it is in our own time. If ever the quality of patience was required of our politicians and our citizens, it is now. It would seem that the wisdom and foresight of the Founding Fathers would now serve us well.

Yet, a second trend has eroded the capacity of our politics to engage in the slow deliberation necessary to deal with these complex societal issues. The fact is that the governmental system structured for a patient people now must attempt to respond to the increasingly dissatisfied demands of an incredibly impatient people.

Every day and in every way Americans of our own generation continue to be conditioned for impatience. Through advertising, an insatiable appetite for things we hardly need is systematically cultivated. We want more and more things and we want them now. Instant food mixes from hot chocolate to full course meals assure that we need not wait. Television shows that fail to find adequate audiences are immediately pulled off the air. The so-called "second season" begins before the first has hardly had time to unfold. Instant replays on television turn the present into the past in virtually no time at all. And our newspapers, engaged in desperate circulation wars with each other, and seemingly doomed to inevitable defeat by television, struggle in every way to hold on to their declining audiences by out "scooping" each other and continually feeding us one "expose" after another with such rapidity that the "news" is hardly news by the next edition.

TV time slots

Such offerings are hardly the stuff of which patience as a quality is nurtured. So we become accustomed to the absurdity of politicians expounding their "views" on issues such as nuclear war, inflation and desegregation on 15- or 30-second spots on the nightly news. And 30-second political commercials during election years telling the candidates' views on which direction the state or nation will move are a part of our national culture. We now operate in a world of minutes, seconds or column inches. Deliberation has given way to deadlines. Thoughtfulness has succumbed to TV time slots.

We have become a people of impatience. And nowhere is this more evident than in our politics. Like the instant replays we watch, we look for

Continued on page 36

January 1980/Illinois Issues/39

On politics and impatience

instant answers. The politicians who seek to explain, to educate, to analyze and to deliberate before they offer solutions find themselves in deep trouble. We now discard our politicians with record speed. Less than one year into his presidency, Jimmy Carter was already being labeled incompetent and a loser for the next election. One-term presidents, senators, governors and mayors increasingly are becoming a sign of our times. We feel we cannot wait. Like the other media celebrities whom we create, we tire just as quickly with our political "stars" and we quickly discard them for some new face.

The problems we will face in the 1980's will, most likely, be the most difficult we have ever faced as a nation. It is doubtful that those problems will respond to quick and easy answers. They will be solved only by the slow deliberation of careful, prudent and thoughtful men and women. And if, during the coming decade when we celebrate the bicentennial of our Constitution, our troubles are even more serious than today, we should not be impatient with those politicians whom today we call our Founding Fathers, for they served us very well. It is we who have changed.

36/January 1980/Illinois Issues