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Who's in charge around here?

Grandpa used to come up to us boys down on the farm and holler, “Who’s in charge around here?” We’d yell back that he was, and it’s no wonder nothing was getting done. Then we’d laugh and feel good about ourselves for participating in an old-timer joke. There’s no better feeling as a child than being treated like an adult.What answer might Grandpa receive if he posed the same question today inside the Oval Office? I don’t think it would make us laugh or feel good about ourselves. There’s no worse feeling as an adult than being treated like a child.A convincing case could be made that no U.S. president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has been in charge of their administration. In the most significant presidential farewell address after George Washington’s, Eisenhower infamously warned, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”Less than two years later, the military-industrial complex assassinated Eisenhower’s successor. Although the evidence is overwhelming, presented in broad daylight, it’s still taboo — 60 years later — for the general citizenry to say those words aloud. We can’t move forward until we’ve come to terms with the past.When discussing Eisenhower's farewell address, we tend to focus on his prescient warning against military-enforced government. We should not dismiss the rest of his speech. His warnings went far beyond the military.With the past few years in mind, consider Eisenhower’s following words:On January 17, 1961, the most powerful man in the world warned us never to give an unelected federal bureaucracy the power to rule without our consent.We didn’t listen.Our natural inclination should be one of suspicion whenever governments, corporate media, and “experts” are aligned on a particular issue. Recent examples include the lead-up to the Iraq war and the response to Covid-19. The current campaign to scare the public into allowing government agencies to halt, ban, or control the accelerated development of artificial intelligence is another.We should be suspicious when this happens because it’s easy to obfuscate and avoid responsibility when things inevitably go awry. There’s never an acceptable answer to who’s in charge. No one's around to take the blame.The American people have no power to hold federal agencies run by unelected bureaucrats accountable. Under current law (The Congressional Review Act), federal agencies can enact and enforce any federal rule they want. The only recourse Congress has is to pass a joint resolution of disapproval.In grade school, we learned the Constitution grants only one branch of government the power to make laws. Congress — the branch of government most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals — alone has this authorization.I asked U.S. Senator Mike Lee (UT) how federal agency regulations impact the economy. “Federal regulations cost the American economy trillions of dollars every year,” said Sen. Lee. “These regulations disproportionately impact poor and middle-class families who usually have no way of knowing that everything they buy is more expensive because of federal regulatory compliance costs.”The obvious solution is to pass a law requiring Congress to enact a joint resolution of approval before any major rule can take effect. The REINS Act does just that. In June, Representative Kat Cammack (FL) introduced the REINS Act, which passed the United States House of Representatives.“This bill would reassert Congress' legislative authority and prevent excessive overreach by the executive branch in the federal rulemaking process,” said Rep. Cammack. “It would require every new 'major rule' proposed by federal agencies to be approved by the House and Senate before going into effect. The bill would also preserve Congress' authority to disapprove of a 'nonmajor rule' through a joint resolution.”Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee are co-sponsoring the REINS Act in the United States Senate. With that in mind, I contacted Sen. Paul (KY) for his perspective.“In an era of high inflation and out-of-control federal spending, considerable regulatory burdens on the private sector inhibit its ability to grow and create jobs,” said Sen. Paul. “Congress can no longer shirk its responsibility to the American people by allowing the unaccountable growth of the regulatory state.""Government administrative agencies have gone beyond their original grants of power to implement policies not approved by Congress," continued Sen. Paul. "The REINS Act would require Congress to hold an up-or-down vote on any major regulation, with an annual economic impact of more than $100 million. The president would also have to sign the regulation before it could be enforced on the American people, job creators, or state and local governments. It’s time for Congress to resume its constitutional duty to make the law and then be held accountable for the details.”It’s fascinating that we need a bill to require what the Constitution already demands: federal laws must be passed by Congress, not executive-branch bureaucrats. According to Sen. Lee, the federal government's proposed regulations would receive Congress' fast-track consideration under the REINS Act.“Sometimes the cost and other burdens associated with federal regulations make sense and accomplish something that makes them worth the regulatory intrusion,” said Lee. “It is Congress’ job to weigh the relative merits of each proposal. As well-educated, well-intentioned, hard-working, and highly specialized as federal regulators might be, they’re not accountable to the people when they make decisions that harm hardworking Americans.”Now, the age-old question – who's in charge around here? – goes to the Senate.

Why we get the leaders we deserve

In 2017, I attended the closing dinner of Mitt Romney’s annual summit in Park City, Utah. It was an impressive event held at the Stein Ericksen Lodge. Influential politicians (mostly, but not entirely, Republicans), cable news talking heads, and the peculiars (as I’ve come to call them) who donate large sums of money to political campaigns were in attendance.I felt like a kid lost at the zoo — staring at all the exotic animals, hoping my parents would show up to take me home. As a guest, I’m uncomfortable listing everyone in attendance, primarily because I don’t remember or care. I will tell you that Ana Navarro was there for some reason.I was there to talk to a political consultant. My friend was thinking of running for Congress, and I’d taken it upon myself to vet potential campaign managers. While I did end up talking to the consultant, given my lack of any role whatsoever in any sort of campaign, the conversation didn’t last long. I couldn’t answer a single follow-up question.The guest of honor that evening was Joe Biden. If you’ll recall, Donald Trump was serving his first year as president. The group gathered this particular evening didn’t seem to care for that fact, which is likely why it didn’t seem strange that Biden and Romney were scheduled to close the event with a one-on-one fireside chat.Just a few years earlier, during the 2012 presidential campaign, then-Vice President Biden told a group of primarily African-Americans that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney planned to “put y’all back in chains.”Of course, there was no time to focus on the past. The country was being run by what both men perceived to be a dangerous demagogue who was willing to say anything — no matter how vile — to win an election.At the time, rumors of Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch’s retirement were growing, and, of course, someone needed to run on the Democratic presidential ticket in 2020. On this night, however, neither man had announced their intention to run for political office. They were exiles in Trump’s America.To begin the fireside, Romney asked Biden an innocuous, unmemorable question as a pleasant warmup to what was expected to be a deep conversation on the most important issues in the world. Biden then spent the next hour-and-a-half rambling incoherently as Romney sat silently beside him.The audience kept looking around and smirking at each other to validate what we were all experiencing. I’ve never seen anything like it. It got to the point where I couldn’t remember life before the fireside chat, and sitting there dumbfounded, I couldn’t comprehend life after it.A chunk of the audience got up and left at around the 45-minute mark. Unfortunately, I was stuck in the same row as then-Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator Lindsey Graham. My fate was sealed.Biden said words I recognized, but the order in which he delivered them made no sense. The only string of words I managed to comprehend concerned him encouraging Romney to run for Senate. “We need leaders like you back there,” he mumbled. No one seemed to care that Biden had the opposite view only a few years back.I left the event confused. On the ride home, two questions popped into my head: Is there any difference between the Democratic and Republican parties? Does Joe Biden have dementia?We haven’t sufficiently explored or come to terms with what motivates a person to seek political office. On the surface, we know they want power, notoriety, legacy, and fortune.What can’t be found on the surface is an answer to the question: Why, though? Why do you want those things? Why are you spending your life in their pursuit? And, perhaps more pressing to society, why should these things be awarded to you?A few years back, I was asked to contemplate a run for state senate in Utah. The seat in my hometown district had suddenly opened up due to the woman who previously held it being elected Lt. Governor. No one asked me what I’d do with the office, my vision for the state’s future, or even if it was something I’d be particularly good at. I was being encouraged to run simply because the position was available.It wasn’t long until I called the politician who’d already declared his candidacy to tell him I wasn’t running because I had no reason to, and it sounded like he did. “I don’t know what I’d do if I won,” I said. That felt like justification enough not to do it.It turns out you don’t need a reason. In his recent biography of Mitt Romney, McKay Coppins writes:We’re searching for answers in the wrong direction. Rather than looking at the politicians, we should be looking at ourselves. After all, the power and notoriety they attain comes from us. We choose these people. The narcissism they exude stares back at us through the mirror.The truth is we don’t care that politicians can’t tell us why they deserve the power to govern us. We don’t care what their motivations are; we just know they don’t align with ours. If we were aligned, they wouldn’t enter office in debt and leave with millions in their bank accounts. They wouldn’t be able to trade stocks while they’re gathering inside information and implementing financial regulations. They wouldn’t talk about foreign countries more than the 100,000 fentanyl deaths in the United States in just the past year alone.We know politicians are self-interested. Why aren’t we? We help the politician who wears our team’s jersey settle petty grievances instead of stopping to ask ourselves why they deserve our power in the first place and what they might do with it. It’s like rooting for your favorite football team without looking at the score.We do this because it’s easier than the alternative. It makes us feel safe. We deceive ourselves into thinking we support the good team over the bad one. In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, “What do you know, what could you know as to how much artifice of self-preservation, how much rationality and higher protection there is in such self-deception — and how much falseness I still require in order to allow myself again and again the luxury of my sincerity.”

The weight of responsibility

I remember the first time I felt the weight of responsibility. I was young, recently married, making $7.25/hour managing a Gandolfo’s Deli in my hometown.One night, my wife and I were out doing what poor newlyweds do in sleepy Spanish Fork, Utah. We went to the dollar store. To get wild, we bought a $1 pregnancy test.We took home a box of Milk Duds and the test, hoping to make a night of it. When we returned home, riding high on Dr. Pepper and sugar beads, she took the test into the bathroom laughing.She didn’t come out laughing. It was positive. No need for alarm, I thought. It’s just a cheap dollar-store test. We got back in the car and bought a real one. Then it was back to the bathroom — this time with a nervous laugh — while I paced in the hallway.Another positive result. We repeated this process several times, achieving the same result each try. I quickly calculated how much money we’d wasted on all those expensive tests. Then reality set in.Shit.Holding one of the positive tests, I sat on the bathtub’s edge. It was there, facing an uncertain future, that I felt responsibility’s weight for the first time. It was heavier than I expected it to feel.There was no point in asking how it happened. As the old sayin’ goes, if a man’s gonna eat fried chicken, he’s gotta get greasy. The time had come to grow up and take responsibility; it didn’t matter we were kids ourselves.That positive test led to my son. He’ll turn 18 in a couple of weeks. On Tuesday, we discovered he's cancer-free after enduring a gauntlet of chemotherapy these past few months. I left that room feeling lighter — knowing my most cherished responsibility was sticking around.To accept responsibility for someone or something is no small matter. At times, the weight can feel unbearable, unfair, and unnecessary. Why must we pay a mental and physical toll to live a life?Keep going. A little grease is worth it.