Anna Quindlen’s bad experience with a recent flight generated her latest Newsweek column.
While complaining about the federally operated security screening system, she writes:
This is not merely an inconvenience. The whole cockeyed system has become a symbol of the shortcomings of government programs and responses. It’s expensive, arbitrary and infuriating; it turns low-wage line workers into petty despots. And instead of making Americans feel safer, its sheer silliness illuminates how impotent we are in the face of terrorism. The hustle and bustle at U.S. checkpoints is window dressing, another one of those rote, unthinking exercises that are the hallmark of bureaucracies, like “Bleak House” with luggage.
At first glance, I thought, “Wow. Maybe she gets it. Government tends to fail when it reaches its tentacles into areas beyond its basic core sphere of responsibility.”
No, she doesn’t get it all. Here’s the next paragraph:
It’s always tempting for a taxpayer to daydream about all the things government money could be used for if used sensibly. I have a laundry list in my computer of those programs we could have bankrolled instead of what may wind up being a $2 trillion invasion of Iraq. Preschool for every child, enormous grants for medical research, a system of universal health care. A trillion is a terrible thing to waste.
One is tempted to wonder whether Ms. Quindlen has ever used her real-life experience with the federal government to project how well universal preschool, universal health care, and “enormous” medical research grants would actually work.
