Governing by “Gotcha”

On May 23, a bridge spanning the Skagit River on a well-traveled interstate sixty miles north of Seattle, Washington, collapsed at the town of Mount Vernon, sending numerous vehicles plunging into the river. Miraculously, no one was killed, but the collapse seriously interrupted commerce and dashed Memorial Day weekend festivities. State officials scrambled to come up with a plan to erect a temporary bridge and were optimistic that a permanent structure would be in place by October, at an estimated cost of fifteen million dollars. Further investigation revealed that the collapse was the result of an overloaded truck hitting an overhead portal and sway braces, thus compromising the bridge's structural integrity. While state officials had considered the bridge safe for vehicles, it had been classified as "functionally obsolete" due to its fairly narrow lanes. The lane width may have contributed to the accident since the truck driver later claimed that he felt crowded by a passing vehicle. The event brought the issue of our nation's crumbling infrastructure into sharp relief as observers recalled that the American Society of Civil Engineers had rated the safety of U.S. bridges a C+, that nearly six hundred bridges have failed since 1989, and that one out of nine U.S. bridges are deemed to be structurally deficient. The incident also brought to mind a 2007 tragedy in which a bridge that spanned the Mississippi River and joined Minneapolis and St. Paul similarly collapsed, killing thirteen people and injuring one hundred forty-five. Coincidentally, this bridge also had been classified as "structurally deficient" (PBS Newshour 2013). I use the Washington state bridge collapse as a micro example of the neglect of our infrastructure, and of public health and safety writ large. From my perspective, we seem to be living in a political environment in which a nontrivial number of elected officials choose to ignore pressing physical and human capital needs, and instead fall into an abyss of ideological intransigence. Resistance to taking action frequently is justified on the basis of fiscal constraint, with policymakers demanding that new revenue sources be found to address infrastructure or other such problems. Invariably, a new revenue source arises through proposed spending cuts, and many legislators are reluctant to support tax increases, even when they take the form of user fees targeted to enhance road and other safety concerns. But perhaps most distressing is the tendency of many elected officials to ignore urgent needs--such as decaying bridges--and instead jump on "gotcha" moments to impugn the integrity of political opponents and exaggerate the perceived shortcomings and harmful effects of proposed or actual policies. As I discuss later in this column, "gotcha" moments also have been widely used to derisively characterize the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with inaccuracies and exaggerated claims, even in the face of some early and widely recognized achievements of the law. "Gotcha" Moments and the Public Interest By "gotcha" moments, I refer to efforts by both parties to capture and portray unscripted, frequently awkward, out-of-context sound bites as representative of an individual's policy stance. To this, I would add unsubstantiated and exaggerated claims of a policy initiative's harmful effects used to distort its intent and shift public opinion. Examples have become commonplace and were replete during our past election season. Most prominent among such gaffes were Mitt Romney's comment that he need not worry about the poor because 47 percent of Americans were dependent on the government and paid no income taxes, and his awkward admission that he likes to fire people who work for him. Other examples include President Obama's statement during a campaign stop in Roanoke, Virginia, that "you did not build this," which antagonized businessmen by seeming to impugn and underappreciate their entrepreneurial efforts; Texas Governor Rick Perry's inability during a debate to name the three federal agencies he would eliminate; and Michelle Bachman's outlandish statement that the HPV vaccination can lead to mental retardation. …