This is all my fault (and yours)

All things considered, it doesn’t seem like America is experiencing its finest hour right now, does it? No sooner did we barely get past the whole debt-ceiling nightmare when a major credit rating agency lowered our country’s rating for the first time in history. I don’t know what all the real-world economic effects of their action will be, but I’m pretty sure our image around the world and in our own eyes has already taken a hit.

But as bad as the economic situation may be, I think I may be just as disappointed by our collective reaction to the apparently not-quite-successful attempt by our government to get its financial house in order. Before the ink was even dry on the debt-ceiling agreement, people on all sides of the political spectrum fell all over each other trying to be the first to assign blame and score political points against their opposition.

President Obama and his Democratic allies did their best to make the Republicans look reactionary and unreasonable as they refused to the bitter end to agree to any sort of tax increase as part of the debt-ceiling compromise. The President even went as far as to blame Standard & Poor for lowering our credit rating, saying the logic they used in evaluating us was “flawed.” Someone’s logic is certainly flawed Mr. President, but it isn’t Standard & Poor’s.

And despite public opinion polls that say most people think the Republicans handled the crisis even worse than the Democrats did, the Tea Party crowd seems to be claiming victory. Although I for one tend to agree with them that we need to attack government spending with a great big hacksaw, it doesn’t seem like a majority of Americans are on board with that kind of thinking.

But the GOP presidential candidates seem to be committed to towing the Tea Party line despite what public opinion may indicate. There is even one guy who is apparently about to jump in the race (Texas governor Rick Perry) who has been “anointed” by a group of self-proclaimed modern prophets who believe that all of our ills are a punishment form on high for our declining morality. If we straighten up and fly right (i.e. stop being so tolerant of abortion and homosexuality) they believe that all of our problems will disappear.

I won’t pretend to know what God is thinking or what His plan for our country might be, but I do know that we don’t need any supernatural explanations for why we find ourselves on the verge of economic disaster. We are merely being punished by the most basic law of economics. If you spend way more than your take in, and you do it for a long time, eventually very bad things happen to you.

And I don’t blame Barack Obama for that. I don’t blame the Democrats. I don’t blame Republicans. I don’t blame the wealthy, big business, big labor, the Tea Party, or Standard & Poor’s.

You want to know who I blame? I blame you. I blame myself. I blame anyone who has ever voted for a politician who promised to keep the government pork flowing without raising anyone’s taxes. And we’ve all been buying into that song and dance for a very long time.

There is no surer way to lose an election than to suggest that you would either cut back on our cherished entitlement programs or raise somebody’s taxes, and by continuing to punish any candidate who would even hint at doing either of those things we have all had a part in digging the deep hole that we’ve fallen into.

Soon another big election will be bearing down on us. Are we finally ready to change course? Will we reward a candidate who tells us that we can’t get out of this mess without someone (likely all of us) taking a major hit in the pocketbook? Will such a candidate even emerge? We’ll soon see.