One of My Pet Peeves

Philip K. Howard (not to be confused with one-time Presidential candidate Howard Phillips) in his Time column asks the following question concerning our health care system:

why can't somebody just use common sense and fix things?

This question ranks up as one of my top Pet Peeves of Politics (up there with "why can't we all just get along," and "we should just do the people's business"). The retort is quite simple: we don't all agree on what constitutes "common sense." When people appeal to "doing the right thing" or "what's right" it is normally in a context where there is no prima facie right thing to do, but rather a legitimate debate exists. I will grant that sometimes there is a clear right thing to do, but those circumstances are rare, especially in public policy.

Politics is about the reasoned (and sometimes unreasonable) interchange of ideas, and democracy especially is about compromise. Appeals to "common sense" and so forth are an attempt to dodge the debate and cast those who don't agree with you as favoring the unreasonable (because, if Congress, or whomever, isn't seeing "common sense", then they are clearly ignoring the obvious, correct?). This is not legitimate argumentation.

Plus, common sense ain't always what it's cracked up to be.