In an article on Senator Clinton, Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne said:
"There is compassion in Clinton's wonkiness. At a rally in Penacook on Saturday, she spoke with energy about the struggles of foster parents and the suffering of foster children. She pledged to make their problems a priority of her presidency, even if there are no headlines in it. She sounded absolutely believable."
I do not doubt that Senator Clinton was believable and really does care about foster children. The question is why is a candidate for President of the United States saying foster children will be one of her priorities? The problems of foster children and the parents who help them are important, but they are the job of the states. If helping foster children is one of your big priorities, why aren’t you running for governor, instead of president?
Unfortunately, this is a problem we have today in spades. At every level of government, we have politicians who think it is their job to do something about every problem. States try to solve global warming. Presidents worry about grade school science scores. City councils pass resolutions on foreign relations.
This is silly. We have different levels of government for a reason. Our Founding Fathers had the right idea back in 1787 when the Constitutional Convention gave us a federal system. Geography and numbers made us too big for just one government back then, and that is even more true today. The beauty of the federal system is that it takes the job of governing and divides it up into smaller pieces. Nobody can do it all. The key is to divide up the job into manageable pieces (or at least pieces that are not too unmanageable), and then have each level of government do its own job.
Dividing the job this way is smart for several reasons. First, it means that each level of government has less to do, which is good because when government tries to do too much, it fails, both at the extra things it tries to do that it should not be doing and at the necessary things it really should be doing.
Second, and just as important, is the idea that responsibilities should be allocated to each level of government based on what it has the knowledge and the ability to do. The key to making good decisions is knowledge. The closer you are to a problem, the more knowledge you should have about the problem. If a problem is too far above or too far below or too far away from you, you will not have the knowledge about the problem that you need to be able to solve it. While having the government that is closest to a problem and knows the most about a problem, decide how to solve the problem does not guarantee the decision will be right, it does increase the chances.
Knowledge is not only important in terms of knowing about a problem; knowledge is also important with respect to knowing the best solution. A particular problem may need different solutions in different communities or different areas. But how are we to know this? Generally, the government that is closest to a problem not only will have the most knowledge about the problem but also will have the most knowledge about what solution will work in its area and for its people. In fact, having the most knowledge about what solution is best in a particular area and for a particular group of people is probably even more important than having the most knowledge about the problem itself. A higher level of government might know more about all of the facets of a problem, but it will probably know much less about what solution will work in a particular area. Without knowledge about what solution is most likely to work, knowledge about a problem is not all that useful.
The third reason for federalism is failure. The fact is that many of the things governments do fail, even when they are done by the government with the most knowledge about the problem and the most knowledge about the possible solutions. Federalism allows for this by letting governments in different areas try different solutions, which gives us a better chance to ultimately determine what the best solution is. It also means that failed solutions will affect fewer people and cause less damage.*
While the arguments listed above would, on average, tend to push problems and their solutions down to lower levels of government, there are problems that must be handled at higher levels. In some cases lower levels do not have the knowledge (even though they may think they do). In other cases, lower levels of government may not have the power to really do anything abut the problem. An example of the former would be the ordinance that the Village of Oak Park passed back in 1982 (or so) declaring Oak Park a nuclear-free zone. While Soviets never attacked Oak Park and nobody ever tried to locate a nuclear power plant in Oak Park, I do not think the ordinance had anything to do with either. The fact is that the Trustees of Oak Park did not have enough knowledge to know what to do about either of those issues, but it made them feel good to pass the ordinance, so they did it.
A current example of the latter is the anti-global warming law passed by the state of California. Even if California really does know enough about global warming to know how to solve the problem, California does not have the power to effectively do anything about it. The California government has just imposed future costs on its citizens without accomplishing anything, except for making themselves feel good.
Which brings me to the national government, and especially the President. Hillary Clinton said she intends to make the problems of foster children and foster parents "a priority" of her presidency. It is hard to believe that the federal government has the most knowledge about the problems of foster care and the solutions to those problems, but even if it does, is this what the President should be worrying about?
Similarly, the current administration has spent a lot of time and effort on elementary and secondary education. But this is not just George Bush. As I have said before, there were times in 2004 when Bush and Kerry seemed like they were running for president of the school board, instead of president of the United States. Is this something the President knows the most about? Aren’t there other things that he should be spending his time on?
In my view, the President needs to focus on those things that only a president can do. There is plenty for the President to do without taking on other people’s jobs, too. Other people at other levels of government can deal with foster children or improving elementary and secondary education. The President may think those other people do not have the right answer to those problems, the President still should not deal with them because he has other things to do that only he can do.
If the President tries to do too much, there is a huge risk that he or she will not do as good of a job at those things only he or she can do. When the United States was struggling to find the right strategy in Iraq, I was incredibly frustrated to hear President Bush talking about No Child Left Behind. We were not getting Iraq right, and that was his number one job. He should not have been doing things he did not have to do, things that are more appropriately the job of other levels of government, while we were floundering in Iraq.
For the United States federalism is not just a good system, it is a necessary system. Our country is too big for just one government. A federal system of government divides up the duties of government, assigning them to those levels of government with the most knowledge about particular problems and the best solutions for them. When a government or an official tries to do things which are not properly their responsibility, they too often fail at them, as well as failing at those things which are properly their responsibility.
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* Obviously, there are other reasons why federalism is good. Protecting freedom by dividing up power between different governments is an important. However, I am focusing on just this one reason in this post.
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