Golis: We need government, after all

In California, the people who like to bash government were lying low last week.

Natural disasters, it turns out, require large and coordinated responses from government agencies.

All those firefighters, cops and emergency workers - the thousands of first responders battling catastrophic wildfires in Lake County and elsewhere - well, don’t tell anybody, but they’re government employees.

And Californians should be forever grateful for their dedication and bravery.

Americans have always debated how big government should be, but it wasn’t always OK to pretend that government wasn’t needed.

In a clever moment, Ronald Reagan once joked: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’?”

Reagan didn’t believe it. Compared to today’s tea party Republicans, he was the most pragmatic of politicians. In national defense, for example, he thought government should be bigger, not smaller.

But his joke made for good theater, and it popularized the notion that you can’t go wrong telling voters that government is the enemy. Sometimes, government is wasteful or inept, but then, so are most human institutions from time to time.

The current Republican presidential primary offers an object lesson in what has happened in the rush to demonize government.

The usual suspects - Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Rand Paul - are scrambling to find traction.

And what do they have in common? They all have government experience.

The new darlings of the Republican Party are Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson.

And what do they have common? They have no experience in government. If elected, Trump has said, he promises “on day one” to learn all the issues that confront the leader of the most powerful nation on earth.

At every opportunity during Wednesday night’s debate, the trio was happy to remind listeners that the others are Washington insiders and part of the problem.

“I’ll tell you why people are supporting outsiders,” said Fiorina. “It’s because you know what happens if someone’s been in the system their whole life, they don’t know how broken the system is. A fish swims in water, it doesn’t know it’s water. It’s not that politicians are bad people, it’s that they’ve been in that system forever.”

As the Pew Research Center noted on Wednesday, Republican voters today are more likely to view experience in Washington in a negative light, and they are less like to trust the GOP establishment.

Thus, we have come to the moment in our history when not knowing too much about how government works becomes a candidate’s strongest asset.

In that way, Bush, Rubio et al have been hoisted on their own petards. Having spent their political careers telling people not to trust government, they’re surprised to learn that people don’t trust people who have worked in government.

Once upon a time, Americans were capable of a more nuanced debate on the role of government.

Now many of us want nothing to do with government - until a natural disaster comes along. Or we need someone to teach our kids. Or fix a pothole. Or maintain a community park. Or protect us from crime. Or make sure our food is safe. Or fight a war. Or guard our borders.

Each time we turn on the tap or flush the toilet or drive down a new freeway, government is making our life easier.

During the debate over the Obama health care plan, a few critics were known to say: “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!”

Hello? Do you really not know that Medicare is a government program?

It isn’t easy to work in government these days. Budgets are tight. Politicians and interest groups cheerfully blame government and government employees for everything that has gone wrong in American society. Morale is low.

No one pretends that we live in the golden age of government. With too many layers of state and local authority, government can be antiquated, redundant and bureaucratic. State and local governments still haven’t explained how they will pay for the generous benefits promised to a generation of retirees.

But these are not reasons to pretend that government doesn’t matter. These are reasons to fix what’s wrong - and to recognize what’s right. All those thousands of firefighters and emergency workers, all those hundreds of trucks, helicopters, air tankers and bulldozers on the front lines last week - they’re from the government, and they’re here to help.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.