The depth of the rot

Of all the deficits America currently has--and they are many--character and leadership are the ones that will ultimately prove fatal. Like our budgets, these deficits have steadily accumulated over the years, and have reached a crisis point just like their fiscal counterparts. The two, of course, are related. True leadership would have confronted the reality of our reckless overspending, long before now. Those few voices of sanity 20, 30 or more years ago, were already dismissed as nettlesome naysayers.

As for character, it's depressingly easy today to point to examples underscoring its absence in our corridors of power. It's a bi-partisan problem, of course. For every politician falsely claiming wartime service, there's a counterpart across the aisle embellishing his own military resume. Many are unfaithful to their own families, yet we somehow expect them to honor their oath to support and defend the Constitution. When our leaders aren't selling seats or playing footsie with those they're supposed to keep an eye on, they're stashing cash or diverting tax dollars and expecting accolades as though they were the providers of the funds.

The icing on the cake, however, is the deficit of accountability. While some of the examples above resulted in loss of office or prosecution, there is a different standard at work for the powerful, belying the notion we are somehow a nation of laws rather than men. It would take a concerted outcry by the public to force the system to function. Unfortunately, the decline of character also means Americans are more concerned with the immediate effects of losing "their" congressman, or "their" particular unConstitutional program than they are the viability of our system of government.

Yes, there's always been corruption and graft--Mark Twain once famously noted that "no man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature's in session." Just as businesses can survive a certain amount of inefficiencies, so too can nations survive a modest amount of the natural effects of fallen human nature.

But we have long passed those amounts. As our bills come due and our choices ever-further constrained, the lack of leadership and character will only exacerbate and accelerate the problems. The problems have been kicked too far down the road, and a dead end has been reached.

One can hope, however, that the compost pile may yet yield renewed growth...