01 July 2005

Assigning blame

Topic:

Several years back, a father and son of my acquaintance went on a driving trip. They were nearing the end, in the outskirts of their destination, and the son, who was driving, remarked that he should stop for gas. The father, whose car it was, said they had plenty of gas to get into town. The inevitable happened, and they ran out of gas. What's the first thing they did? If you're any kind of student of human nature, you'll know that they first argued about whose fault it was. Finally, the father — without accepting any responsibility, mind you — took the gas can and went off in search of diesel.

Perhaps two doors down the road, he ran into a college classmate who had a diesel tank in his backyard (obviously, this was a farming community). Getting more fuel and finishing their drive took far less time than arguing had.

The same dynamic is going on in Minnesota. Democrats & Republicans, having let the government close up shop, are now spending their time blaming each other rather than trying to fix the problem.