Many people are lamenting the failure of the Congressional “Super Committee” to come up with an agreement on ways to reduce the runaway federal deficits. But you cannot judge success or failure without knowing what the goal was.

If you think the goal was to solve the country’s fiscal crisis, then obviously the Super Committee was a complete failure. But, if you think the goal was to improve the chances of the Obama administration being re-elected in 2012, it was a complete success.

Imagine that there had been no Super Committee in the first place. Who would be blamed for the country’s fiscal crisis? The overwhelmingly Democratic Congress that voted to spend the money which increased the deficits more during the Obama administration than in the eight years of George W. Bush.

When the Obama administration’s massive spending spree was going on, Republicans were so hopelessly outnumbered in both houses of Congress that nothing that the Congressional Republicans could say or do would have the slightest effect.

Even the cleverest political spin-master would have a hard time trying to keep blame from falling on the Obama administration, without the later shift of attention to the debt crisis.

Two things got the blame shifted. The first was the national debt ceiling, which had to be raised, if politicians were not going to be forced to either cut existing programs or shut down the government — neither of which was politically attractive.

By the time a vote on raising the national debt ceiling was required, Republicans had gotten control of the House of Representatives. This meant that the national debt issue was now a bipartisan issue, whereas the spending that drove the national debt up to that national debt ceiling had been a problem strictly for the Democrats.

Splitting the blame with the Republicans for what Democrats alone had done was a political victory, in terms of making the Obama administration less vulnerable at the polls in 2012.

With the help of the media, the big issue was no longer the big spending that drove the national debt up to the legal ceiling, but the failure of the Republicans to help solve the debt ceiling crisis.

Many people lamented the failure of President Obama to become engaged in the process of working out a solution to the fiscal crisis, and regarded that as a failing.

But, again, success or failure depends on what goal you are trying to achieve.

If the goal was to reach a bipartisan solution to the country’s fiscal crisis, then the president’s involvement might have increased the chances of doing that. But, if the goal was to outsource the blame, then the president’s fading away into the background was the perfect political ploy.

Appointing a bipartisan Super Committee with dramatic powers, and apparently dramatic consequences if they failed to reach agreement, created another long distraction in the media that took the president further out of the picture. When it came to media coverage of the country’s financial crisis, it was almost a question of “Barack Who?”

The draconian spending cuts that were supposed to hang over the heads of the members of the Super Committee, like a sword of Damocles, turned out to be a cardboard sword when the inevitable failure to reach an agreement occurred.

A new Congress meets before these draconian cuts are supposed to happen — and no Congress can be forced to do anything by a previous Congress. So all this turned out to be a grand charade — and politicians are great at charades.

This one was a complete political success, because we are now talking about who is to blame for not coming up with a way of solving the fiscal crisis, rather than who did the runaway spending that caused that crisis in the first place.

An even longer-running charade is the budget-cutting charade, where big spenders promise to make spending cuts to match tax increases — or even to exceed tax increases. Of course the tax increases come first and the spending cuts are spread out into the future — and usually end up not taking place at all.

This particular charade could be ended by making the spending cuts take place first. But that would spoil the political game.

To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com.

COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM

Article source: Creators.com

 

One of the greatest questions that mankind has dealt with over the years is that of determining what causes success.  There have been many notable authors such as Napoleon Hill, Dennis Waitley, and Zig Ziglar who have tackled this subject, and produced spectacular works.  A common theme among all of the success literature is the notion that success is something you must go out and achieve.  One cannot expect success to come and find them in the middle of the night and announce its presence.  This analogy may sound silly, but it seems to be the strategy that many people pursue in regards to their own well-being.

The main thing that cripples most people’s chances for success is inaction.  Sometimes this inaction comes from genuine apathy, but many times it is the result of discouragement over past failures.  Feeling the sting of temporary defeat is both the ruin of many otherwise successful people and the “winners edge” that propels others to great heights of achievement.

The difference between the ‘winners’ and everybody else is that winners view temporary failure as a necessary stepping stone to their eventual success.  This creates the drive to keep going in spite of setbacks, defeats, or outright failure.  Entrepreneurial biographies are full of people that tried something, failed, tried something else, failed, and eventually realized success beyond their wildest dreams that was the direct result of the experience that was gained during all of their accumulated failures.  Unfortunately, the spirit of many people is crushed by the first setback and the seeds of success are not allowed to mature.

It is well known that Thomas Edison failed over 10,000 times while he was attempting to perfect the incandescent light bulb.  In is research, Edison viewed every failed trial as an accumulation of knowledge that led him closer to his goal.  The thing that makes vision like this remarkable is the fact that these entrepreneurs do not know when the ‘overnight success’ will actually happen.  The setbacks could last years, decades, or even longer.  It is the rugged determination to keep going that generates the ‘winners edge’ for great achievement.

As each of us go through our lives, it is important to ask whether we allow temporary setbacks to destroy our ambition.  Will we walk with the crowd and find comfort in tales of difficulty and defeat?  Or will we develop the ‘winners edge’ and use every setback to propel us closer to success?  The choice is there for each of us to make.  One is made by our emotions and the other is made by our reason.  Which will you pick?

 

When life becomes difficult, it can become very easy to believe that we are the victims of circumstance.  It is comforting to blame the economy, or whichever political party happens to be in power.  (Ironically, the political party in power typically blames the people that were in power beforehand as a way to try and absolve themselves of responsibility)

However, as individuals there is only a narrow scope of things that we can really control.  I do not have the ability to directly influence the political system since my one vote is easily dissipated.  Thus, the only area of my life that I can ‘really’ influence is what I choose to do and how I choose to react to my environment.

The importance of this insight lies in the fact that many people do not actively choose how they will act . . . instead, they react to their environment emotionally.  Therefore, in a very real way their environment shapes them instead of them shaping their environment.  Conversely, if we wish to exercise influence over our circumstances it requires that each action be a conscious choice.  James Allen described this phenomenon in his book: “As A Man Thinketh.”

The composition of the human mind is such that the thoughts we hold in our mind will manifest themselves in action by means of influencing our perceptions.  When our minds are fixed on blame and failure, then all that we will see is failure.  This focus on failure will naturally result in actions that take us in the direction of our thoughts.  When we consciously fix our minds on thoughts of improvement and achievement, we will remain open to opportunities.  Once we become open to opportunity, they seem to live everywhere that we look.

In the end, it is our thoughts that determine what we perceive.  This perception influences our actions and slowly molds the composition of our character.  Thus, it is figuratively and literally true that we are who we choose to be.

 

There is a disturbing trend among both people and politicians to find somebody to blame for each setback, difficulty, or annoyance they experience.  This phenomenon frequently provides a convenient alibi for failure, as some opaque persona such as ‘big business’ or ‘the man’ is blamed for our problems.  The most critical danger of focus on these ghosts of failure is that they give us a subconscious excuse to avoid doing what is necessary for success.  However, the realization of our goals, dreams, and aspirations will require many of us to ‘man up’ (or ‘woman up’ as the case may be) to make our goals happen.

The importance of a perspective of ‘making it happen’ cannot be overstated, since it shifts the responsibility for our circumstances squarely onto our shoulders.  This means that we can no longer place the responsibility for our wellbeing onto other people (or politicians) and must take full accountability for our achievements and failures.  This means that if there are great things we want to achieve, that we must personally take action.  If there is something that we want to do in the future, we must first become educated and then we must take action.  If things don’t turn out the way we wanted, it is our responsibility to study our decisions and learn what we can do differently next time.

In practice, this mindset is quite liberating since it frees us from the constant feeling that we are being held down by somebody else.  The counterpoint to that mental freedom is the realization that all of the obstacles in our way that prevent us from achieving success are really self-imposed.  The truth is that those self-imposed obstacles have always been there . . . it’s just that we were previously unaware of their existence based on a belief that something external was responsible for our failure.  Once we become aware of our ability to influence our own achievements, it becomes our responsibility to identify and remove the obstacles that we have placed in our own way.