A Little Perspective

January 3: Classes began for the American Politics class at 10 a.m. sharp to hear from our first speaker. Uber became the favored mode of transport due to the down poor of rain to get the Carnegie Endowment building. Our speaker did not have as far to travel in the weather thankfully as the Brookings Institute is right next door.

Philip Wallach is a Senior Fellow of Governance at the Brookings Institute with a Ph.D in politics from Princeton University.  He was done research on climate change, financial institutions, and regulatory policy. In his presentation, he asked us to examine graphs displaying data on taxation in relation to income and graphs on government spending, leading into a discussion of how the government should allocate funds from taxpayers to serve people and what that would even mean. Among issues in this field are how decisions are to be made and what the requirements of such a decision making process would involve. Or to look at the bigger picture, what even is the job of government? Which, he stated can often be a “big normative mine-field.”  In looking at such questions, the issue of how different life circumstances lead to a different perspective on what is true about the world played a big role.

After lunch, we returned to class to watch the movie “Thank You For Smoking” (which had a Rob Lowe in it so that was great). Despite being fictional, it gave an interesting view on the relationship between the government, lobbyists, and regular people. It showed that how a person, idea, product, or anything is seen is largely subject to framing. In the right light, with the right argument, it isn’t that hard to at least prove the other guy wrong. But is that always in the best interest of people? In regards to the government being for the people (the question of our course), this begs the question: Could the government appear to be for the people when it is not, or vice versa?

Until tomorrow,
Allie Thibault ’19
American Politics Seminar