By Herb Strentz

Most of us engage in occasional self-delusion. Maybe it’s the “hope springs eternal” delusion that keeps Chicago Cub fans waiting until next year.

Maybe it’s thinking the lawn mower, recliner or car that we can afford is every bit as good as the high-end model we can’t.

Maybe it’s thinking that a spouse will see the wisdom of our vacation plans and, in time, thank us for finding that low-rent cottage on the shores of Lake Delhi in Delaware County.

It’s all part of thinking we know what we’re doing.

Other delusions can be toxic, a threat not only to ourselves but to the nature of our civic life.

Concern with delusions comes with the 2012 presidential campaign and the rhetoric that will torment us for the next several months.

Here are three such ill-founded thoughts;

1. Government should be run like a business;

2. People can spend their money better than government can; and

3. The news media are liberal.

Let’s take these in order.

Government should be run like a business! What we mean by this is that government should be efficient and serve citizens well. No argument about that. But government simply can not be run like a business because government by its nature should be service-oriented, not profit-oriented.

Many of the tasks that fall to government are by default — either that “We the people” address societal needs that no one else wants to touch or that having government do the task is the best way to go about it. If we have to turn to government for assistance in the care of disabled loved ones, for programs for military veterans, for programs like those at the Centers for Disease Control, we want the emphasis to be on service and, often, compassion and not on reckless cost-cutting and below-par standards. Besides, some businesses are poorly run, and we don’t want government to be like them. Further, perhaps businesses could learn from the way that public servants — like Mary Maloney, the Polk County treasurer, for example — run their operations.

The purposes of business and government are so disparate it is folly to have government run like a business or vice versa. That idea, however, feeds a second misleading notion: People can spend their money better than government can!

Huh?

How much will your neighbor spend on fixing potholes down the street? What wisdom will your neighbor bring to deciding how much to spend on police and fire protection and where those resources should be allocated? This delusion makes no sense at all when it comes to shaping public policy.

We unite in government for collective decision-making. Most of the things we spend money on individually have little or nothing to do with our collective lives and government spending. That’s why we have elections and hold public officials and employees accountable for how well government is run; that’s why we are outraged when public agencies waste money or don’t support essential programs.

Consider the sentiment of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who didn’t mind paying taxes because, “With them I buy civilization.” That makes more sense than the delusion of letting our neighbor decide to fix the pothole at the end of his driveway and ignore other neighborhood needs.

Feeding the first two delusions is the complaint that the news media are liberal. Well, yes and no. Of course the news media are liberal if you recognize we live in a liberal nation: What other country in the world protects individual rights to the extent our Constitution does? What other country in the world allows people to criticize government officials to the extent we do? Much of what we are about as a nation is still revolutionary and the envy of others. But that’s not an end in itself — it’s an opportunity to leave the nation in better shape than we found it. We shoot ourselves in the foot by opting for rhetoric over reality. Besides, when it comes to preserving the status quo, the news media are conservative in their outlook and too often dedicated to telling us what we want to hear and feeding our delusions.

There’s more to all of this, but I have to pack for that Lake Delhi outing. CV

Herb Strentz is a retired administrator and professor in the Drake School of Journalism and Mass Communication and writes occasional columns for Cityview.