For some reason, I'm subscribed to the Wildlands CPR email list. In one of their latest articles, The Forest Service's Fatal Flaw, Executive Director Bethanie Walder opens with this:
Oedipus Rex, Macbeth, Willy Loman, Tony Soprano, and ... the Forest Service? A diverse group with a common theme – tragic or fatal flaws. From ancient literature to modern times, people have written about, read about and dissected the concept of the fatal flaw.
My "metaphorical synapses" may be as rusty as Ms. Walder's -- to her credit, she admits it -- and I can appreciate the effort she makes to build the foundation of her essay. But the Forest Service isn't a character and thus cannot have a "fatal flaw" of the kind that Walder attributes to it.
She identifies "accountability" as the flaw which plagues the Forest Service, and goes on to say that "one word may be too simplistic to describe the whole problem." Eventually, she uses more than 1,400 words in a quest to fully develop her essay on the tragedy of government.
About halfway through, we find out what Walder thinks the real flaw is, and it's not "accountability":
Their tragic flaw, therefore, may be their failure to create a new infrastructure to develop, promote, direct and implement their watershed restoration plans.
The "flaw" of the Forest Service is that it's not big enough! It apparently doesn't have enough money, either, for Walder says they have "largely failed" to implement the Legacy Roads and Trails program despite receiving $180 million in the last three years. And she wants to give them $700 million a year for a proposed Integrated Resource Restoration Program.
Now, pardon my ignorance, but I'd like to propose that there's a different fatal flaw at work here. On the one hand, Walder (and, by extension, Wildlands CPR itself) acknowledges the Forest Service's failure. At the same time, she wants to give them more money to build bigger programs and hire more staff.
For example, we think they should develop a national Watershed
Restoration Program, led by a national Director of Watershed
Restoration, with regional Restoration Directors, and we have
proposed this to the agency. These staff should be trained in
hydrology and/or aquatic/fisheries ecology, and they should be tasked
with developing and implementing clear, science-based,
ecoregion-specific restoration agendas for the agency that put
resource needs over economic returns.
Clearly, Walder thinks she knows best. She demonstrates an unfailing willingness to put taxpayer money where her mouth is. And she has a fatal flaw that is truly the equal of its classical brethren: hubris.
Hubris: extreme haughtiness or arrogance.
Hubris often indicates being out of touch with reality and
overestimating one's own competence or capabilities, especially for
people in positions of power.
In a fashion worthy of her opener -- which is to say that it's lacking -- Walder takes the essay full circle. The Forest Service can, she says, avoid becoming a tragedy.
The agency can make an attitude
adjustment, they can create the necessary infrastructure and
accountability, and they can implement the restoration vision that
Secretary Vilsack and others have laid out. In typical tragedies, the
“hero” is incapable of overcoming their flaw, and thus they fail.
But this isn’t a story, it’s real life, and it doesn’t have to
be a tragedy.
There's a small problem here, and it comes directly from the liberal worldview that Walder so eloquently embraces: the government must not fail. No matter how much money it squanders, no matter how badly it actually does fail at every program it undertakes, people like Walder will always want to funnel more taxpayer money into it.
To her literary credit, she does recognize the essence of a tragedy; the moral makeup of its main character makes redemption impossible. What she fails to recognize is that such tragedies have their genesis in real life; and that, in order to succeed, government must be smaller and not bigger.
Flaw, thy name is Walder.
