Rabbi Meets Dentist, Shares French Fries, Saves America

It seemed natural, when my lunch portion of French fries overflowed the bowl, to offer to share them with the person sitting next to me at the deli counter. Rein’s is about half way between New Hampshire and Easton—between the bastion of Republicanism and a town solid for Democrats.

The young woman was traveling with her father on a college tour. He was uncommonly friendly and soon learned from my wife that she is a professor at Muhlenberg College and had wise advice to offer. And we soon learned that he was a dentist who commuted to his job in Lowell, Massachusetts.

I always ask this question of dentists: Poor people and unemployed people can go to an emergency room with a medical problem. But what can they do in the event of a dental emergency?

Massachusetts has a program for dental care, he replied. But it has problems. Some dentists take advantage of it. If the state offers $20 for a certain procedure some dentists routinely perform that procedure on all their patients just to collect the money.

There needs to be a co-pay, graduated, he added, according to ability to pay. “But one must have some skin in the game to control costs.” Revealing that he was a Republican, he also clearly showed sympathy for the concern behind my question.

I’m guessing he figured out that I was a Democrat, not because I came from Easton, but from my attitude about sharing French fries with a stranger. Good crispy ones at that.

I believe that society should not let people die early for lack of money or access to health care. But I was ready to agree with him about the co-pay. It was a friendly, if brief, conversation and we both left feeling like we could be good neighbors.

And then I thought about Congress.

We were two intelligent, well-read, compassionate people with different political ideologies. But we had no political agenda; our success did not depend upon the success of a political ideology nor did our careers depend upon a political victory. Our brief conversation was solution-oriented. It was what doesn’t happen in Congress.

I realized that we had stumbled on the solution that many neighbors have probably exemplified over the years, over the ages:  solutions to difficult problems are best resolved, not through political horseplay but by pragmatic problem solving. To deal with important, controversial, difficult issues, Congress, or the President, should appoint a panel of knowledgeable people to develop a plan to present for legislative approval. The authority given such panels would help “cover” those congress-people whose constituents would disapprove.

Health care? Dental care? Tax policy? Energy policy? Monetary policy? Let’s remove these decisions from the political arena and give them to those who have less of a stake in the decision. The lawmakers would still have their constitutional responsibility to pass laws but their vote would be based on much more objective input than what they now get from special interests and lobbyists.

Commission members would be impermeable to lobbyists because they would already have the information, from various points of view, necessary to work out a solution. The Fed already does this with regard to monetary policy and Congress does not even approve or deny the Fed’s decisions. Commission-written policy would benefit the legislative process and serve the Legislature and the American people.

Does anyone believe that congressional committees would do better? Let their fears be allayed by declaring a time bound limit to this experiment. A president could run on a platform of establishing such policy suggesting commissions and, if he or she won, assume the authority to appoint them. After perhaps four presidential terms, the next national election could include a choice to keep or end the “experiment.”

Worried about politics entering the choice of commission members? Give the majority and minority leaders of each party the power to veto up to three appointments—similar to an attorney’s right to reject a candidate for a jury. 

Roberts Hitchens, Director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, reported many years ago on an experiment done at the Center. A group of diverse people was clustered around a table and given controversial moral dilemmas to solve by consensus. In every case a consensus was reached. Then, the participants were asked to justify their decision according to their religious principles. Consensus broke down.

The political process, too, rarely favors consensus. But intelligent people can figure out what is right. In an age far more complex and fast moving than that of our founding patriots, we need a better process of problem solving and legislative efficiency. Congress and the President would do well to follow the example of the rabbi and the dentist so that the college student and the college professor will come to live in a better world.