According to pool reports, Joe Biden told a fundraising party in North Carolina last night that "the heavy lifting is over" in terms of getting new bills passed this year. He also added this interesting nugget to his speech:

"We stabilized the financial system,” Biden said. We were on the brink of a depression ... We avoided a total economic meltdown," he said. “There are 3 million [more] Americans working today than there were before we took office.

“Barack and I are realists," the vice president added. "Government is not the answer. But we also know we can plant seeds. These seeds that have been planted have generated whole new industries.”

Emphasis mine. That last paragraph might as well stand in for all the strategy of the Obama administration -- perhaps the strategy of all recent Democratic administrations -- as the Grand Statement of Pandering. Over and over and over again, Democratic politicians pander to the people that the right have fooled into believing that simply by existing, government is evil.

Never mind that it is, and largely remains, a representative government in which more people have a chance to have a vote than ever in our history. Never mind that many of the problems that face a nation are simply too big for a single, non-government entity to solve. Never mind that without government, the only thing that's certain is chaos. No, we must constantly hear Democrats -- who are supposed to be on the pro-government side of the aisle -- kowtowing to the idea that any time the government offers assistance, it's interfering.

I understand well the politics behind this maneuver, but I fail to see why we continue to pander to this mindset instead of working to change it. When the government provides unemployment funding for workers who've been without a job for six months, and that money allows them to go to the local grocery store to buy food for their kids, which in turn allows the local grocery to keep people employed so that they can feed their kids, why doesn't that do anything to cure the idea that the worst statement in the world is, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help"?

It's because the best actions of government are often the most invisible, and the worst actions are the most frequently trumpeted. It's always easier to complain about the pot hole in the road than it is to say, daily, thank you, government, for giving us roads at all. So: Thank you, tax dollars, for making it possible for me to drive to and from work without worrying about washed-out dirt tracks. Thanks for the streetlights being on when I come home at night. Thanks for the public education that makes me able to read the stop signs you've put up. Thanks for the courts that will handle any traffic tickets given out by the police you employ. All of that, by the way, makes it possible for businesses -- yes, those sacred small businesses -- to flourish in my community.

Government is an answer to a very basic question: how can we live together and thrive? By having rules, and regulations, and certain public spaces that receive care. It's not the solution to everything -- Joe Biden isn't going to take the trash out at my house tonight or decide what we're having for dinner or where my (far future) kids should go to college or even what they should think about the constitution -- but it is the solution to many, many, many, many things. It is the organizing engine of modern society.

I'm tired of hearing it so sharply and constantly maligned. It's not perfect; it's not meant to be. But it's not the biggest problem we as a nation face by far, and it's ridiculous that anyone would think it's realistic to paint it that way. In a time when millions are crying out for help, it seems irresponsible to continue to insist that the most government can do is plant a seed. Government can also tend the tree and nurture its growth, and it should. It's what we, the people, formed it for.