Representative Blake Farenthold did an interview with TalkingPointsMemo today about how cutting funding from Planned Parenthood would make it easier for him to go home and explain to his district why he hadn't fulfilled a ridiculous pledge to cut $100 billion from the president's budget. Quote:

"As Republicans, we promised in the pledge to America to cut $100 billion off of Obama's plan. If we're going to come back with less than that, we've got to come back with some policy riders to say look, I took less than $100 billion, but I've defunded Planned Parenthood or abortions in the District of Columbia. Or I've ended Obamacare," Farenthold said in an interview following a news conference featuring House GOP freshmen on Friday.

We are now experiencing the conflict of uninformed ideas against reality. When you run for Congress on a platform based solely upon your belief of how things should be instead of one based within the universe of how things actually are, you will end up making some promises you can't keep. This happens to every candidate, as they chase each other further and further up the crazy tree. Barack Obama thought he could make Washington work better by being a kinder, gentler, listening president. He was wrong. Rep. Farenthold thought he and his friends were the first ones to be stalwart enough to push through unpopular budget cuts. They were wrong.

Being wrong isn't the problem, though. The problem is hardly anyone is willing to admit they were wrong. Instead, they discuss these conflicts not as arising out of a disconnect between what they expected was possible and what actually is, but as an issue of others thwarting them. That makes it a contest of wills. Logically, then, if they just stick to their principles long enough, they will succeed.

As anyone who was once five years old can tell you, though, there are certain things you just can't get, no matter how long you pound your fists on the floor and kick your feet and scream "I hate you I hate you I hate you!" Compromise is a necessary part of the two-party system. If you equate "compromise" with "caving in," with "giving up," with "being made a fool," then your understanding of the American system is fatally flawed.

But again, and again, and again, our political leaders have set up their battles with exactly this language. Back to Rep. Farenthold: "'I've gotta go back home, look people in the eye and say, look, I told you $100 billion, but I went for less, and I've got to have a because,' Farenthold said. 'Because I don't want to be perceived as a liar back home.'"

There is a because, though. The because is that the $100 billion promise you made was impossible. You didn't do your research beforehand, you didn't read the budget documents of the last ten years, you just signed a pledge and campaigned on it without ever thinking, what if this doesn't work out? Why can't Farenthold and his freshman friends in the Conservative caucus go home and tell the truth: the government is not yet ours to rule. We went in with a handful of idea and ideology, and we were defeated by those with working knowledge and experience of the system.

Sometimes, looking foolish is courageous. It's courage that few have. Perhaps because I've only recently assigned it to some freshmen of my own, I'm reminded of George Orwell's masterful piece, "Shooting an Elephant." A young Orwell, serving in India, has been sent for to deal with an elephant in heat. He realized:

I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing – no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.

This is, also, the struggle of the modern congressman. The GOP has only themselves to blame for this. They spend so much time campaigning against Washington and the evils of government that it is inevitable that Congressmen and Senators have become slightly ridiculous figures back at home, required constantly to prove that they are "doing something." The truth is that showing up and paying attention is doing something; it would often be doing enough, and it feels, sadly, like it would be doing more than most of those who are grandstanding today about cuts and costs and being broke have been doing all year long.