Floor?

So: What’s the floor?

QUESTION

We argue constantly about what government should do. We almost never ask the question underneath it:

What is the one thing government absolutely has to get right — the thing that, if it fails at this, nothing else it does even matters?

Not your whole wish list. The floor. The single function so basic that a government failing at it has stopped being a government and become just a building full of people with titles.

Some people say safety. Some say justice — equal treatment under the law. Some say it's simply not lying to you. I notice we rarely agree, and I think the disagreement is more revealing than any of our policy fights, because it quietly tells you what each of us is most afraid of losing.

So: what's the floor for you? And bonus question, the uncomfortable one — is the government you actually live under clearing that floor right now, or have we just gotten used to it not?

"He is an independent force in the world." — Winston S. Churchill

Oratory not from podiums alone, but from desks in the second row.

Noah Dean

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