titive political relationship with Bill Clinton has been rancorous at best, blamed his own (Gingrich's) handling of the budget negotiations that resulted in the shutdown, on his poor treatment during an airplane flight that he and the President were on (Turque & Thomas, 1995, p. 28). One can look at this issue from both sides. Onthe one hand, shabby treatment on an airplane flight is hardly a reason to close the U.S. government. On the other hand, if the shabby treatment occurred, was it a wise thing for the President to do in light of the delicate negotiations that were going on at the time? In both cases, it seems that all concerned were, in effect, blinded by their competitive hostility. They both presumably desired to run the government well (we assume that's why they ran for office in the first place), butthey couldn't overcome their hostility long enough to run it at all. If the Speaker is to be believed (although he has since tried to retract his statements), the entire episode resulted not from alegitimate disagreement about how to govern well, but from the competitive desire to dominate government. Indeed, when one examines the eventual compromise that was reached, there seems to be no significant difference in the positions of the two parties. If this is so, why was it necessary to waste millions of dollars shutting down the government and then starting it up again a few days later? What's more, this entire useless episode will be reenacted in mid-December. One can only hope that Clinton and Gingrich avoid traveling together until an agreement is reached. Although people incessantly complain about government and about the ineffectiveness of politicians, they rarely examine the causes of these problems. While there is a lot of attention paid to campaign finance reform, lobbying reform, PAC reform, and the peddling of influence, we never seem to realizethat, most of the time, politicians are merely giving us what they thin...
