On Defense and Offense

On the evening of Sunday, May 1st, I was at the Mets/Phillies game in Philadelphia. I was sitting 10 rows behind third base, allowing the camera to share my frustrations as a Mets fan with the stadium and the national audience on ESPN:

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But the big story that night wasn’t how I survived 14 innings wearing a Mets cap amongst home fans that pride themselves on setting the global standard for alcohol-inspired thuggery. Instead, that was the same night that Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces in Pakistan. Chants of “U-S-A, U-S-A” were taken up a few times by the assembled crowd, although I can report that media-fueled stories of Mets and Phillies fans linking arms in harmony were exaggerated. A Philadelphia fan has enough hatred in his tank to deploy it simultaneously against Osama and David Wright.

I later learned that rabid Mets fan and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie* was also in the crowd. I wonder if he savored the irony of how America can flawlessly plan and execute a secret military mission 7,000 miles from home, but can’t figure out how to build a new transport tunnel between New York and New Jersey. The last tunnel for cars was built in 1957. The last one for trains in 1910. 1910—two years before the Titanic sailed. But we got Osama, didn’t we? Back pats and chest thumps all around!

Killing Osama bin Laden, however satisfying to all of us, is nothing more than the government playing defense. Providing universal access to education, mobility and basic health care to a country that is expected to add 100 million people by 2050 is critical to ensure that Americans’ standard of living continues to increase. That’s the government on offense, and don’t let dead-end tea party rhetoric fool you: read any economics textbook, and you’ll learn that it’s a role that only the government can play.

It takes a New Jersey Transit train thirty to forty-five minutes to travel the nine miles of overburdened, congested tracks between Newark and New York. That's plenty of time for me to read about the details of the Abbottabad raid (my favorite: the $80,000 Navy SEAL dog that wears a wireless headset to communicate with its master). But as we crawled along due to yet another unscheduled, inexplicable delay, I also seethed about how my government can put a bullet through the head of a terrorist, but can’t guarantee that I’ll be at work for a 9am meeting. We need the capability to do both, but which do you think is more relevant to our long-term economic prosperity?

The Mets managed to push across a run in the top of the 14th inning that night, sending both the Governor and I home happy. Here’s to hoping he took away the lesson that you can play defense for 14 innings, but you’re not going to win unless you manage to put together a successful offense for at least one of the frames.



* Editor's Note: This month at a town hall in Manalapan, New Jersey, Christie was asked if he believed in evolution. He refused to answer. So never mind about the trains--New Jersey's got bigger problems.