When you look at it that way, corporate waste and government waste go together like a mortise and tenon joint.

Attempted humor aside, we citizens need a better model for our government than corporate America. Government isn’t a business. It is the only thing we do together. It is all that unites us. Our challenge isn’t to make it bigger or smaller, it is to make it better.

Have we just elected a crop of politicians to Congress and the statehouses across the country who will make government better? Not likely. Chances are, they’re just the people who had the deepest pockets or the more effective slogans. We don’t know anything about how they’ll govern. Just like last time and the time before that and so on.

I think the fault lies not with the pols themselves, but with us citizens. If all it takes to get our money and our votes is a five-word slogan and a few sound bites of character assassination, we deserve what we get.v