U.S./ Welcome to DC Sen. Scott Brown!

Senator Brown, of course, will stand for re-election some day and if he likes being a Senator he is likely to be mindful of the progressive views of many Bay State voters, especially on social issues. It will be curious to see how the GOP treats him: They love him today, but this is a pro-choice Republican who has made his peace with gay marriage. And, he posed nude for a magazine. This is not a Jerry Falwell Republican. And, he voted for a health care bill in Massachusetts that has many of the features to which the Republicans object in the current reform effort at the national level. Sen. Brown needs to be careful lest he find himself as the second Senator from Massachusetts to be for something before he was against it.

Maybe the prospect of another snow storm has my thoughts turning in decidedly Augustinian ways this morning. To regain confidence in government seems like such a small thing, and bipartisanship seems like such a small means towards that admittedly small end. But, it is not a small thing after all. It is the last myth of Reaganism, the myth that government is not the solution to our nation’s ills but the problem. The myth is in the participle. Reagan was right that government is not "the" solution, but it may be "a" solution. It may be "a" problem but it is not "the" problem. Whatever else it is, government is a creation of ourselves and will be as good or as bad as we insist that it be. The new Senator from Massachusetts, like the still new President from Illinois, are in their positions of governance because we sent them there.

First published in America