Politicians need to know when to abandon the search for the quick fix

Everybody loves a quick fix, but you don't want to spend more time in a futile search for one than it would take to do the hard work to solve the root cause of a problem. Joe Biden gets this, and the Republicans don't.

I'm an engineer by trade and know when to roll up my sleeves and get to work. It's the same concept as in politics. In fact, I was on a job interview where the employer had heard that I was adept at finding quick fixes. I responded that I was, but my real skill was in knowing when to abandon the attempts at a quick fix. I didn't get the job.

Republicans will have a hard time embracing this idea. The reason is that they have trained their voters to believe that government can't solve problems. So how would you square that with the idea that the world has difficult problems that are going to require a lot of new ideas and hard work to solve? It's like hiring a mechanic who says that mechanics can't fix cars or going to a doctor who says that doctors can't cure illnesses.

Real fixes also cost money. Build Back Better is a real plan which comes at a cost, and we're going to have to pay it. Trump's plan was to hand our bills to Mexico, Canada, Europe, and China. They just handed them back to us.