How do you east an elephant?

One bite at a time.

This is wisdom that it would behoove politicians to heed. A big part of the problem why Congress can't accomplish anything is that everything has to be "solved" in one colossal singular piece of "comprehensive reform" legislation. Its always "comprehensive this reform" and "comprehensive that reform." Its as if politicians seem to think that the only way to eat an elephant is in one massive bite. And of course, the result being they choke on it. What is so wrong with breaking a problem down into surmountable problems? When you design a computer, you don't start by creating one chip that has every required function integrated on to it. You start by breaking the design down into smaller, tractable subsystems, such as processor, memory, peripherals, power supply, etc. One bite at a time.

For some reason, politicians don't seem to get this basic principle. Part of the problem, I think is that politicians believe that anything worth doing is worth doing with headline grabbing grandiose legislation. They are probably afraid that if they broke things down into solvable problems they wouldn't get grand public recognition for "_SOLVING_ _PROBLEMS_." They want that "big game trophy" to hang on the wall. So instead, they get grand public notice for failing to solve any problems because they try biting off so much they choke on it. And it's also partly "obstructionist politics" that are to blame that creates this environment of an inability to break things down into solvable problems. Whenever someone tries to solve a well defined tractable problem, critics will obstruct this by claiming, "you can't do that because it doesn't solve the WHOLE problem." Well, no it doesn't, it solves one smaller problem that is an important part of the whole problem, and what is wrong with that? Isn't it far better to solve something a bit at a time than failing to solving any of it in one all inclusive colossus? A good example of this is immigration reform. Many ideas were floated to address narrowly defined immigrant issues, and many of these ideas had merit for the issues they were designed to target. However, the critics and nay-sayers responded not by critiquing the efficacy in solving the issues they were intended to address, but rather by proclaiming that each of these solutions didn't address the entire colossal issue of illegal immigration and therefore they can't be considered. Why is it that, for example, border security can only be addressed in concert with addressing every other facet of society touched by illegal immigration? Why can't a border security solution simply deal with border security?

Take "health care." Why does this have to be tackled in one massive colossus that no one can agree on and to which everyone finds something to take exception. President Obama says that now we need to work on passing the parts of health care reform that everyone agrees on. Wow, what a concept. It takes a near fatal torpedoing of the health care colossus to figure out that this should be solved in less ambitious pieces? If it had started that way from the get-go, large portions of the health care conundrum probably could have been reformed by now. Why can't we, say, pass legislation to remove the exemption from anti-trust and anti-competition laws for health insurance providers? Why can this only be done as part of a massive colossus of legislation? Then move on to legislation reforming Medicare/Medicaid to incentivise quality of care instead of quantity and how doctors and hospitals are compensated. And so on, one bite at a time. And sooner or later (and probably sooner than later as compared to the "comprehensive" approach) health care has been reformed, costs have been controlled by making the providing of health care more efficient, effective, and less wasteful.

True, there would not be any celebratory fanfare at the end for all of the politicians to gloat and thump their chests about how wonderfully they have "served the people" regardless of whether or not anyone is actually any better off: "we passed massive legislation that says the people are better off so it must be so - we are so wonderful." There would be no singular "big game trophy" to hang on the wall and point at. But in the end, effectively solving big problems one tractable problem at a time would better server the people. If a smaller, well defined, tractable problem is solved by focusing problem solving on that problem alone without the distractions of trying to deal with it as part of a colossal, over-arching (over-reaching?) effort, much more effective and beneficial solutions will be produced. Thus, taken as a whole, all of the smaller solutions end up producing a better over all "comprehensive" result in the end. That is assuming that something would come of a colossal "comprehensive reform" effort in the first place.