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Why You Need to Learn to Say More Than “No”

This week Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, and the rest of this Administration reminded us of an important lesson, one that transcends politics: saying “no” is a really easy trap to fall into—and once you’re there, getting out can be nearly impossible.

For the past 8 years (in almost all interactions with President Obama, but particularly with regard to healthcare), GOP leaders have grown accustomed to simply resisting; content to do nothing but identify problems, shoot down ideas, and shut down conversation. Over the course of his tenure they became fluent in the language of opposition and gradually lost the ability to do anything else—seemingly forgetting that they might one day be required to provide an actual response that was more substantial than simply their objection.

The GOP frittered away nearly two Presidential terms complaining about and dismissing the Affordable Care Act, content to play the role of steadfast naysayers. As a result they grew intellectually lazy, atrophied creatively, and recently found themselves with no substantive plan for our nation’s healthcare; frantically trying to instantly cobble together an alternative to the ACA, the way a middle schooler would try to do 2 month’s worth of work overnight. Only this was a whole lot bigger than shoeboxes, pipe cleaners, and hot glue guns—and they failed miserably. The American people weren’t having it.

After the healthcare bill was pulled, Ryan was quoted as saying “Doing big things is hard.” Well actually Paul, doing things at all is hard, which is the point. Being creative and digging into details and solving problems and crafting compromise and anticipating pitfalls is required to do almost anything worth doing, and yes those things are almost always difficult. Everyone from engineers to teacher to artists to athletes to mutual fund managers understands that doing stuff requires work—usually a heck of a lot more work than people who criticize that work ever realize. 

But this is the seductive power of the drug called “no,” because it is so readily available to us and offers such a cheap high. We get to feel superior, to be brazenly judgmental, and to shun any personal responsibility in the process. And avoiding the emotional stimulant of the putdown is made more difficult by a culture of social media contrarianism. We’re conditioned to see something, read something, hear something—and to offer immediate critique as a knee-jerk response, usually with little regard to all the time and sacrifice the authors and architects of these things have invested. We can troll mightily with zero accountability—but we pay dearly for the privilege.  

A couple of weeks ago, when the President was likely becoming aware of the political quagmire he and his team had gotten themselves into, he fired off a preemptive caveat to the coming proposal: “No one knew how complicated healthcare was.”

Actually lots of people knew, Mr. President: Barack Obama. Joe Biden. Nancy Pelosi. Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders. Members of the Senate and House who spent nearly a decade of their lives addressing it. They all knew it was complicated because they’ve done the work for months and months in the boring, uncomfortable trenches of minutia, nuance, statistics, numbers, and complicated ideas. That is the price of doing things of consequence and it’s a heck of a lot less costly than standing at a distance and holding your nose and throwing stones, which is what Paul Ryan and company have made their bread and butter.

In almost all cases, destroying stuff is a lot easier than building it, and saying “no” is a pretty effective wrecking ball. But as the Trump Administration showed us once again, wrecking balls aren’t very good at construction. Eventually they aren’t enough. That’s the transcendent lesson from the failure of the GOP healthcare bill: be very carefully about becoming a full-time critic, because sooner or later you will be called upon to do something other than object.

In matters of career, faith, relationships, politics, and every other arena of life, instead of spending all your time trying to tear someone else’s efforts down—learn to be a builder.

Learn to do more than say “no.”

 

 

 

 

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