Schaff: Corbett espouses ‘Peekaboo strategy’

People everywhere go about life with the notion that human history has exhausted its possible supply of brilliant, transformational political thinkers. People everywhere go about life with the notion that human history has exhausted its possible supply of brilliant, transformational political thinkers. These average people occupy coffee shops and workplaces wearing forlorn faces, thinking, “Well, having already seen the heavyweights like Plato, Machiavelli and Locke, what extra insight could we expect from our species? Other than black suits, voluminous egos and top-notch entertainment, our current political system couldn’t, at least within a reasonable spectrum of the imagination, squeeze out anything of substance to contribute to mankind’s political intellectual legacy.”

All this talk of mediocre outlooks, while perhaps valid in the recent past, has now been irrefutably rendered unnecessary; we can safely reroute our sighs of disappointment back to the media’s endless skewering of Britney Spears (they just won’t leave her alone). That’s because, in our midst, a political mind has emerged who shines with every bit of promise that the greats must have held in their time. His name is Tom Corbett, the sitting governor of Pennsylvania, and he secured his eternal seat in the hallowed hall of historical significance just last week.

Gov. Corbett unleashed the brilliance last week in his commentary on Pennsylvania’s ongoing abortion-ultrasound controversy. The state legislature is currently considering a bill, the Women’s Right to Know Act, that would force any Pennsylvania woman seeking an abortion to first undergo an ultrasound procedure. The obligatory procedure would determine the health and gestational age of the fetus, produce fetal images that would be provided to the patient on a screen above her face and in physical form, and require signed paperwork to be carried by the patient to her abortion doctor after a minimum of 24 hours. Citing a litany of concerns ranging from constitutionality to basic decency, opposition to the bill has gained steam — that is, the steam was gaining until Corbett took the stage. Uttering a phrase destined for inscription beneath the governor’s future bronze bust in the state capitol, he squelched charges of government overreach, declaring, “I’m not making anybody watch, OK? Because you just have to close your eyes.”

Wow. Like no one before him, exhibiting extraordinary mental finesse, Gov. Corbett has managed to recreate an infant’s lack of object permanence within his own mind so as to extract and reframe the key lesson from the game of Peekaboo: If we close our eyes, all the problems in the world — especially those intentionally made by pandering politicians — can disappear.

Corbett’s thesis is excessively simple, yet exceptionally elegant. Surely, as experts have warned, the ultrasound bill’s neglecting to specify a required ultrasound method could likely force practitioners to widely apply the invasive transvaginal wand (you can’t accurately image a first-trimester fetus with “jelly on the belly”), and such a situation could open a dark, morally dubious chapter in the history of the commonwealth. But those worries are for naught, points out Corbett. When everyone involved — the policymakers, the enforcers and the citizens — collectively pull down their eyelids, there isn’t anything reprehensible the state can’t do. To expound further, negative effects of our actions cannot be felt if we aggressively refuse to perceive those effects. Although, of course, given the ultrasound wand’s destination, you’d probably have to add general anesthesia to eye-closure to allow affected women to completely block out thoughts (and internal sensations) of government intrusion, his point still stands.

The utility of the “Peekaboo strategy” doesn’t stop at abortions. Outside of aiding Republicans’ campaign to dismantle, er, redefine women’s rights, Corbett’s groundbreaking insight offers huge potential for the pitching of nearly the entire GOP brand. Truthfully, it seems many Republicans in power have been inspired by it all along. (Perhaps that means Corbett is the darkhorse Romney-alternative everyone’s waiting for the RNC to unveil.) What other than coordinated, systematic eye-closing can explain how half a nation indefatigably terms the Iraq invasion as anti-terrorism, doubts President Barack Obama’s citizenship, blames him for rising oil prices, spurns the need for tax increases in addressing national debt, spits on the science of evolution, vows to protect Americans from socialized medicine (despite the popularity of Medicare), thinks gay weddings assault the institution of marriage more than congressional extramarital affairs, accepts the “job creator” argument as anything more than the wealthy’s defense of the widening U.S. income gap and votes regularly outside personal, social or economic interest?

The applications and implications of Gov. Corbett’s thesis far outpace any mortal’s list-making abilities, and this “Peekaboo strategy” is sure to attract decades of critique by academics at the most prestigious institutions. Our governor has proven a political genius of modern times, and with his so being I cannot wait to see what this man does next, even if that entails deepening his much-maligned cuts to education programs. Don’t think too hard: If we close our eyes, we don’t have to see the young Pennsylvanians — and by extension, our future commonwealth and country — being shut out of a brighter tomorrow.

Write Matt Schaff at matthew.schaff@gmail.com. NOTE: Responses to emailed questions and comments will be delayed, since Matt now conducts business wearing a blindfold.