I remember as a youngster believing that the President and the government would protect us from harmful things---like gas fumes at the pump and toys that broke off and could hurt babies and little children. Of course, I was quite young at the time, not even at double digits, the country was much more naive and Dwight Eisenhower was president. This was obviously a long time ago!
But I took the notion seriously that government had a moral and constitutional responsibility to protect the public and keep us from harms way---whether it be from enemies to our shores, criminals threatening our personal peace and safety or just known bad things being cast upon us by those who didn't care about our well-being.
It turns out I, too, was very naive, and had a misplaced sense of what the government, at least in times of Ike,considered to be its responsibilities. But as our country has moved on, the role of government to protect us as consumers and as individuals has evolved. Particularly in the 1970's, and somewhat ironically, under both Republican and Democratic presidents, the role of the EPA, the Consumer Protection Agency and other publicly concerned entities took a front-and-center position in helping protect our nation and our natural resources. After all, it was Richard Nixon who signed the Clean Water Act (although it was pushed heavily by the democratically controlled congress). To his credit, he also oversaw the first Environmental Protection Agency, committed to protecting our environmental health.
Fast-forward to today and we see a stark contrast between a national commitment to protect the public and an adminstration which has blatantly and shamelessly pronounced that the public health and consumer safety are of no concern to it. That seems to be the message of this week's extraordinary conduct of one Nancy A. Nord, the acting chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
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