By Nick Bond

Say what you will about President’s Obama stimulus plan. Whether you are for it or against it, the most important part of the plan is that it is undoubtedly an event that tests one of the fundamental foundations of the Obama presidency. It tests the argument that the president made throughout his campaign, a notion that marked an integral part of his inaugural address, the idea-as the president put it-that “the question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.” The $789 billion stimulus package passed today by the Congress is a tangible adjudicator of this argument.

The argument is one that traces its origins back to the beginnings of civilization, the question of whether or not we want the government meddling in our affairs, and certainly whether or not we should pay for the mistakes or misfortunes of others. Some, especially modern Republicans, seem to want government to be just small and cheap enough to fit in your living room, while others, like their counterparts, the Democrats, seem to think that you can have as many freedoms as you want as long as you are willing to pay, and dearly, for them.

It is this debate as it is, without nuance, which has raged in this country for the last several decades, first truly championed by the “Great Communicator,” and Obama-analog, Ronald Reagan. At the core of every major political argument has sat this issue, rearing its ugly head in topics ranging from abortion to banking regulations, pushing the two sides farther and farther apart, in a never-ending cycle of entrenchment of political ideologues, pulling this country further and further apart.

Which is how the things that have happened over the past 25 years have happened. The ability for open discourse in public on a myriad of topics has been all but destroyed, and the only group who is being negatively affected is that same public.

Maybe the plan will work the way it was intended, maybe it won’t, but hopefully it does what it is supposed to do, to push us pass the ideologies that have so crippled the American polity, and it to a discussion of government that works and government that doesn’t.

Nick Bond is a senior political science student and managing editor of The Chronicle. You may e-mail him at [email protected].