Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes
It is one thing to diagnose a problem; it is another to resolve it.
While true in many fields, it is particularly so in politics.
Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930, English Writer & Conservative candidate for Parliament, Dialog he wrote for the character Sherlock Holmes, Quoted on PBS Sherlock Homes, August 10, 2007
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The reason that this quote is important is that during the time that Graham served in the Senate, most of his Republican colleagues had evolved a political style where they just criticized everything the Democrats did or advocated. They would outdo each other to characterize problems more dramatically. They would even vote against legislation that they had supported earlier and in some cases, that they had even sponsored. They generally never made any specific suggestions or offered specific legislative options as once they did, there would be something that some might criticize them for. The tactic was reasonably effective in the short run, but a few Republicans, like Graham, felt that it was their duty to try and legislate solutions to national problems and not just uncover, describe or harp on what is a problem and attack Democrats.
Ideally problems of government would be prevented by good planning and anticipation. Once the political problem becomes evident, it is usually too late to resolve it well at reasonable cost. Machiavelli warned against waiting. However, he never imagined that a political problem would become evident, and the government officials or legislators would not deal with it and delay attempted resolution. However “kicking the can down the road” became very common in the latter part of the 20th century. By the beginning of the 21st century, the extreme political polarization of Congress had caused so much gridlock that almost no problem could be legislated upon, even well after it had been recognized.
He was referring to the 2016 Presidential Campaign Politifact showed that Hillary Clinton’s facts were not valid and truthful 25 percent of the time and Donald Trump’s were false more than 70 percent of the time. Never before have there been so many falsehoods exchanged in a Presidential Campaign.
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle KStJ DL was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are considered milestones in the field of crime fiction.
