Greensburg — During my stay in Virginia, I collaborated with professors on a number of projects. One of these is a proposal to develop a college course on the question whether the people are capable of governing themselves. Big question.

You and I might take it for granted that we are indeed capable, but that has not always been the consensus throughout history or around the world. Many eminent philosophers have expressed deep distrust of the rabble. Plenty of pundits and politicians in our own culture have their doubts.

One recent college graduate heard more than once that people like to be fooled. There is a certain convenience to ignoring the truth about a lot of topics, as well as a thrill to experiencing illusions at the movies. In politics as in romance, we want to hear candidates say things that cannot possibly be so.

Reality has a way of asserting itself, however. You can neglect things for only so long before the evidence shows. If I ignore my teeth long enough, they will discolor, rot, and fall out. No amount of happy thinking will prevent this. The hard truth is that I must floss and brush and visit my dentist, much as I prefer not to. In other words, I can fantasize about life for a bit, but not forever.

In politics, we tend to trust somebody else to take responsibility for the future, in order that we can spend time doing other stuff such as shopping online, watching pee-wee baseball, and perfecting a golf swing. Nevertheless, there will come a day of reckoning. The ones we delegated to run our community will be unable or unwilling to stop every problem. Then what?

A gifted politician can promise the moon, and when you find yourself disappointed, he will use sleight-of-hand to make sure you do not blame him. It was the other party's fault, for example, or he will say that what seems to be a problem is really just a minor correction to be expected. Everything is under control. Or the politician simply changes the subject, asking you to stop whining for a second and look over there.

Once you get a cluster of such illusionists in power, they create a strange hall of mirrors among themselves, as they vie with each other for control and happily use the rest of us to help them prevail. Yet they work with their adversaries to keep the illusion intact. They are in league with each other against the common run of men. And we seem to like things that way, most of the time.

Remember when the Clinton presidency was such good theater? Before that, Democrats kept trying to remind us that Reagan was an actor. And, well, maybe that's how we like it.

Government can be so boring. Have you ever actually read federal legislation? Much of the work is dull, technical, repetitive. I'm unconvinced we have the attention span to govern ourselves. I know I don't want to get up to speed on the oil spill, stimulus package, immigration reform, the war in Afghanistan, and dozens of other hot button issues, all at the same time. I have things to do.

In a complex society where we need a division of labor just to produce toasters, I see nothing particularly offensive about apportioning responsibility for the political order to a bunch of different folks, assuming they are credentialed and overseen by someone. Besides, most of the important acts take place outside of government, when people simply obey the law and assist each other and collaborate to generate wealth. It all helps to maintain the civic order.

Having said that, however, I still believe that one day reality will encroach on us like a recession or a terror attack or a hurricane, and then I will want to hold somebody accountable, right or wrong. 'How could you let this happen?' I will ask. And of course, there is often no possible answer.

I am interested, therefore, in the vision that prospective leaders will publicly claim to pursue. What sort of future are they trying to achieve? What dangers are they trying to avoid?

Do they fixate on keeping taxes low? Do they struggle to prevent change? Do they promise to do whatever YOU tell them to do? I may be capable of governing, but I don't want to do that right now. If you want to, then tell me more about your vision. I can agree to govern to this extent: I can vote for you and watch what happens, reserving the right to complain later. Whether that's sufficient, of course, is the whole point of that college course we were hoping to design.