Bad grandma Obama.

• Author: Puterbaugh, Dolores T.
• Position: PARTING THOUGHTS

I AM TRYING to be a good grandmother. Mostly it is easy to be good: I like reading books, coloring, and entering into imagination land. If the tissue box is now a cake, and the tissue sticking out a flickering candle flame to be blown out by the giraffe having a birthday, I am right there, singing off-tune. I like blocks and baby dolls, and helping black-and-pink tricycles with Harley-Davidson stickers stay on the sidewalk.

On the more challenging side, I follow the rules when I babysit. If bath-and-bed is organized and executed in a certain way, I will stick to it. I follow the instructions on how many cookies at snack time, whether the drink after nap or "quiet time" is milk or apple juice, and a host of other guidelines. These are my daughter and son-in-law's regulations: they are the lawmakers in their home and, when I am posted on duty, it is my job to execute those rules. I cannot change them, or ignore them, or strategically enforce the ones I like. Would it be fun to have chocolate milk and two cookies instead of reduced sugar apple juice and one cookie? You bet, especially for Nana. However, I have a particular job this generation, and it is not to override the "kids." If I do, I am failing in my obligation to them and to their daughter, my grandchild, who needs a predictable, reliable environment to be safe and to develop properly.

Just so for adults. We need a predictable environment. We are a "nation of laws." It used to be a reliable assumption that everyone but criminals likes it that way. When a law is enforced unfairly, we take notice. We protest and petition. We want consistency, so we can plan accordingly. If behavior is legal today, but suddenly not tomorrow, it becomes impossible to plan for the future. Already we function with the dread of unpredictable tort: the high rates of various forms of insurance and a host of bizarre, superstitious, and dysfunctional behaviors arise out of a fear of being sued. The fear is not unwarranted: strange interpretations of laws by which burglars successfully sue homeowners for the intruders' injuries, for example, terrify normal people.

The arrangement for checks and balances in power in the Federal government is the constitutional equivalent of an effort to have the grandparents and babysitters follow the agreed-upon rules established by the parents. The House of Representatives is one parent, proposing a bunch of rules. The Senate weighs in; there is some debate. Sometimes one is...