Quid pro quo

It's Just a thought

By Alex Hutchins

Quid pro quo is generally understood to mean
“something for something” or “this for that” or even “what for what” but there is another meaning seldom used that goes something like this:  “a misunderstanding or blunder by substituting one thing for another.”  It is using this latter definition that I offer just another thought.

Let me begin by taking us back in time to a period between the late 70’s to the early 80’s and a position I held managing a non-profit in North Carolina.  The city in which the non-profit offered its programs was about 20 miles away from another city that housed a similar non-profit with similar demographics except our sister city was about twice as large.  My Board of Directors wanted to duplicate many of the same programs that the other non-profit was offering because they were all financially successful. 

At the time, we all thought this was a great idea but we soon found out we were dead wrong and develop programs slightly different for our slightly different resident that were over time just as successful perhaps more so in some cases than those offered in our sister city.



Scene from The Good Wife - Quid pro quo



Lesson learned:  do not blunder by substituting one thing for another.  And, we can further extrapolate that one should not try to duplicate what happened in one decade in another decade.  In other words, what happened in the 60’s should never try to be duplicated, because people are different as are the socio-economic and political climates from one decade to another.

Ok, so now let’s fast forward back to the present.  In a recent new broadcast about the Republican Presidential Candidates and what they would do to fix the economy, in every single case the answer was to return to what was done and worked years ago, even though the socio-economic and political climates are different, especially our debt footprint in much, much larger and we are experiencing fierce competition from a global marketplace.

So, once again our potential political leaders want us stuck in the past and are out-of-sync with not only the people but the times.  Just a thought -  is what this is and probably will not be given much consideration because I am no expert and it seems (from this perspective) that only an expert can offer advice that will be followed time and time again no matter how often that expert is wrong.