The Failed Analogy of Sausages

There is a famous quote by German statesman Otto von Bismarck that “laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.” This really is quite insulting to sausages. No, laws are not a delightful, filling breakfast food to accompany your bacon and eggs. Rather, they are something else entirely, resulting from a gastrointestinal-like process. First, there is the ingestion of facts, figures, budgets, bitter pills, finger pointing, and perhaps even the occasional sausage or two. Then there is the caustic, acidic rhetoric that tears everything apart. Following this is a long, gut-wrenching process where everything is squeezed, mashed together, and obliterated until nothing recognizable is left. Finally, when all of the innate goodness has been sucked out completely, you get the end product. If you are lucky, you have found yourself with a lovely new law, still smelling of compromise and probably just a whiff of insanity. If you aren't so lucky, and everything went too fast or there was too much hot air involved, then all you are left with are disturbing, loud noises and the rather putrid stench that goes with it—and the realization that you probably will have to go through everything all over again .