"It Could Have Been Worse!"

Those words may be this decade's all-purpose emolument for screw-ups. Has there been a infrastructure failure, terrorist attack, product recall, campus massacre, economic recession, negative crime statistic or public policy failure for which that phrase is not applied? Even God gets in on the act with natural disasters.

From Columbine to Katrina to Sago to 35W to Continental 3407, following the initial shock, newscasters, politicians and people on the street all revert to this old rubric. I guess to make themselves feel better. Thirty-three students and faculty are shot on the Virginia Tech campus, but "it could have been worse" if the Virginia gun dealer who sold Cho his guns had thrown in an autoloader. Sorry, but for the dead, seriously injured and loved ones this is about as "worse" as it gets.

Politicians have become particularly adroit at its use as the first line of their ass-covering defense in any preventable tragedy. "Harrumph, true the money could have been allocated for federal inspectors, but had I not earmarked the Omnibus Historic Roller Coaster Beautification, Restoration and Amusement Park Owners' Subsidy Bill, the children falling from the mangled superstructure 200 feet to the ground would have crashed onto concrete instead of the lovely bougainvillea, and it could have been worse."

The mother of all "it could have been worse" rationalizations has to be George Bush's senseless invasion of Iraq, although we've never been told exactly how much worse off Iraq could be had we not invaded then what we've turned it into.

Obama's whole economic recovery theory is based on "it could be worse." "Damn tootin'! Without the incentives, the stimulus, the bank bailouts, the auto takeovers, we'd be a lot worse off."

But then have you ever read a story about bureaucratic failure without a reference to what might have been? Government agencies reporting negative statistics, such as increasing rates of crime, poverty, infant mortality, drug use, high school dropouts, AIDS, make use of "it could be worse" big time. "If it wasn't for the $100 million we allocated for abstinence education, there'd be even more unwed pregnancies." Then the finger pointing and blame game begin, especially if it's an election cycle -- but of course it's a always an election cycle.

Corporations are in the game also, rationalizing defective products, salmonella poisonings and prescription drug-induced cardio infarctions. "It could be a lot worse if we hadn't immediately taken action to recall the product as soon as we discovered that a disgruntled employee had e-mailed The New York Times a copy of a two-year-old, confidential, internal report documenting the lethal side effects of our product."

The religious variation of "it could be worse" has a slightly different spin. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Harris Miller of Covington, La. avowed "I shoulda' been dead when that tree limb fell on me, but" -- nodding toward the sky -- "the man upstairs was lookin' out for me." According to Miller's logic, God decided to save him but chose to let 1600 others mercilessly die. Ah, the magic of religion.

Similarly, how many times did you hear the word "miracle" thrown around in the Minneapolis bridge collapse, especially in connection with the yellow school bus? Obviously, the divine plan thingy at work. Do you think God sits around and asks himself, "should I make this thing worse? I could get away with knocking off half the kids on the bus, and people will still say 'it could have been worse' and still give me credit for a miracle. Hmmm. Something to think about for the next disaster."

At what point do you think "worse" kicks in? We know it applied to 9/11 because if the passengers on United 93 hadn't put up a fight and the plane crashed into the Capitol, "it could have been worse." On the other hand, it doesn't seem to get used for, say, run-of-the-mill home invasions and family massacres. "Good thing Aunt Tess and Uncle Bill weren't visiting from Buffalo or it could have been worse." Naw. Nor did we hear it applied to stuff like Shuttle disasters, like hey, they could've sent up eight astronauts instead of only seven? That would have been worse.

And you don't hear the phrase used in conjunction with, say, the 2004 Asian Tsunami or the genocide in Darfur in which hundreds of thousands of people are killed. I guess at those numbers a few more dead isn't going to make it any worse than it already is.

I think I've got it bracketed. More than ten deaths but fewer than 3000 seems to be in the "it could be worse" range; enough dead for viewers to care about but not so many they become bored.