There are two political cultures that we need to change in order to have a healthy “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” in this country. The first is the culture among the voters as defined by how thy perceive those who hold political office. The second is the culture among lawmakers as defined by how they perceive the purpose and role of government.
Our Pit of Dysfunction
I got thinking about these culture issues during a brief discussion with my brother in which he mentioned an ex-politician that now works for the same company as he does whom he described like so:
He’s the kind of guy who leaves you with a sense that not all politicians are scum sucking bottom dwellers. He’s a really great guy.
That is a great example of the voter culture that leaves voters not wanting to participate in politics because the whole process feels dirty. That perception makes you feel that anything more than voting might contaminate you by association and has the added effect of making your vote feel useless anyway.
Among politicians the dysfunctional culture is one that views government as a powerful multi-tool which is adaptable to help deal with whatever problem the nation is facing at the time. The perception that government can be so adaptable is dangerous because it causes an excessive reliance on government (a hammer) so that we use it for tasks it was not meant to address (like cutting aboard and wondering why the edge is all jagged) while overlooking other available tools (any number of saws) that are better suited to many of the challenges we face.
The reality is that neither of those cultural perceptions is correct. Many politicians (possibly even the vast majority although my own experience is too limited to prove that conclusively) on both sides of basically every issue are good people who really do want what they think is best for their constituents and the nation as a whole. That fact may explain why, when confronted with their individual elected leader at whatever level, voters find it easy to send the incumbent back even while holding a very low opinion of the elected body they are sending them to participate in. Because government is not a multi-purpose tool to address a wide variety of problems, even well-meaning people (politicians, lobbyists, voters) trying to use it as such will create at least as many problems as they solve and they will be dissatisfied with the results of all their hard work.
A Functional High-Ground
[quote]If the culture among voters changed to the point that the vast majority of people recognized that almost everybody involved in the process of our citizen driven political process has good intentions it would help to remove much of the rancor that currently infects our political process. People would be more open to listen and discuss and less worried about scoring points. Even more importantly we could learn to respect each other for our efforts even when we continue to disagree over the proper direction. If we could change the culture among voters it might even naturally improve the errors in the culture among politicians.
The problem is not so much that most politicians are bad as it is that most of them succumb to a system that promotes the centralization of power – which is inherently destructive if not held firmly in check. Government power operates much like gravity – the more mass you have concentrated in one place the stronger the pull of gravity – thus attracting even greater mass. It is a natural process, not some insidious conspiracy. In that way the neoconservative view expressed by Irving Kristol that they see the growth of the state as natural is true. What they fail to acknowledge is that it is not desirable – that it is, in fact, dangerous. As nice and or good as many politicians are they don’t understand that they must be ever vigilant against the concept that the government is a solution to a wide range of problems. Once you accept that notion you start cutting wood with a hammer and act surprised when you can’t make a straight cut.
The natural gravitational pull of government power is one of the reasons that we can benefit so much from an establishment of term limits. True, there are some few individuals in history who would be able to stand in the halls of power without losing sight of the limits of the usefulness of that power, but far more common are those who get a tool and eventually they see that tool as adding value to every project. As my father in law is known to say – when you have a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.
The truth is that government is only good for policing the legal system , in other words making sure that they don’t exceed the proper bounds of government (unfortunately most politicians today don’t understand this so it doesn’t happen enough), and for providing a justice system that treats everybody fairly (but since government is involved in so many things our justice system frequently treats many people unfairly – either granting unfair advantage or inadvertently punishing those who they are not concentrated on helping).
The reason our government and political system are broken is not so much because the actors are bad as because they are working off the wrong script. I believe that any nation where these two cultures are in their proper form can sustain a healthy government so long as they avoid the pitfalls we are currently in. The voters and elected officials must always respect the limits of what government can appropriately do and they should also remember to respect those who disagree with them – are at least respect that their opponents rarely have sinister intent.
