By
Joshua Sager
In recent years, the political climate has been more
akin to a spectator sport than a legitimate method of instituting good policy.
People are more interested in sound bites and political propaganda than the
actual policy which is going to be passed and the media has been going right
along with it. Tabloid politics such as the Weiner scandal and the antics of
the Palins sells better than less interesting things; things like pointing out
that the rich are robbing us blind and then using our own money to buy our
politicians.
Let’s face it, watching dumb people make fools of
themselves is good TV (See: reality/game shows, sitcoms, etc.), but focusing
all political media on the next ignorant thing to pop out of the mouth of
Bachmann/Palin/Perry/ to the exclusion of
actual news will be the death sentence of our democracy. Politics is not a
reality show, and at some point we will need to actually discuss policy, rather
that the antics of the political personalities.
In political science there are two major components
to the creation and implementation of public policy: Politics and Policy. The
policy component is the substantive policy decisions that are eventually made
into a bill. Policy has no partisan gamesmanship, only competing ideas as to
what the most effective ways to bring about the best results are. The political
component of public policy is the political games that must be played in order
to garner support, negotiate, and deal in order to get a policy agenda passed.
In many ways the politics of the legislature is disconnected from the actual
policy outcomes because it doesn't matter how good the policy actually is just
as long as it can be passed.
Theoretically, good policy should be accompanied by
good politics and the best ideas will win out, but in reality this system works
just about as well as an unregulated free market. The right wing of the country
has truly awful policy, ranging from the unconstitutional
(abortion/anti-immigration legislation), to the purely fantastical
(trickle-down economics/war on science), but they are amazing at politics. To
give credit where credit is due, the Republicans have not only dominated the
political agenda but convinced large numbers of ignorant people to vote
entirely against their interests even in the face of evidence.
The Democrats propose policy that would be
beneficial to most of the country, whether by reducing pollution or
strengthening the social safety net, but they (Obama most of all) are unable to
advocate their policy to the people. In a world dominated by the fact-free
sound bite the Republicans have completely shut out the Democrats and then used
the worsening conditions to improve their own political prospects. Many would
assume that this is a pro-Democrat statement, but it is equally damning on both
parties.
I posit that the Republicans are intentionally
stalling economic recovery efforts in an effort to harm Obama electorally due
to the fact that they are now rejecting their own initiatives (Ex. the payroll
tax cut); the fact that the Democrats are failing to mobilize against the
Republicans, even with the Republicans' evident hypocrisy, is evident of one of
several weaknesses in the Democratic Party as a whole: either the Democrats
simply do not see that their positions are far more popular than the
Republicans’, or they are inability to articulate a convincing argument as to
why their positions are superior and more popular. In making this argument, I
am assuming that the Democrats as a party are not “throwing the game” in
service to big money donors, for if this is true we are in far more trouble
than most people have realized.
Republican politics has overshadowed their policy to
the point where the president's job proposal was being blocked by the house at
the same time that are they threatening another government shutdown over giving
aid to disaster victims (Ex. The fight over aid to the Joplin tornado victims);
someone playing devil’s advocate would argue that the Republicans disagree with
both the president’s job plan and the disaster aid based upon principle but
this argument has one major flaw: In the recent past, Republicans have
supported both disaster relief and
virtually every initiative included in the president’s jobs plan. Not
only have the Republicans supported projects similar to those included in
Obama’s plan, but they were the ones to initiate the tax cut that would be
extended by the plan. The Joplin tornado series cost the country millions of
dollars due to damage, but far less than hurricane Katrina, and Katrina was
funded without incident. Disaster aid has never been a controversial issue in
the United States, that is, until Obama became president. If ideas that were
supported by both parties are uncontroversial until a Democratic president
suggests them, the only explanation is that the opposition cares more about
politics than policy.
Republicans as a party are blocking simply
everything, regardless of substance, in order to hurt the country and defeat
Obama. Due to the Republican ability to sell even the most insane and
self-destructive policy to their base voter, through a combination of religious
rhetoric, deceptive facts and slogans, they can completely ignore policy and
focus entirely on getting elected.
To be fair, the Republican viewpoint is and has in
recent memory been that of inaction: Reducing what the government does for its
people, reducing regulations, and cutting taxes are all Republican policies
that stress the government not actually working; in this way the Republican
focus on politics over policy makes sense because if you don't believe in
government actually doing anything, it is a lot easier to be a politician than
if you actually had to make working programs. The position that the federal
government is universally wasteful makes little factual sense for the
Republicans, as a majority of red states actually receive more federal
assistance (through subsidies, federal assistance programs, and grants) then
they pay in taxes, but it does make a powerful rhetorical point for the
Republicans to use against the Democrats.
In many policy fights, the Democrats have a lot going
for them: Democratic policy often has more connection to fact than Republican
policy in the fields of economics (Keynesian Tax policy V. Reaganomics),
science (Climate change), and general policy knowledge (Stimulus pulling a
country out of depression, regulations being necessary, etc.). I do not argue
that all Democratic policies are superior to Republican policies, rather that
many of their major policy proposals are far more fact based then those
supported by the Republicans.
Unfortunately for their political success, the
Democrats are handicapped by the facts that they actually care about improving
the government and the lives of the "little people" (Read: us 99%),
and the fact that the Democrats are abysmal at selling their policy. Proof of
the inability of Democrats to sell their policy, no matter how beneficial is
evident in the “Obamacare” fight just two years ago: The Democrats couldn't
sell the idea of giving access to health insurance to everybody at lower prices
(Public option), nor could they make their opponents look bad for opposing
outlawing the pre-existing condition clauses in health care. The Republicans
used false, yet easily digestible, arguments such as “death panels” and the
threat of “government takeovers” to fight the factual, but more complex,
arguments of the Democrats. In addition to the differences in how the two sides
sold their argument to the American public, the Republicans had massive amounts
of health industry money to support them as well as the newly born “Tea Party”
to act as ground troops. With a lack of convincing arguments, sloganeering, and
ground mobilization on the part of the Democrats, they were unable to
effectively combat the Republicans during the healthcare fight.
Not every Democratic politician is unable to make
their case, as some Democrats can fight politically and very competently at
that, (Frank, Weiner, Warren, Sanders, etc.) but a great majority of Democrats
are completely unable to advocate for their positions on the same level as the
Republicans. Barney Frank, Alan Grayson, Elizabeth Warren, and Raoul Grijalva
in particular have shown great talent and skill in their presentation of
progressive arguments for Democratic policies, yet unfortunately much of the
rest of the party has been far less competent.
While I have yet to find any “unifying theory” as to
why the Democrats are less effective than their Republican counterparts, but I
believe it to be a combination of factors:
1. 1) The
Republicans begin in an advantageous position in many arguments as their
default position is claim that government is broken; if you intentionally stall
government, it is very easy to convince people that government doesn’t work.
While the Democrats need to propose good policy, the Republicans can sit inside
of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
2. 2) Unlike
the Democrats, the Republicans commonly operate using easy to understand
slogans such as “freedom” or “patriotism” to support themselves and “death
panels” or “socialist” to attack their enemies; these slogans are almost always
false, but they are reported on by the media and repeated by the candidates
until they gain a life of their own. Obama utilized this tactic to great effect
during 2008 with the slogan “hope”, but Democrats as a group do not commonly
use this tactic.
3. 3) Republicans
fuse their religion into their politics which reduces the ability of the other
party to attack for fear of insulting the religious.
4. 4) The
Republican Party discipline is far stronger than that of the Democrats. In most
situations, the Republican leadership decides upon something, and then the rest
of the party follows; there are very few dissenting voices or differences of
belief, unless they are to the right. The Democratic Party is composed of
political actors ranging in partisanship from Bernie Sanders (borderline
socialist) to Joe Liebermann (middle right-wing). The Republican Party is
composed of political actors ranging in ideology from Scott Brown (middle
right) to Michele Bachmann (insane right).
I know that I am being overoptimistic in saying that
I wish that there will be a day when we return to a political landscape where
political games no longer overshadow the substance of policy, but I wish it
just the same. I believe government to be a means of producing social good and
benefitting everyone in society; an ideal which is incompatible with much of
current politics. While I know that such a radical change in politics is
unlikely, I would settle for a political landscape where a good idea is
recognized regardless of partisan affiliation and compromise is no longer
stopped through political gridlock on EVERY issue.
In a Democracy, the job of politicians is to advocate for their constituents and if they do a good job, they often get reelected. We are in a system where the politicians sell out their constituents to the interests and the rich in order to get re-elected.
