Republican senator Paul Ryan from Wisconsin is charging people $15.00 to come to his 'town hall' meetings. While he avoids putting it that way, he does it because the protesters in Wisconsin will shout him down, yell, and express their outrage in a way that makes him almost unable to speak. The anger against Paul Ryan is a rage that comes from fear and resentment over his policies and a belief that Paul and others like him are hijacking the job they were voted in to do for another agenda.
Democrat Anthony Weiner of New York had a strange and almost teenage pseudo-sexual exchange with women across the country involving photos sent over cell phones. The outrage over his odd behavior, not quite cheating but strangely morally disturbing, got so bad that he resigned his congressional seat under pressure from the minority leader and others.
Republican Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota broadcast a response to the presidential State of the Union address speaking for nobody at all and was featured on CNN. The tea party explained it wasn't a direct representation of them, the Republican party had their own response given by Paul Ryan, and of course she surely wasn't speaking for the Democrats. Yet the broadcast was featured all over the internet and covered more by the mainstream media than the Republicans were.
What do these things have in common?
Well, we have a man who can't hold meetings in his own state because of a policy he didn't pass, another man who can't hold political office because of sex he didn't have, and a woman covered by every major media outlet intensely for a group she doesn't represent. We have politicians getting in trouble and suffering consequences both good and bad for what they didn't actually do, but what they flirted with doing.
It's hardly a revelation to say that the Internet, social media, and cell phones have dramatically changed our lives, but we don't really talk much how it has changed our politics short of acknowledging that it has. I'm going to argue that something very important has happened in the last fifteen years that may end up completely reshaping our nation.
Representative politics has always depended on the ability of politicians to stand for abstractions and deal in concretes. This is to say they can stand for lower taxation or helping the poor or smaller government, but the decisions they might make day to day on specific bills or issues are part of a broader, more complicated, and wider reaching network of deals and compromises as well as complicated environments where a vote or choice might not always be in line with those principles.
To put it another way, the individual acts of a politician are not necessarily indicative of what they stand for. To attempt to look at each individual political choice by itself is misleading and dangerous. It would be like seeing a surgeon create an incision and deciding he's a violent criminal attacking a helpless civilian.
A good example would be a politician who wins election to fight for the poor. While in congress, that politician makes some deals to help get legislation to raise the minimum wage on a ballot in the next year, but does so agreeing to vote for lesser policies that might not have anything to do with labor or to accept certain concessions that are not well liked by his constituents. As their representative, he makes the call: His judgment says that the minimum wage deal is more important to his promise than the smaller costs, and so he proceeds. This is the idea behind representative democracy - that the elected official is entrusted to act on the population's overall behalf and will be held accountable how they do that, but the individual decisions made are at their discretion.
For the longest time and until very recently this is exactly how US politics worked. Most people didn't even know who their Senators or state Congressmen were much less how they voted or what committees they were on. Politicians were held accountable based on the effect of their legislation on their constituents. These men and women would vanish into the mostly opaque box of their state capitol or Washington DC and as their activities started to have a material effect on life back home and abroad, reaching the news outlets papers, we would get an impression of them. If we liked it, they kept their job. If we didn't, they didn't.
Am I talking about 1950?
How about 1995.
In 1995, most people didn't have internet, cell phones, or any other way to communicate with one another that was any different than 1950. There was no dial-up access in most metropolitan centers, much less wireless, tablets or smart phones. People got their news from print copy papers and major network news. There was no Fox News. There was no MSNBC. Your choices were ABC, NBC, CBS, or CNN. On radio you could catch Rush Limbaugh, but not anyone else. Even C-Span didn't join radio until 1997.
The information explosion ripped across the world in a very very short period of time closing the gap between voters and their political representatives. Voters were still no more privy to the long term deals and plans chugging along in the the complex political process, which itself had not sped up a single bit, but they were suddenly aware of every action that their representatives took. In short order, politicians were not being held accountable for what they did, but what they said they were going to do. Not what they voted to pass, but how they voted on any bill for any reason whether it ever even got out of their committee or branch. The lives of politicians became instantly available open books subject to immediate review by voters not just day to day but minute to minute.
As I sit watching my facebook stream, I get updates on exactly where Paul Ryan will be anywhere in the world doing anything at all as well as transportation information if I want to join the protests organized for every appearance he makes anywhere in the nation.
This is today's politics. Men and women who haven't done anything, but simply said they were going to do something or voted on something that didn't happen are subject to immediate consequence based on the interpretation of outsiders. Politicians cannot choose which sugar to put in their coffee without raising questions about which industry they like better. The President gets hassled over a driving a Canadian made bus while Chris Cristy's use of a government helicopter to drop in on his son's game makes national and worldwide news.
Welcome to the age of super celebrity politics even more real than entertainment celebrities. Sarah Palin makes a career out of flirting with a presidential run, touring like Justin Beiber across the US while Michelle Bachman responds to the president's speech as if she's the Speaker of the House and not only gets away with it but is covered as if she were.
This isn't politics as usual.
This is Pollywood.
Commentary on politics is starting to look exactly like tabloid magazines you see in the checkout at the grocery store, and the headlines are just as trivial, outrageous and absurd. Read a few pages of Ann Coulter's 'Demonic' and tell me it doesn't read like the trailer voice for a movie. Drop your voice and read it out loud for best effect: “In a world, where terror lurks around every corner, a small band of conservative truth seekers faces the mob of liberals slowly shambling towards the end of a great nation...”
It is arguable that this live action display of politics is one of the reasons we've seen a growing back-door movement to define political policy in partisan think tanks. Fueled by PACS and lobbies and passed through the halls of power without much disclosure, this form of shadow legislation is an effort to avoid the lethal scrutiny of the now fully aware masses that turn governance into a circus. Unfortunately, these interests rarely have the American people at heart, and as a result inflict a growing disconnect between voters and the laws their politicians are attempting to enact creating an ever more hostile atmosphere between voters and their government.
The machine of US politics has always depended to a certain degree on being left alone while it tried to build laws worked for the country, then being held accountable for actual results. No longer. Where in the past the greater effort required to research government activity bought politicians breathing room to try things and fail – to actually fail before being raked over the coals - now the only way many of them see to get that opportunity is to exclude the public from legislative involvement altogether.
I have no solid conclusion for this analysis. I don't have a solution sitting neatly tucked away for the last paragraph. I am, however, concerned for the political health of our nation. It is disturbing to watch the president's right leaning jobs bill get shot at like a Wisconsin deer by conservatives mostly because the interests that write their campaign checks and draft their laws don't care about anything other than securing power so their privately crafted legislation has the smoothest path to passage. While the circus continues, a small number of interests are consolidating power and wealth to defend themselves against it. While I'm not sure what that means in the long run, I found a voice of interest in antiquity that rings a disturbingly haunting bell as the left rages against the private legislation machine leveraging their growing version of pure democracy and the right calls for less and less government in the name of self determination and liberty.
“Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.”
-Plato
Democrat Anthony Weiner of New York had a strange and almost teenage pseudo-sexual exchange with women across the country involving photos sent over cell phones. The outrage over his odd behavior, not quite cheating but strangely morally disturbing, got so bad that he resigned his congressional seat under pressure from the minority leader and others.
Republican Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota broadcast a response to the presidential State of the Union address speaking for nobody at all and was featured on CNN. The tea party explained it wasn't a direct representation of them, the Republican party had their own response given by Paul Ryan, and of course she surely wasn't speaking for the Democrats. Yet the broadcast was featured all over the internet and covered more by the mainstream media than the Republicans were.
What do these things have in common?
Well, we have a man who can't hold meetings in his own state because of a policy he didn't pass, another man who can't hold political office because of sex he didn't have, and a woman covered by every major media outlet intensely for a group she doesn't represent. We have politicians getting in trouble and suffering consequences both good and bad for what they didn't actually do, but what they flirted with doing.
It's hardly a revelation to say that the Internet, social media, and cell phones have dramatically changed our lives, but we don't really talk much how it has changed our politics short of acknowledging that it has. I'm going to argue that something very important has happened in the last fifteen years that may end up completely reshaping our nation.
Representative politics has always depended on the ability of politicians to stand for abstractions and deal in concretes. This is to say they can stand for lower taxation or helping the poor or smaller government, but the decisions they might make day to day on specific bills or issues are part of a broader, more complicated, and wider reaching network of deals and compromises as well as complicated environments where a vote or choice might not always be in line with those principles.
To put it another way, the individual acts of a politician are not necessarily indicative of what they stand for. To attempt to look at each individual political choice by itself is misleading and dangerous. It would be like seeing a surgeon create an incision and deciding he's a violent criminal attacking a helpless civilian.
A good example would be a politician who wins election to fight for the poor. While in congress, that politician makes some deals to help get legislation to raise the minimum wage on a ballot in the next year, but does so agreeing to vote for lesser policies that might not have anything to do with labor or to accept certain concessions that are not well liked by his constituents. As their representative, he makes the call: His judgment says that the minimum wage deal is more important to his promise than the smaller costs, and so he proceeds. This is the idea behind representative democracy - that the elected official is entrusted to act on the population's overall behalf and will be held accountable how they do that, but the individual decisions made are at their discretion.
For the longest time and until very recently this is exactly how US politics worked. Most people didn't even know who their Senators or state Congressmen were much less how they voted or what committees they were on. Politicians were held accountable based on the effect of their legislation on their constituents. These men and women would vanish into the mostly opaque box of their state capitol or Washington DC and as their activities started to have a material effect on life back home and abroad, reaching the news outlets papers, we would get an impression of them. If we liked it, they kept their job. If we didn't, they didn't.
Am I talking about 1950?
How about 1995.
In 1995, most people didn't have internet, cell phones, or any other way to communicate with one another that was any different than 1950. There was no dial-up access in most metropolitan centers, much less wireless, tablets or smart phones. People got their news from print copy papers and major network news. There was no Fox News. There was no MSNBC. Your choices were ABC, NBC, CBS, or CNN. On radio you could catch Rush Limbaugh, but not anyone else. Even C-Span didn't join radio until 1997.
The information explosion ripped across the world in a very very short period of time closing the gap between voters and their political representatives. Voters were still no more privy to the long term deals and plans chugging along in the the complex political process, which itself had not sped up a single bit, but they were suddenly aware of every action that their representatives took. In short order, politicians were not being held accountable for what they did, but what they said they were going to do. Not what they voted to pass, but how they voted on any bill for any reason whether it ever even got out of their committee or branch. The lives of politicians became instantly available open books subject to immediate review by voters not just day to day but minute to minute.
As I sit watching my facebook stream, I get updates on exactly where Paul Ryan will be anywhere in the world doing anything at all as well as transportation information if I want to join the protests organized for every appearance he makes anywhere in the nation.
This is today's politics. Men and women who haven't done anything, but simply said they were going to do something or voted on something that didn't happen are subject to immediate consequence based on the interpretation of outsiders. Politicians cannot choose which sugar to put in their coffee without raising questions about which industry they like better. The President gets hassled over a driving a Canadian made bus while Chris Cristy's use of a government helicopter to drop in on his son's game makes national and worldwide news.
Welcome to the age of super celebrity politics even more real than entertainment celebrities. Sarah Palin makes a career out of flirting with a presidential run, touring like Justin Beiber across the US while Michelle Bachman responds to the president's speech as if she's the Speaker of the House and not only gets away with it but is covered as if she were.
This isn't politics as usual.
This is Pollywood.
Commentary on politics is starting to look exactly like tabloid magazines you see in the checkout at the grocery store, and the headlines are just as trivial, outrageous and absurd. Read a few pages of Ann Coulter's 'Demonic' and tell me it doesn't read like the trailer voice for a movie. Drop your voice and read it out loud for best effect: “In a world, where terror lurks around every corner, a small band of conservative truth seekers faces the mob of liberals slowly shambling towards the end of a great nation...”
It is arguable that this live action display of politics is one of the reasons we've seen a growing back-door movement to define political policy in partisan think tanks. Fueled by PACS and lobbies and passed through the halls of power without much disclosure, this form of shadow legislation is an effort to avoid the lethal scrutiny of the now fully aware masses that turn governance into a circus. Unfortunately, these interests rarely have the American people at heart, and as a result inflict a growing disconnect between voters and the laws their politicians are attempting to enact creating an ever more hostile atmosphere between voters and their government.
The machine of US politics has always depended to a certain degree on being left alone while it tried to build laws worked for the country, then being held accountable for actual results. No longer. Where in the past the greater effort required to research government activity bought politicians breathing room to try things and fail – to actually fail before being raked over the coals - now the only way many of them see to get that opportunity is to exclude the public from legislative involvement altogether.
I have no solid conclusion for this analysis. I don't have a solution sitting neatly tucked away for the last paragraph. I am, however, concerned for the political health of our nation. It is disturbing to watch the president's right leaning jobs bill get shot at like a Wisconsin deer by conservatives mostly because the interests that write their campaign checks and draft their laws don't care about anything other than securing power so their privately crafted legislation has the smoothest path to passage. While the circus continues, a small number of interests are consolidating power and wealth to defend themselves against it. While I'm not sure what that means in the long run, I found a voice of interest in antiquity that rings a disturbingly haunting bell as the left rages against the private legislation machine leveraging their growing version of pure democracy and the right calls for less and less government in the name of self determination and liberty.
“Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.”
-Plato
Just last night I was saying that maybe there should be a media ban on politics for a spell and let people get some stuff done. I hate to say it, but all this attention is detrimental to the process. My father watches (shudder) Fox news, and says that it's his "soap opera". I do believe that the government of the country should be less trivial than a soap opera.
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