We cherish bi-partisanship among our elected officials. When most of us decry the political machine, and “the Washington way” we mean partisan politics. By which we usually mean voting along party lines regardless of whether it’s best for your constituents, the country, or your own conscience. We want our officials to be adult, educated, able to lead
But we don’t want them too smart. We say they should be real folks, not over-educated elitists, they should understand “the people.” But these Real People have to be pristine and perfect, with nary a blemish in their entire lives. No traffic tickets, no faux pas, no family skeletons. No relations that might have them either. An unbroken halo of a life unchallenged. But still someone you want to have a beer with. Huh? The ideal person that the American voter wants (unmarked, unbesmirchable) is most definitely not someone I would want to have a beer with – they have no experiences to draw on. We learn by making mistakes, but we demand elected officials who have never made them. But who understand that we make them. But who are just like us, only smarter. But not too smart. Hmmm. Wait...
We develop and change as we grow (well, most of us), but we want our politicians to be static. They can’t change their views, or alter their position based on altered facts or circumstances that warrant it without being accused of “flip-flopping.” If you said something 15 years ago that your partly likes, you damn well better still be willing to say it. Unless it’s something the party doesn’t like anymore – then you better repudiate (that’s “refudiate” to the Palinites) it post haste.
We don’t want growth experiences, evolving viewpoints, or connection to the complex dynamics of society to influence those Real People we elected – they have to maintain their perspectives from election to election in perpetuity so we “know who we’re voting for.” But we don’t like the entrenched career politicians who do things the same old way. We carry on about the Washington bubble where politicians go and lose touch with the real world. So you better be responsive to changing economies and changing social values. But don’t “flip-flop.” As Sarah Palin put it – you better “dance with the one who brung you.” Meaning you follow the party line and you stick with whatever your opinion was 40 years ago when you got there. Even if people’s views change, you will be lambasted during the Silly Season for changing your position, often simply as a res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself). Your change of position will be portrayed as an obvious sign of (insert bad thing here: weakness, influence of special interest groups, pandering, lying. etc.), even if what you’ve done is develop a more sophisticated understanding of the problem you’re trying to address.
Which brings me to the new anti-government sentiment, which is all about getting the incumbents out. But who are these incumbents? Guess what – they include all the freshman legislators you voted in just 2 short years ago to get the last incumbent out, who may well have been the new guy last time. And now it’s about “we sent you there to clean up the joint and you didn’t.” Well, the new kid on the block has a learning curve in Congress just like everywhere else – they can’t overhaul the entire political system in their first term. And for the most part, they shouldn’t. New legislators - perhaps more than any other new kid on the block – are often in place based on populist slogans that aren’t forged in the fires of intellectual wrestling and deep research, but rather on things that average folks on the street think based on their emotional reactions to sound bites and 30 second news clips. These are terrible foundations for legislation! But since we as a society have a sense that our government should do whatever we want rather than what’s best for the nation, we LOVE it when candidates tell us we’re right and smart and should be in control of everything. So the new kid gets to Washington with little more than a fire in the belly and a few cue cards. Then they start talking to the folks who’ve been there-done that and (hopefully) start to realize that they aren’t the saviors of mankind they thought they were – they’re more like teenagers stomping their feet and demanding to be in control of their own lives and not have to do dishes or take out trash. So anti-incumbent sentiment is not only inherently flawed as a platform (as soon as you elect a new savior, she becomes an ‘incumbent’ and is now the enemy), but also counterproductive - denying that legislators get better with experience just like anyone else.
We think we want the best and the brightest, but we demand unreasonable things from them, both in order to get elected and once they’re there. Is it any wonder that the best and brightest don’t want to run? Who wants that? Who wants their high school prom date in the tabloids discussing their juvenile pranks? Your vindictive ex on Fox News saying whatever horrible thing they want and getting the rapt attention of the non-fact-checking media? Or, heaven forbid, a college rally against a Wal*Mart showing up during a Republican campaign? Who wants to have their education used against them and face the demands of the screamingly uninformed that you kowtow to their every whim? And who are They anyway? One thing is for sure – if you’ve got 20 people in a room and one issue on the table, you’ll have 45 different opinions and probably another 32 issues being argued about.
Politics represents, in many ways, the deep divide in American thinking, and we continue to be shocked that “they” aren’t doing what “we” want when we don’t even really know what that is. It’s a Madonna-whore complex of national significance. And until Americans are better educated about the government and its processes and duties (i.e. NOT ‘do as I say, not as the other 60,000 people in this district say’) and more willing to recognize that every individual person can’t get their way all the time any more than one new representative can drive national policy, we will continue with this spiral of inferior candidates, inferior platforms, and inferior government processes. And for heaven’s sake STOP denigrating education and STOP thinking that candidates should be just like you – they SHOULD be smarter than you! They should be smarter than me! They should actually be the best and the brightest, and if you want real people, you HAVE to accept that you can’t just checklist them off every time the opposition says “he made mistake X and changed his opinion about Y” – those aren’t bad things. I guarantee you’ve done worse. So have I. Grow up America! Most people stop thinking in black and white at about second grade, but somehow our political thinking has regressed to toddlerhood where we think we know everything and we can do a better job and good candidates have to be perfect according to some standard that we don’t quite understand.
Join Sandra Day-O’Connor’s quest to re-introduce civics education into classrooms. And coffee-shops and diners and anywhere else there are people. http://www.icivics.org/.
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