COMMENTARY: Politics in the U.S.
Published 1:30 am Tuesday, February 20, 2018
Imagine a corporation with its employees divided into two teams. Instead of working together to further the profits of the company, each team merely blocks anything the other does. One does not need an economics degree to know what the result would be: almost instant bankruptcy.
Yet we have just such a “corporation”: the United States Congress. Except that Congress cannot go bankrupt. It receives an endless infusion of cash from us, its hapless shareholders, in the form of taxes. These continue to flow no matter how poorly Congress does its job.
The Republicans used their congressional muscle to block almost everything President Obama tried to do, and to attempt to overturn his few legislative accomplishments (repealing Obamacare being the most obvious, and denial of hearings to his Supreme Court nominee one of the more egregious). Yet, while one could argue that the Republicans are more shameless in their adherence to partisan politics than the Democrats, the latter have historically not behaved significantly better when in power.
The Congress currently has an approval rating of somewhere around 12 percent. It’s difficult to imagine where you could find that many people who think that Congress is actually doing a good job — I mean, did they not understand the question? This stands in sharp contrast to the the return rate of incumbents — 97 percent in 2016. People hate this dysfunctional Congress, but they keep sending the same people back there year after year.
The problem is not that people necessarily approve of their representatives: it’s that they have no choice. Every election we get two often dismal alternatives, both of whom represent parties that adamantly refuse to work together to solve problems and to advance the prosperity of the country. While some representatives are indisputably better than others, they almost all play the game to one extent or another. And, as is accepted by pretty much anyone who is not a Supreme Court justice, the large campaign contributions they receive from special interests come with major expectations. Congress today represents nothing less than institutionalized bribery.
This situation is what made the last election so different. Lacking any reasonable ballot options, voters in Congressional elections have no way to express discontent. Invariably, we must choose between Dumb and Dumber, or at least between Bad and Worse. By contrast, the 2016 election gave us two candidates in Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders who, in radically different ways, were perceived to be outside the system.
Sanders lost to Clinton, the establishment Democrat. And Trump is a narcissistic abomination with the maturity and compassion of a schoolyard bully, a man who has systematically defiled the American presidency from his first day in office. But both these men were popular because, for once, voters were given what was effectively a choice they are otherwise denied: a choice for “None of the Above.” People hungered for a radical change — and sadly for the rest of us, we all got one.
If ballots included a “None of the Above” option, mandating that candidates be replaced with new ones if a certain percentage of voters checked that box, I’d bet the metaphorical farm that many of our existing representatives would suddenly find themselves out of a job. But of course it will never happen: the existing system would have to endorse it, and that system will not commit suicide.
I would argue that our two political parties — with their central position within the power structure and obdurate refusal to do anything except be mutually obstructive — inflict far more damage upon the economic and social fabric of our nation than any other single entity, including global terrorism. The cost of their irresponsibility is not as obvious as a burning building or a downed jetliner, but it is far more pervasive.
We have all come to so unquestioningly accept the current state of affairs that we rarely contemplate what a different system might achieve. Imagine what this nation could be if politicians actually worked together to craft solutions to problems, to find creative ways to improve the economy, to deal with poverty, and to advance other lofty goals. If we used our abundant creativity and resources to reach for the stars.
But the sad reality is that nothing will change. Until congressional elections routinely include candidates who are genuinely committed to bipartisan collaboration, and who place the American people’s interests above those of the party, the politics of obstruction will continue. And the United States — as remarkable and as successful a nation as we are despite our crippling political system — will continue to fall short of what it could become.
— Phil Clapham is a research scientist who lives on Maury Island.
