Tag Archives: politics

Engage!

There’s no dearth of discussion about the effect of social media on culture and politics. Facebook and Twitter, especially, are credited (if that’s the word) with facilitating everything from the Arab Spring to the surprise victory of Glenda Ritz here in Indiana. Political observers tell us that sophisticated use of social media was a major factor in Obama’s successful GOTV effort, and that bungled use of that same media hampered that of the Romney campaign.

During a discussion about the Media and Policy class we’ve been team teaching this semester, John Mutz wondered aloud whether these forms of communication might be destabilizing government, making it much more difficult to engage in the sort of negotiation and deliberation that democratic theory prizes.  I think he’s right, and I think this is an unfortunate and under-appreciated consequence of our current, frenetic media environment.

It’s not just the speed with which information, innuendo, rumor and half-backed conspiracy theories circle the globe. It’s the partial nature of that information.

The goal of democratic societies is informed participation. Not just voting, not just agitating for this or that change, but thoughtful engagement in self-government. Today’s communication technologies facilitate immediate engagement: Sign the petition to XYZ, telling them to vote for ABC! Join the protest against so-and-so! Don’t let ‘them’ change this program–it’s all that protects grandmas and kittens! We are given tools with which to send a message, but all too often, the message is not based upon a full explanation of the issues involved.

I know there have been several instances where I’ve gotten such a “call to action” that initially seemed appropriate to me, but upon further research into the policies involved, turned out to be promoting a result that was neither practical nor possible. (The federal budget really isn’t like our household budgets–it’s a lot more complicated. Sometimes, well-intentioned programs that are meant to help one population or another have negative unintended consequences that really do need to be addressed. It’s usually more complicated than that email blast would suggest.)

Despite their considerable merits, Facebook and Twitter and all the other methods of rapid communication at our disposal too often get us to fire before we aim.

It’s important to be engaged. It’s important to communicate quickly with our elected representatives when we think they are about to act in ways that will damage important institutions, or harm vulnerable constituencies. Social media allows involved citizens to mobilize others, and to have a much louder and more effective voice than was previously possible. The downside is that the folks most likely to be involved are the partisans, both left and right, who tend to be more ideological than informed.

It’s so easy to click that link and sign your name. Who has time to read up on the arguments, pro and con?

As Captain Picard might say, “Engage!”

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It All Depends on What Your Definition of “Job” is….

I’m getting tired of politicians piously declaiming that “government can’t create jobs.” (That statement is generally followed by that candidate’s jobs plan. Irony, anyone?)

The truth is that even if you reject the notion that public policy can create an atmosphere that facilitates job creation, government is a huge employer. Almost one of every five American workers is employed in the public sector – working in our schools, colleges, universities, police and fire departments, and providing many other vital public services. One of the biggest drags on employment since the start of the Great Recession–one of the reasons that job creation has not been more robust–is that state and local governments have laid off so many of those public sector workers. Such job growth as has occurred has been almost entirely in the private sector .

Those public sector jobs (we used to call them “public service” jobs) have become a handy target for ideologues who rant about bloated government and overpaid public sector workers, but the inconvenient truth is that modern society requires educators and police officers and people who work at the BMV. When their ranks get too thin, we complain about government inefficiency, or insufficient public safety, or classrooms that are too large.

A modern, complex society requires an agency that monitors the environment, that oversees food and drug quality (more meningitis, anyone?) and performs numerous other tasks that individuals in urban environments cannot do individually. Unfortunately, we still need soldiers. All these people may be bloated bureaucrats in the public imagination, but when that schoolteacher or firefighter is furloughed, we are suddenly faced with reality.

Of course, even the politicians who are fond of declaiming that government can’t create jobs betray their hypocrisy by accusing “big government” of killing jobs with taxes and regulation. Their claim–implicit and explicit–is that lower taxes and less regulation will foster job growth. But when tax cuts imperil our ability to provide essential services, jobs go elsewhere. When we go too far with deregulation, we get more instances like the recent deaths from meningitis.

I know it isn’t as satisfying as making sweeping proclamations about the evils of government and the glories of the private sector, but we need to admit that modern life is complicated. We need the right levels of taxes, the proper regulation. Those things need to be carefully calibrated to achieve our goals, not subjected to simple-minded “either-or” formulations.

And we need to laugh out loud the next time a political figure says that government doesn’t create jobs.

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About Those Political Ads…..

There’s an article in this morning’s Star detailing suggestions for catching a liar. The focus was on business interviews, and the advice was for folks interviewing job applicants, but I wonder if the same tips might be useful when applied to the candidates applying for our votes.

According to the article, signs of dishonesty include

Showing an inappropriate level of politeness. Let’s say you respond to a question. Then you suddenly increase the level of niceness by injecting a compliment such as, “That’s a great tie, by the way.” The compliment is a signifier, because psychologists tell us  that the more we like someone, the more we’re inclined to believe him and to shy away from confrontations. The person is using politeness (aka “sucking up”) as a means of promoting his likeability.

Making “referral” statements. This is when a deceptive person responds to a question and refers to having answered the question previously. The idea here is to build credibility through repetition. (This probably doesn’t work when the previous answer was dramatically different than the one currently on offer. Yes Mitt, I’m looking at you…)

Using qualifiers. These indicators are “exclusion qualifiers” that let people “who want to withhold certain information to answer your question truthfully without releasing that information.” They’ll say things like “basically,” “for the most part,” “fundamentally,” “probably” and “most often.”

Another clue is use of “perception qualifiers” to enhance credibility: “frankly,” “to be perfectly honest” and “candidly.”

Going into attack mode. ‘Nuff said.

I don’t know how accurate any of these are, or how applicable to the political arena–but using these clues to analyze the bilge that passes for political argumentation these days might make those 30-second smears more bearable. And who knows–in any given race, one candidate might turn out to be a bigger liar than his opponent.

Incivility and an Inability to Govern

There’s an interesting symposium on political civility in a recent issue of PS: Political  Science and Politics. The articles wrestle with some foundational questions: what is the difference between the sort of argumentation that illuminates differences and is an inevitable part of democratic discourse and rhetoric that “crosses the line”? What do we mean by incivility?

The consensus seemed to be that incivility is rudeness or impoliteness that violates an agreed social standard.

I’m not sure we have agreed social standards in this age of invective, but surely attacks that focus on, and disrespect, persons rather than positions should count as uncivil. An example of civility in political argument might be Dick Lugar’s often-repeated phrase to the effect that “that is a matter about which reasonable people can differ.” (Hard to imagine Mr. Mourdock, who has taken pride in incivility and intransigence, making such a statement.)

The contributors offer a variety of perspectives on the definitions and causes of today’s nasty politics, but one of the most trenchant observations came from a Professor Maisel of Colby College, who attributes the gridlock in Washington and elsewhere to “partisan one-upmanship expressed in ways that do not show respect for those with differing views.” As he notes (referring to Erik Cantor)

If your will is to prevent legislation from passing, to prevent the president’s agenda from moving forward, to work the system to your political advantage, then lack of civility works.

In other words, if your over-riding motivation is simply to beat the other guy–to keep the President from a second term, as Mitch McConnell famously admitted–and if that motivation outweighs any concern for the public good, governing is impossible.

The reason politicians no longer “respectfully disagree” with each other, Professor Maisel points out, is that they do not in fact respect the views of their opponents. They hardly know them. The days when Congressional families lived in Washington and socialized–when their children went to school together, and their spouses carpooled or otherwise interacted–are long gone. It’s easy to demonize people you don’t know.

Add to that an even more troubling aspect of today’s politics, a disregard for fact and truth, enabled by partisan television, talk radio and the internet. Survey after survey shows that people on the Left and Right alike get their “news” from sources that validate their biases. Worse, we have lost the real news, the mainstream, objective journalism that fact-checks, that confronts us with inconvenient realities. In such an environment, it becomes easier to characterize those with whom we disagree as buffoons or worse, unworthy of our respect.

When political discourse is so nasty, and regard for truth so minimal–when the enterprise of government has more in common with a barroom brawl than a lofty exercise in statesmanship–is it any wonder that so many of our “best and brightest” shun politics?

Government is broken, and we need to fix it. Unfortunately, the symposium contributions didn’t tell us how to do that.

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Absence of Trust

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act, I was once again reminded of how painful it has become to watch what passes for political discussion/debate in this country.

We have always had disputes about policy, about the proper role of government and the reach of the federal courts. We always will have those disagreements, and that’s how it should be. What is qualitatively different about our current discourse is the degree of suspicion and paranoia that characterizes it.  Americans simply do not trust the motives of those in government, and as a result of that distrust, we are unwilling to grant that honorable people of good will can come to different conclusions about the problems we face.

In Distrust, American Style, I investigated the sources and consequences of that distrust. The sources were easy enough to identify: for the past two decades, we’ve seen massive betrayals by businesses and Wall Street, scandals in institutions ranging from churches to major league sports, obscene amounts of money being spent on lobbying for legal advantage and more recently, poured into Super Pacs. There are undeniable reasons for our current levels of cynicism and distrust.

The problem is, when citizens don’t know who they can trust, they don’t trust anyone, and politics becomes impossible.

Yes, there are bad corporate actors–but there are also scores of good corporate citizens. Yes, there are politicians who are “on the take” and/or beholden to those who finance their campaigns, but there are also many, many good public servants who genuinely are trying to do the right thing. Yes, there are judges whose ideology drives their decision-making, but there are many more who divorce their policy preferences from their responsibility to faithfully apply the law.

Wholesale distrust makes for toxic politics.

It is one thing to disagree with President Obama’s priorities and policies–quite another to suggest, as “commentators” on Fox News and others regularly do, that he is a Kenyan Muslim Socialist who wants to destroy the United States. It’s one thing to disagree with Senator Lugar, quite another to suggest that his ability to work with Democrats on national security issues makes him unfit to hold office. You may disagree with the Court’s analysis of the healthcare law (although very few people seem to know enough about the actual law to form a reasoned opinion), but to suggest that Chief Justice Roberts is a “traitor” or (more bizarrely) that his opinion was flawed because he takes epilepsy medication is to embrace paranoia.

We have reached such levels of derangement that we no longer believe anything we don’t want to believe–and thanks to technology, we can choose to inhabit media environments that reinforce our most unhinged conspiracy theories.

We don’t trust the “lame stream” media (or what is left of it). We don’t trust businesses or unions. We don’t trust the courts. We don’t trust the President, Congress or the Supreme Court. Increasingly, we don’t trust each other.

This is no way to run a country.

It won’t be easy, but rational people need to insist on measures that will make our governing institutions trustworthy again–beginning with more transparency and more control of money in politics. If we can restore a measure of basic trust in the good will of those we elect, perhaps we can begin to calm the crazy and actually talk to each other again.

Failing that, maybe Prozac in the water supply??

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