It seems to me that for too much of my life, I have looked for the candidate whose positions, agenda, and character most closely align with my own and then expect that the candidate will compel those positions and agenda into existence. That is now their job. That’s what I “hired” them to do. HOW it’s done, I didn’t really comprehend or care — I just wanted it done.
I see now that the RAMIFICATIONS of my not fully understanding…
1) the intricacies involved in turning ideas into legal, living policies, and
2) the complexities inherent in public problem solving on a grand scale
…are huge when combined with millions of people just like me.
When immediate action and change are unrealistically and unfairly (in a representative democracy) expected, even demanded by those who voted an individual into office, OR as immediate action and change is unrealistically, even deathly feared by those who oppose the candidate-elect, a volatile stew brews in the collective consciousness:
Our lack of patience and tolerance for the governmental system and, more specifically, for the very real and fallible human beings who are bound to work within the complexities of that system, can foment into outright DISTRUST. That distrust builds into desperation that creates and propagates anxiety, animosity, and alienation, which in turn leads to paranoias and conspiracies that justify villainization (“those people are BAD”, “that party is EVIL”, “these politicians are CORRUPT”.).
I’ve been researching what’s involved in policy-making and it’s helped to keep my own paranoias in check. Maybe it will help you too.
Let’s start with this: public policies are laws, rules, regulations, judgments, case studies. government programs, etc.. In order for an IDEA to become “a policy”, it has to swim UPstream, like a salmon going up a fish ladder: first the Problem stream, then the Policy stream, and finally, the Political stream.
Policymakers and politicians must navigate the whole, complex machinery of policy and law-making. The best visual I can come up with for this process, other than the fish ladder, is the scene in Galaxy Quest when Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver are faced with getting through the chompers.
Simply stated: it’s complicated.
Like the friends of the Little Red Hen who only wanted to eat the bread, not bake it, most of us have no interest in going through the chompers. We have little to zero experience, tolerance, or patience with what it really takes to enact public policy. As home-bound social-media users, we act like armchair politicians and soldiers for truth (at least our interpretation of it), zinging about criticism, disdain, and casual “expertise” untempered by respect, sympathy, or actual, actionable solutions, feeling good at least about feeling “passionate” (which seems to justify all of the above).
There is one group though who aims to avoid the passion and the pie-fight: the people involved in the earliest stages of policy-making. They are the well-intentioned “experts” — not the wanna-be experts like you and I (or perhaps celebrities or the ultra-wealthy) — but the REAL experts who have earned their expertise, coming from professional lifetimes in fields like science, national security, the military, diplomacy, medicine, agriculture, commerce, economics, foreign affairs, and education. Their lane is the first stream: the Problem stream — identifying and analyzing a problem.
After it’s identified, the problem then hopefully becomes the province of the generally well-intentioned problem-solvers, a consortium of governmental, NGO, and sometimes private enterprise workers in the second stream who explore and debate the many alternatives to addressing the problem. Their recommendations are based on a great deal of specialized experience and education that, frankly, the rest of us in the general population, do not have.
Finally, it is up to the people in the third stream, the politicians, to actually DO something. If they are well-intentioned, they have to…
a) sincerely care about the problem
b) sort through the presented solutions
c) consider the impact of each alternative on the balance of the three-legged stool that is democracy: Justice, Public-Welfare, and Freedom
d) bring the domain of the experts (facts) and the domain of the problem-solvers (solutions) into a useful, working relationship with the will of the people
e) convince fellow politicians to pay attention and take action on the problem (cultivating relationships is key) and finally,
f) formulate and navigate a policy to life through an extremely complex system (the chompers) requiring persuasion, negotiation, compromise, and cooperation — expertise in and of itself.
Compare that approach to governance to historian Reinhard Luthin’s definition of the alternative — demagoguery:
“What is a demagogue? He is a politician skilled in oratory, flattery and invective; evasive in discussing vital issues; promising everything to everybody; appealing to the passions rather than the reason of the public; and arousing racial, religious, and class prejudices — a man whose lust for power without recourse to principle leads him to seek to become a master of the masses. He has for centuries practiced his profession of ‘man of the people’. He is a product of a political tradition nearly as old as western civilization itself.”
Wikipedia goes on to explain:
“Demagogues have appeared in democracies since ancient Athens. They exploit a fundamental weakness in democracy: because ultimate power is held by the people, it is possible for the people to give that power to someone who appeals to the lowest common denominator of a large segment of the population. Demagogues usually advocate immediate, forceful action to address a crisis while accusing moderate and thoughtful opponents of weakness or disloyalty. If elected to high executive office, demagogues typically unravel constitutional limits on executive power and attempt to convert their democracy to dictatorship…
“What distinguishes a demagogue is how he or she gains or holds democratic power: by exciting the passions of the lower classes and less-educated people in a democracy toward rash or violent action, breaking established democratic institutions such as the rule of law. James Fenimore Cooper in 1838 identified four fundamental characteristics of demagogues:
They present themselves as a man or woman of the common people, opposed to the elites.
Their politics depends on a visceral connection with the people, which greatly exceeds ordinary political popularity.
They manipulate this connection, and the raging popularity it affords, for their own benefit and ambition.
They threaten or outright break established rules of conduct, institutions, and even the law.
The central feature of demagoguery is persuasion by means of passion, shutting down reasoned deliberation and consideration of alternatives.”
Though I know there are those who would hi-jack, circumvent, or dismantle the system, which is discouraging, contrasting them with those who respect it makes me grateful to be part of a vast network of well-intentioned citizenry. After getting to know individuals in key positions in all three streams (in person and thru much book reading), these fellow Americans have become very real people to me: no longer labels, no longer stereotypes; not a vast, coordinated conspiracy, not a “them”, but another aspect of ME, of US; people of family and feeling who are committed to their job.
I, for one, choose to focus on the Policy Makers intent to serve — tho I may not agree with them all the time. I find myself trying to express a little more patience, a little more appreciation, and a lot more respect. And yes, I listen with a more open mind to them because I’ve never personally faced the chompers, and because I believe there’s a good and noble reason for expertise, for policy-debate, and for experienced, well-intentioned politicians.
As William Penn wrote a long time ago:
“Government is an expedient against confusion; a restraint upon all disorder; just weight and an even balance: that one may not injure another, nor himself by intemperance.”
Image: Gallaxy Quest