The last couple of days have been a doozy, and I know I have contributed to the discussion about the DNC tangle. I have learned a lot about the Democratic Party governance and that’s good I guess, but the cause of the tangle is not corruption — it’s politics. I offer this excerpt from Chapter 1 of my book RealClout that lays out my definition of politics as an honorable activity that makes our world go round and well worth our time and energy. Even retired.
Politics is a process that decides who gets what, when, and how. Politics can be a difficult, unpleasant process of negotiations between people who don’t like or respect one another. And while everyone has to compromise some, somebody ultimately wins the most, somebody loses the most, and sometimes the loser gets sore and cries, “Politics!”
The philosophers Aristotle and Hannah Arendt described politics as the pacific alternative to war. And indeed, sometimes it is. Every civilization has documented family, tribal, and national political decisions allocating favors or resources that have been followed by murder, warfare, and genocide triggered by the loser’s angry cries of injustice, bias, or dishonesty.
Remember the competition between Cain and Abel? Remember what happened when a prince of Troy ran off with the wife of a Spartan general?
Now while state or county politics may not involve murder or warfare, it has never been described as peaceful. Although blood is not literally shed in the state capital or the county seat, the two are not always quiet places where well-intentioned people calmly negotiate a quick and comforting resolution. Rather, the state capital and county seat are places where differences of opinion (often strongly held) are debated (often vigorously) before being resolved by a vote. Somebody wins. Somebody loses. The majority rules. The minority vows to fight another day. And fight they do, using debating skills, press releases, and parliamentary tactics instead of guns, knives, and military maneuvers.
It was to stifle verbal abuse (including slander) and physical violence (including swordplay) that our country’s Founding Fathers designed formal political protocols to contain and rechannel hostility and rage.
For instance, the rules of legislative debate, which forbid members to address each other directly or by name, force enraged partisans to address remarks to the presiding officer, indirectly referencing opponents only by district or town. Today, wit and sarcasm are the only permitted weapons, and both are used to sharpen speeches with phony declarations of collegiality during the most heated and antagonistic debate.
Madame Speaker, I’m sorry to say that the previous speaker’s lack of good taste, good sense, and good humor was only exceeded by his lack of good arguments to support a silly little proposal.
Mr. President, I stand to respond to my colleague, the lady from Cobb County, to say that her persuasive and articulate arguments cannot make up for her lack of accurate facts, her inability to construct a logical argument, and her total disregard for the essential truths taught in the Bible that she so self-righteously waved before this podium.
Now don’t you think that this kind of civil debate is vastly preferable to fistfights and swordplay? At least more entertaining? How about less stupid? Less bloody?
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I hope you give credit for the Harold Lasswell quote in your book at least…
Thanks , actually I quote Prof. John McDonough …
This how I start the discussion in the book, I’m sure John Mc Donough quoted Professor Laswel,l and I should have. Thanks for the help..
Former Massachusetts Representative John McDonough, armed with a Ph.D. in Health Administration, works at the Heller Graduate School for Public Policy at Brandeis University. He teaches folks who aim to become public policymakers with credentials. He is often invited to speak to public health groups, special interest organizations, and trade associations about the making of public policy. He always begins his presentation by asking his audience to define politics. Professor McDonough then leads the group through a discussion, finally arriving at this definition:
Politics is the negotiating process by which a civil society decides who gets what, when, and how. In other words, politics is a process that produces policy.
Someone in the room inevitably tells the good professor that his definition of politics as a process seems just a little lofty. To them, politics implies unscrupulous behavior, favoritism, and corruption. The audience usually pleads guilty to having a bad attitude until the professor asks them to think about negotiations in their family, their workplace, their church or temple, their social clubs, and their community organizations:
A slight correction. John McDonough left Brandeis in 2003 and has been teaching and performing other research duties at the Harvard School of Public Health since 2011.
What bugs me is when campaigning is suspended due to some negative or tragic news event. It feeds the idea that politics is profane and at best a necessary evil when it should instead be one of the highest callings in a free society.
It is an index of the degraded state of our politics, that citizens have on the one hand a romantic and completely unrealistic notion of what constitutes political leadership and service. And on the other a cynical and contemptuous attitude about the leadership we have, one that is almost too easy.
What political actors of all stripes can do, however, is to view their actions as opportunities to model virtue, and to articulate where the justice lies in compromises and deals that harmonize divergent viewpoints and interests.
So, who is it that degrades our politics? Leaders who tolerate corruption, who meet popular contempt for politics with a corresponding contempt for the people, and who eschew that bothersome transparency, are at the top of my list.
Regarding your first paragraph I would say that precisely because expectations are unrealistic reality too easily falls short and thus causes the cynicism.