Political Maturity

 Political Maturity

Bemused, I watched as our congress went through another paroxysm on the way to some semblance of budgetary progress. Hobbled by a handful of extreme conservative Members of the House, Speaker McCarthy struggled to develop a proposal that reflected reality and had some hope of wending its way through the congressional maze past extreme members of his and the opposition party. And that’s the true problem he, and by extension the rest of us, face. When he managed to work up a compromise and secure short-term budget relief, reactionaries from his own party turned on him, historically ousting their own choice for speaker. In a spasmodic reaction to not getting everything they wanted, these representatives hobbled our government reducing any chance of thoughtful leadership and legislation to near zero. To them, the idea of successful compromise is anathema. They have thoughtlessly discarded one of the most important tools of democracy in order to placate their most extreme constituents and their overweening thirst for power and recognition. 

    We’ve forgotten how democracy in a representative republic works. The extreme wings of each party demand their way now and supported by their more extreme and vocal voters at home continuously work to stop any progress. In our soundbite-driven media cycle, our representatives believe that saying the right things suffices for actual work. Properly delivered soundbites inflame the base and develop the impression of standing up against their foes without the real labor required to make a democracy work.

In our current political culture, compromise has become a sign of failure instead of wisdom. Long ago we embraced the concept of a pluralistic society, one in which members of various groups with differing viewpoints work together to form policies that best suit the body politic. This makes legislative progress in our country slow and halting; however, it does help make sure that we do not veer too far to one extreme or another; but, in recent years we seem to have discarded this concept. Politicians, and more importantly the electorate, seem to revel in posturing, neglecting the hard work of governance, and that is the problem.

Good governance requires diligence and hard work. We reward our elected officials more for their pronouncements than for their progress. We’d rather “own” the other guy than stand shoulder to shoulder as we labor to solve some of the pernicious problems we face in our nation. Elected officials want to remain in office and take the actions they think will keep them there. Instead of holding our representatives accountable for progress or lack thereof, we laud them for sticking it to the other guy. We’ve forgotten that in a democracy we seldom, if ever, get all that we want. Most of the time, we must satisfy ourselves with incremental progress toward an often ill-defined and constantly moving goal. Sadly, most of us seem to be unsatisfied with the compromise and the resultant good governance. We’ve allowed ourselves to become politically and culturally myopic, forgetting that others have pressing needs, wants, and desires that must be addressed in a pluralistic democracy. Sometimes I’m just not going to get my way, and a politically mature outlook requires that I not only recognize that fact, but that I also do not game the system. Sadly in many quarters, we’ve abandoned political maturity, accepting gamesmanship over progress, however incremental. 

As the electorate, we incur the blame for this state of affairs. Oh, we like to heap blame on the other side or perhaps some amorphas behind-the-scenes cabal of big-money donors. After all, don’t they hold all the levers of power? My one vote does not matter. This is not the case. We go to the polling place. We enter the booth. We cast our ballots. As long as we continue to accept cool soundbites over the actual hard work of legislation that leads to good governance, our nation will suffer. We must elect men and women who are willing to roll up their sleeves and slog through the difficult negotiation process that results in legislation that leads to good governance. We need more statesmen and fewer politicians. Sam Rayburn, from Texas by the way, and one of the greatest Speakers of the U.S. House of Representatives, understood this well. He held the speakership for over twenty-one years, with two interruptions. The position of Speaker comes with a prime suite of offices. As the story goes, during one of his brief hiatuses, the outgoing speaker asked Representative Rayburn when he wanted to move into the Speaker-Suite. Rayburn responded that he did not need to move in. He wanted to devote himself to the business of governance. Representative Rayburn understood his responsibility, and we need more representatives like him.

We need to raise up and elect men and women who understand the art of a representative democratic republic. We also need to support them in this endeavor. We’ve allowed ourselves to drift into the political practice of punishing those who reach across the aisle and get things done. Selfishly, we demand our own way all the time, forgetting that in our pluralistic society, we will have to be satisfied when others get their way. As long as we reward representatives for meaningless posturing and promoting legislation that is doomed to failure, we will endure dysfunctional government. When we recover our political maturity, hold our representatives accountable for getting the real work of good governance done, and stop punishing them for necessary compromise, we will see a capital that starts to function again.