I went for a long hike yesterday out into the Nevada desert with my friends Mac, Lloyd, and Lloyd’s girlfriend Juanita.
Holy smokes, this place was about 50 miles past “Resume Speed”, on a dirt road, through an old, abandoned railroad stopover, totally cutoff from cell service, no amenities of any sort, and populated by lizards, snakes, and a few human beings. We saw about six automobiles all day. Most of our day was driving, but we did get the opportunity to hike about 6-1/2 miles through some river washes.
Not my cup of tea, really, but Mac and Lloyd like this kind of thing. On the positive side, we got to chat about things, which is the key attraction of hiking with your buddies.
Mac and I both used to work in government: Mac for the Dept. of Defense back on the East Coast; and me for the County of Riverside (California). So, we understand how government is supposed to work and also why it is failing Americans at this time. We are both very frustrated and disgusted with the current state of affairs.
Government, per se, is necessary in a civilized society. It is the mechanism that creates order, plans for the future, finds solutions for problems, assures law and order, and keeps the Ship of State moving forward in a positive direction. “Bureaucrats”, i.e. the derogatory word for government workers, are the people who execute the policy of the Executive Branch. If the elected leaders fund a new jail, bureaucrats (the jailers) do the work of tending to the prisoners per the guidelines set down by elected officials. The Legislative Branch is responsible for identifying problems, finding solutions, and devising laws to guide the Executive Branch (and bureaucrats) in making a better society.
Politics and government are not the same thing. While government is a mechanism for addressing societal problems, politics is concerned with acquiring, using, and retaining power to exert control of government. An “effective” politician is not a person who can get elected over and over; rather, it is an elected official who can actually get things done which benefit society.
There is a high skill level required to be an effective elected official. Government is the ultimate team sport: it takes a lot of people working together to move the ball forward in a manner that satisfies the public. Since there are many different opinions on any subject, and a variety of ways to build an effective mousetrap, elected officials must evaluate the options, weigh the pros and cons, and then build a consensus with their fellow elected officials (for example, other legislators) to come up with laws that work for the majority of their constituents.
Typically, elected officials at the national level have been elected officials at the State or local levels. Presidents are usually ex-Governors or Senators, Senators are usually ex-Congressmen, Congressmen are usually ex-State legislators, State legislators are usually ex-County officials, County officials are usually ex-City Councilmen, and City Councilmen are usually ex-Planning Commissioners, School Board members, or H.O.A. members.
I think you get the idea that effective elected officials typically have a wealth of experience in government leadership and a lot of practice identifying important issues, devising clever solutions, and developing consensus among their peers exactly how to tackle serious problems. The best elected officials are master strategists and dealmakers, and the most valuable appliance in their toolkit is compromise.
It is better to get some of what you want than none of what you want. If two opposing politicians each have a ten-point wish list regarding legislation to solve a problem, it is likely that there are items on that list that both sides want. Let’s say there are five common “keepers”. Those become the “givens”, the groundwork for the compromise. The other five items on each politicians list become pawns in the game of “horse trading”. There may be a few items from each party’s list that are absolutely unacceptable to the other but, by the end of the negotiation, perhaps each side is okay with seven or eight components which will help address the original problem. So, an agreement is reached wherein the ball is moved forward.
This is how great achievements have been made by our government officials. Think of all the discussions, debates, and compromises that went into the adoption of our U.S. Constitution and the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, the Panama Canal, and the Interstate Highway System, just to name a few complicated and contentious undertakings. Grown adults, passionate people all of them, worked hard at finding a way to achieve the “impossible”.
Fast forward to 2022.
We are seeing political parties putting forward candidates for high public office who have never held any position at any governmental level, who merely have name recognition (as a celebrity), and whose only campaign promise is to promote the extreme agenda of the nominating political party. This is a recipe for disaster, as elected officials who are not skilled at, or even willing to consider, compromise are useless when it comes to participating in democratic government.
Mitch McConnell, the long-time Republican Senate leader, complained early in this year’s midterm election cycle about G.O.P. “candidate quality”. He is a very astute and effective politician, and his statement was correct, as a large number of whackadoodle candidates were put forward throughout the Nation (many backed by whackadoodle former President Donald Trump) and were rejected at the polls.
Maybe more and more Americans are realizing that a good football player, a quack physician, a television news anchor, or an election denying podcaster don’t have the experience to craft laws and administer them. That’s a good thing.
In 2016, the Nation elected a guy to be President with a decidedly checkered past in business who had absolutely zero experience in government. He not only did not know what he was doing, but he publicly exhibited a strong negative opinion about the purpose of, need for, and mechanics of government at all levels. This President distrusted even the Cabinet officials that he hired, refused to take advice from experienced public officials, and blamed those officials when his own ideas proved to be unsound. He made a lot of enemies in Congress and could get nothing accomplished legislatively.
This President acted like a King, not an elected public official, and chose to govern by “executive order” rather than working with Congress to pass actual laws. In between issuing executive orders and otherwise finding ways to undermine the Legislative Branch, he used his public forum (usually Tweets) to badmouth elected officials (Democratic and Republican) who disagreed with him.
I worked in County government for three decades advising our top elected officials (the Board of Supervisors) on public policy. I knew every Board member personally over the thirty-year period, sat in their offices, explained the details of items on the agenda, and received policy advice. The Board (five non-partisan, elected individuals) met every Tuesday in formal session to make important decisions concerning the future of our county.
The Board members changed from time to time due to elections. They were all very different people, with varying politics and agendas. One would think that there were plenty of disagreements among them on major policy issues, and one would be right. However, in decades of serving the Board and attending those Tuesday public meetings, I never once heard a Supervisor speak disparagingly about another Supervisor in public.
Those respectful adults, working together as a team, transformed their jurisdiction from a “cow county” into one of the economic powerhouses of the Nation and a place with a very high quality of life.
The problem that we Americans suffer from today is a government run by political party hacks who are interested in exerting power, but not necessarily moving the ball forward. These elected officials do not pursue compromise, probably because they don’t have the skill and experience needed to accomplish that. It is easier to shoot a spitwad at a fellow legislator than to work with him on important issues.
In government, we need serious people, not class clowns.
This is the message that Senator McConnell was trying to convey a while back.
