Change I Could Believe In
Posted by David Miller, Jan. 28, 2010
Back in October I wrote about the dangers of a crisis mentality and tried to show that the abuse of crisis was not a one-party trait. I see that Will Wilkinson did a better job of showing that this month in Let the next crisis go to waste:
The Aughts began in crisis when the second plane hit the second tower on Sept. 11, 2001. The Bush administration, loath to let a serious crisis go to waste, managed to parlay the nation’s alarm and credulity into an ill-conceived invasion of an entirely unrelated country, wasting over a trillion dollars and many tens of thousands of lives, all while losing control of the fight in Afghanistan and failing utterly to bring down Osama bin Laden.
Bush’s botched attempts to capitalize on crisis—the ugly aftermath to which Obama is heir—might have made an alert leader wary. But instead, Obama set up shop in the Oval Office and proceeded immediately to use crisis as (Emanuel’s words again) “an opportunity to do things you’d think you could not do.”
Rather than acting as a prudent guardian of the public good in a time of economic turbulence and hardship, Obama and the Democratic Congress have hurried to check the boxes on their partisan wish list precisely when the nation most needed a restorative break from transformative ambition.
When Obama was campaigning he promised change – the only change we got was that the president was officially affiliated with a different party than before. His opponents during the campaign were vocal about the fact that they could not believe he would deliver the promised change. Since his inauguration some of those who supported him have found that they no longer believe in the change he promised. We were promised an end to “politics as usual.” Instead some left wishing for the politics of the 90’s – nasty as they were – rather than the politics of today. As Mr. Wilkinson put it:
This marriage of incompetence and craven opportunism is so much in the familiar spirit of the age that one must conclude that the age itself remains unchanged.
The “crisis as opportunity” mentality can lead to only one thing – criminal behavior. It is the same mentality that leads to looters during the L.A. race riots of the past and the Hatian earthquake of the present.
I have concluded that regardless of whatever other rhetoric a candidate may offer in the future the biggest change I want to see will be a candidate who promises to treat a crisis as a crisis and not as an opportunity.
February 1st, 2010 on 10:29 am
The coins of the realm of politics are power (note that money is simply an adjunct of power) and prestige (glory, celebrity, etc). Regardless of how altruistically we paint the political world or wish it to be, these factors are the actual basis upon which that world operates. (There are the occasional benevolent players, but these are outliers; they are not the rule.)
Given this framework, what kind of political payoff exists for treating a crisis with prudence? If the payoff is long-term, how great is the incentive for the political player to forgo more immediate rewards?
February 1st, 2010 on 11:06 am
Unless we can somehow develop a nation where the average politician is inoculated against the attraction to money and power I see no solution to this problem except to have consistent turnover.
Most politicians in the halls of Congress have a very short shelf life before they turn rancid – but somehow almost all of them keep getting re-elected anyway. I’d rather pull a politician home while he was still good, than consistently send him back after he has become tainted by sitting in the halls of power too long.
All of this reminds me of a fantasy book I read that spoke of a culture that essentially made elected office a direct path to jail – once someone finished their term they were immediately jailed. I can’t remember the book (probably something by Terry Pratchett) but despite the fact that this would undoubtedly have some horrendous unintended side effects it is tempting some days.