"Every kingdom divided against itself it brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand." Matthew 12:25
Ideological Democracy Creates the Endless Election Cycle When an election comes along, as an engaged and active voter, I have to decide who among the candidates I want to support. What I will tend to do is consider their stated positions and their track record and ask myself a question: Does this candidate agree with my beliefs? Will they work to ensure that the law reflects my beliefs? I will try to discover who among the candidates aligns most closely with my beliefs, while also assessing whether I think that they can win. This sort of decision—repeated millions of times over—represents the building blocks of Ideological Democracy . Say for example that I supported a candidate because they say they want a law requiring women to be paid equally as men for comparable work. If my candidate wins the election, what then? Ideological Democracy offers one and only one overriding means of evaluating them. Are they wielding their power such that my belief in equal pay for woman has actually become the law? If not, then I will be disappointed, perhaps deeply so. I will question whether this person was ever a real champion of my beliefs or if their promises were just talk. If after years of being in office the law has still not changed to my satisfaction, I will turn against them. I may support a challenger from within their same party. I may give up hope that my belief will become the law and decide on a new belief or set of beliefs to champion. I may become disillusioned with electoral politics in general and stop voting. I am—of course—concerned about more than one single issue. But when I evaluate an elected official, I consider their stated positions and their track record and ask myself a question—will they make my beliefs into the law? But this is the same fundamental judgment being made when deciding who to support in an election. Nothing changes about how I evaluate a politician based upon the fact that they are in office rather than a candidate. There is only one means of evaluation. A savvy politician knows they are always either gaining or losing votes. The distinction between one election season and the next is really only a semantic one. Ideological Democracy lacks a framework for evaluating an elected official as a servant of the public good rather than a proponent of certain beliefs. And so the work of governing becomes synonymous with rallying a political base. Responses to policy proposals become not about the merits of the policy itself but about how it will play in the next election. Recall in President Obama’s first term that Republican legislators named their number one goal as being making sure Obama was a one term president. Republicans were already campaigning against the President because their goal was to remove him from office, not to work with him. Similarly, Democrat legislators are talking about how their votes will affect the midterm elections and speculation has already begun over who will challenge Trump in 2020. The public goal of any figure within the Democratic party right now is to remove President Trump from office, not work with him. In the politics of Ideological Democracy, there is one and only one judgment being made—will this person turn my beliefs into the law. There is not an honest means of evaluating elected officials on non-ideological grounds. And so in the politics of Ideological Democracy there is one and only one season. Election season. Ideological Democracy Creates Intractable Gridlock Elected officials of all stripes understand quite well that they must please their political base, and that if they do not deliver the things their base wants then they will eventually lose their support. In reality, however, no single elected official is able to deliver the kinds of laws that their base demands entirely on their own. Turning a belief into the law depends not only upon they themselves being elected to office but also on whether their political party is in the majority or minority. What determines an elected official’s day to day behavior politically is not their professed beliefs but rather the position of their party as either the majority or minority. The goal of the majority is to expand their majority. The goal of a minority is to retake the majority. This determines what goals officials pursue and how. It also creates intractable gridlock which worsens over time. When the majority puts forward an agenda, the particular details of the agenda are not relevant to how the minority will respond. What matters is not the substance but the source. When the majority is pursuing an initiative to further its political platform, it is strategically important for the minority to argue that the proposed actions of the majority are essentially harmful. What I mean by essentially harmful is that the minority will argue that the majority is acting upon dangerous principles and in furtherance of dangerous goals. Only an outright defeat of the proposed act will suffice. For example, Republicans argued President Obama’s actions represented a betrayal of American exceptionalism and traditional values. Republicans were not interested in fine tuning proposals to redistribute wealth or regulate industry and financial markets. These proposals in their view moved the country in a fundamentally wrong direction and they attempted to block Obama’s agenda outright. Similarly, Democrats are arguing that President Trump’s action represent a betrayal of America’s commitment to diversity and compassion. Democrats are not interested in fine tuning proposals to ban Muslims and vilify LBGT people and build a border wall with Mexico. These proposals represent moving the country in a fundamentally wrong direction and they will attempt to block Trump’s agenda outright. This dynamic isn’t going to change, other than by getting worse. Whether it is the Democrats or the Republicans, the minority will always argue that the majority’s actions represent significant change. This is because it is easier to publicly justify outright opposition to an initiative if it is a major departure from the past. Over time, however, this leads to smaller and smaller actions being resisted as very bad and dangerous. Stopping legislation turns into stopping judicial appointments turns into stopping cabinet appointments turns into stopping the functioning of the government. Democrats who once lamented Republicans’ shutting down the government are now refusing to commit to keeping the government running. So atrocious is Trump’s budget, they argue, that it is worth the cost to shut down the government if it stops his agenda. This was, of course, exactly the thinking put forward by Republicans when they shut down the government in protest of Obama’s budget. The minority opposes the actions of the majority because it is politically advantageous for the minority to cast the majority as always and at every stage furthering a harmful agenda. Even formalities—such as a State of the Union speech (you lie!) or a swearing in ceremony(the smallest crowd in years!)—can be an opportunity for the minority to resist the action of the majority as unacceptable. The next election is held up as the opportunity to definitively stop the majority’s agenda. But the election cycle is never ending. Contentious resistance simply begins again, earlier and louder than before, either with the same parties holding the same roles of minority and majority, or with the roles reversed. This cycle is not dependent upon which party is in the majority and which the minority. This is the result of Ideological Democracy playing itself out. Ideological Democracy Creates Ever-Widening Partisan Divides The party that is in the minority tends to create gridlock through obstruction. The majority party behaves differently and it is their behavior that tends to worsen partisan divides. In response to the minority resisting their agenda, the majority will unilaterally pass whatever they can on their own, all the while making promises of what they could achieve were it only the case that the minority had no power whatsoever. Any slowdown in the majority putting their agenda into law will be ascribed to sheer obstructionism on the part of the ideologically wrongheaded minority. What’s more, the majority will argue the actions of the minority are inherently unfair and undemocratic. They will say the minority lost the election and, as such, should give up trying to obstruct the will of the majority. The strategy the majority will put forth in the short term is to change the law as much as they possibly can, while blaming the obstructionism of the minority for why they can’t achieve more. This is their essential case for expanding their majority at the next election—the next election which is already going on. In the face of Republican obstructionism, President Obama expanded what could be done via Executive Order, saying that such actions were justified given the unfair and undemocratic way the Republican minority refused to work with him. This meant that on matters as diverse as climate change and trans* rights, President Obama simply acted unilaterally, knowing that the Republicans would never work with him. Similarly, President Trump is making use of an expansive idea of what can be done through Executive Order. On matters as diverse as climate change and trans* rights, President Trump is acting unilaterally, rightly guessing that Democrats would never work with him on such goals. In Ideological Democracy the majority is always working to enshrine their ideology in the law even over the objection of their opponents. If I am in the minority, when I meet a zealous from the majority I am facing someone who wants to see me stripped me of all power to influence the world and who is actively working to force me to live under beliefs that are contrary to my own. Such a figure is a threat to what I believe to be the proper order of public life in this country. Such a figure does not seem so much a political opponent, as a dangerous enemy, someone actively working to harm my loved ones and strip me of any political power to resist. This is not dependent upon which party is in the majority and which the minority. The ever-widening partisan divide is a natural extension of Ideological Democracy playing itself out. This will not change, other than to get worse. Summary of the Problem of Ideological Democracy The basic notion behind Ideological Democracy seems reasonable enough; I should try to get people elected to public office who agree with my beliefs and who will try to enshrine my beliefs in the law. Ideological Democracy, however, is radically dangerous and destructive to public life. We should expect that every upcoming election will be viewed as the most important election that has ever been. And in many ways it’s true. The next election will be the most important ever, followed only by the one after that and the one after that. The next election season will be longer and more expensive and more divisive than ever before. The minority will engage in new heights of obstructionism, arguing that the majority is so dangerous that unprecedented action is needed. The majority will argue that they have won the right to govern as they wish and will expand what is possible under unilateral action, all the while arguing they are the victims of undemocratic sabotage and gearing up to expand their majority in future elections. We should expect to see calls for ordinary political behavior to be subject to criminal prosecution. Bitter partisan hatred—which has already overflowed into isolated violence—will become only ever more bitter. Politically motivated violence will become more common. These problems flow from the philosophy of Ideological Democracy, the idea that democracy is about seeing one’s own beliefs become the law. And these problems will get worse and worse over time. Each side will always hold out hope that the next election will improve things. But election after election, the problems only get worse. Which party plays which roles may change but the plot remains the same. An honest look at even the last few decades of national politics will reveal that our democracy has decayed beyond the point of being able to self-correct through the process of partisan political elections. A different, alternative democratic movement is now needed.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI'm a Christian, a progressive, a pastor, and a community organizer. Archives
August 2017
Categories |