The Human Factor
So I’m getting the sense that healthcare reform hinges on what happens on Tuesday when the voters of Massachusetts decide who will replace Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. All the efforts of healthcare reformists, tea partiers, bishops, legislators, lobbyists, and everyone else with a stake in the healthcare debate have come to a point where the decisive action may well result because the Democrats decided to run the downright awful candidate Martha Coakley.
A lesson I draw from this is that an issues-centered approach to politics will, on not a few occasions, come to a crashing halt upon arriving in the messy, human, chaos of political reality. You might find a candidate with the right positions on all the right issues who looks likely to team up with other like-minded politicians, vote and see the lot of them elected to office, watch as your dream legislation is crafted, only to then stare dumbstruck as your hopes for those issues come crashing down because events or situations having little or nothing to do with those issues undermine the whole operation.
Voter guides tend to uphold particular issues at the expense of others, sometimes telling us that one particular issue matters more than any others. Abstractly speaking, that may be true, but in the unpredictable and uncontrollable world of politics, seemingly unimportant contingencies can easily mean the most, practically speaking. Voting just isn’t always an act of prudential judgment. Sometimes, maybe most of the time, it’s a matter of blind speculation and high-risk gambling.
Comments are closed.
The public square is messy, human, and chaotic. It puts a premium on compromise and negotiation. It is also preferable to the chilling alternative, in which elites (whether kings, oligarchs, demagogues, bishops, generals, or intellectuals) draw up and execute their plans with dogmatic certainty, in an orderly, antiseptic, and unaccountable bubble.
Thatr is indeed one of the biggest insights in politics . That human it factor. It is frustrating but its at the core of the whole thin really
First of all, why is everyone presuming that Brown will actually oppose the health care reform that is the product of Obama’s efforts to “compromise”? I think he’s probably a “moderate Republican” like Olympia Snowe, and that he’d want to compromise with moderate Democrats, just in order to retain the Senate seat he may win on Tuesday.
Secondly, I think Obama is being undercut as a facilitator of compromises in reforming by his own party, and that his Presidency MIGHT prove to be more effective if he needed more cooperation from moderate Republicans. Not only that, but a situation in which the few moderate Republicans who are left would actually have to JOIN with the Democrats in finding solutions to the most pressing problems MIGHT prove further isolate the reactionary “base” of that party from the nation’s independents.
A more evenly divided Congress may be exactly what Obama needs to be re-elected, if for no other reason that he could then blame the Republicans for his ineffectualness. That was the story of Bill Clinton’s re-election in 1996, wasn’t it?
when the voters of Massachusetts decide who will replace Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat
With all due respect Mr. Cupp, it’s not Ted Kennedy’s seat. It’s the people’s seat. ;)
Mark,
I agree. I prefer the messiness of democracy to the orderliness of tyranny.
Digbydolben,
I take your points and wouldn’t claim any certainty about what will happen or how Brown will act if he wins. It’s all up in the air. The public sphere is almost always up the air, swirling, spinning, and looking to land who knows where.
Steve,
Touché.
A more evenly divided Congress may be exactly what Obama needs to be re-elected, if for no other reason that he could then blame the Republicans for his ineffectualness. That was the story of Bill Clinton’s re-election in 1996, wasn’t it?
Only if the Republicans offer another inept candidate on the order of Bob Dole (and perhaps a little Ross Perot factor thrown in…)
Kyle, it seems you struck on the reason American conservatives are suspicious of government. Modern pro-active government is all about the exercise of power, and “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (hence conservative or classically liberal advocacy for limited power)
But I’m not seeing how voting is a matter of blind speculation. That’s a bit too cynical for my tastes. In a democracy, we get what we deserve, and for the careful observer I think the current situation was all too predictable. Not that you aren’t a careful observer… I guess I’m curious.. did you expect something else from Congress?
Zach,
Perhaps I should have said half-blind speculation, or blind speculation in an atmosphere that stinks something awful. I don’t really deny a predictability to our political process (I can safely predict that Dennis Kucinich will never become president), but I see (or perhaps smell) an underlying unpredictability that at any moment could erupt and throw the whole system into chaos. The danger is always there, simmering, occasionally erupting. The point I’m trying to make, perhaps a little too cynically, is that at the end of the day what seemed a perfectly predictable outcome can be supplanted by outcomes no one saw coming, and these alternative and unexpected outcomes can result from events of seemingly minimal significance. I’m not entirely sure, but I might be applying a crude version of chaos theory to the political arena.
Ah.. I see now… the perfectly predictable outcome being the passage of the health care legislation. With that, I agree. It’s absurd, but I think it’s the way the system is supposed to work. The Founders intended federal legislation to be difficult, and when a party proposes radical change it often flounders because the people have time to see the extent and effect of the proposed change, reject it, and get legislators in who are like-minded.
It’s actually quite genius.
It’s “quite genius” in a time of no crisis; in a time of crisis like the one we’re in now it’s disastrous.
“The Founders intended federal legislation to be difficult, and when a party proposes radical change it often flounders because the people have time to see the extent and effect of the proposed change, reject it, and get legislators in who are like-minded.
It’s actually quite genius.”
True. The only thing the government can do quickly is start a war.
True. The only thing the government can do quickly is start a war.
phosphorious,
It seems to me the US government got aid to Haiti very quickly indeed. Doesn’t that count for anything?
“It seems to me the US government got aid to Haiti very quickly indeed. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
My understanding was that the response to Haiti was a a matter of “playing politics,” a photo-op more than anything.
Did I misunderstand?
Snark aside, I was responding to what I thought was Zack’s rather smug assumption that the Constituiton was designed exactly to avoid the sort of “meddling” to which liberals are prone, namely health care reform.
If only they could have designed it to avoid the kind of meddling to which conservatives are prone, namely war.
Brown wins and the blame game begins. The human factor is on full display tonight.
phospohrious,
it’s not an assumption, it’s the intentional design of our constitutional republic. It’s not designed to thwart liberals – it’s designed to thwart everyone.
I’m sorry it upsets you, and I hope you try to see the wisdom in delaying the national legislative process. Democracies are notoriously fickle.
And how could you say that the US’s aid is a political photo op? THat’s incredibly cynical and insulting to the thousands of military personnel providing aid and relief to the people of Haiti. No good deed goes unpunished, I suppose.
And my name is spelled with an h.