Honest politicians: What everyone really wants
The American people need to grow the hell up.
A politician steps up to the mic and begins a speech. Everyone is expecting the usual. “I’ll drain the swamp. I’m an outsider. I’m not a Washington bureaucrat I’m just a simple (noun that looks good after the word “simple”). I’ll be working for you, not the big money. The Barbarians are at the gate. Only I can save you.”
Oh really?
The truth is, nearly anybody who listens to any kind of news, including the infamous Fox, knows that it takes massive amounts of money to get someone elected. Smaller, down-ticket elections are beginning to need larger and larger amounts of cash to run any kind of successful campaign. Billionaires have noticed that having the presidency beholden to you is nice, but what you really need is Congress. Accordingly, they are investing in those small contested seats that don’t get any attention from the press. There are states in this country where a Senator represents vast amounts of real estate but almost no people. Therefore a few votes either way can win or lose an important Senatorial seat. There are only a hundred of those seats; they are extremely valuable. It’s worth the price of a manicurist’s annual salary to get a few of those Senators in your pocket.
The reason Obama couldn’t exercise the considerable power of the presidency to enact policies that Democrats and the left really want, is because he didn’t have enough people in congress to get those policies made into laws. Democrats seem to have been very slow to understand that every seat in the House and every seat in the Senate is extremely important.
Trump pretty much has the same problem as Obama, oddly, but from a different direction.
Trump is a prick. He thinks of Congress as his middle management employees. He doesn’t realize they are his equals and he’s never in his life had to deal with that. So he’s not cordial. He thinks “the art of the deal” means he gets all the marbles and you don’t get any. That’s not a deal. That’s theft. The guy who installs the carpet in your hotel doesn’t have any power over you. You don’t have to be nice to them and you don’t even have to keep any bargain you made with them if it is inconvenient. If they squawk you can sue them out of existence or just shrug and use a different carpet installer next time.
Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi don’t install carpets. If you make a deal with them, you’d better keep your word or you’ll never make another deal with any other member of Congress. Trump doesn’t operate that way and he’s completely blocked.
The men who can’t be king
The people who voted for Trump wanted a king. They wanted their own version of Vladimir Putin. They feel like their ideas and worldview are the ones that are kissed by the gods and The Way Things Should Be. Anybody else will murder them in their beds. Trump is supposed to keep that from happening.
Democrats and leftists tend to think the same way, though they hide it better. A judicious mix of democracy, socialism, and regulated capitalism are The Way Things Should Be. They think Republicans and conservatives want us to drink dirty water and breathe dirty air and murder us in our beds for the change in our pockets. Obama was supposed to keep that from happening.
Neither Obama nor Trump were honest about the power they would have and the extent of what they could do. They both knew we wanted a king because we believed the “other side” was a bunch of murderous thugs from which we need protection. They both made sure we continued to think that and that they, and only they, could save us.
Democracy vs. Honesty
The American people need to grow the hell up. As a nation we are all in this together and your neighbors don’t spend time figuring out how to kill you. We all drive on the same roads, send our kids to the same schools and shop at the same grocery stores.
You know what would reunite us as a people? Honest politicians who are blunt and open about the problems we face without trying to scare the pants off us.
We need a politician that will stand up and say some version of this:
“I will not be your king. I will share power equally with Congress and the Supreme Court. That’s how our particular form of government works. Therefore I will negotiate in good faith with people I mostly disagree with. I will try to make sure that everyone wins, not just our side. We won’t get everything we want.
“I will be cordial and collegial with Congress. I will not have any enemies, only opponents. I will be respectful of my opponents and their needs and wishes.”
That means we will probably not get single-payer health care. The other side is afraid of it — what it will cost and what health care they might lose. The left is afraid of going back to the bad old days where people died of easily treatable illnesses because they couldn’t afford a doctor visit.
Therefore we need to search for a system that most people can be comfortable with.
Global warming and climate change are happening. Get over it. The right are afraid that if we address the issue it will crash the economy. Oil companies and coal mines think they will no longer have a business model. Conservatives think anything we do will be expensive and that millions of jobs will be lost. The left is afraid that Florida will sink under the sea and Kansas will become a desert — and don’t forget the Cat5 hurricanes.
Therefore we need to seek measures that will make everyone comfortable. Cap and trade was a Republican free-market solution that only became toxic when Count Blackula embraced it. There are lots of ideas out there that would improve the situation. We can work it out.
Every time a Democrat is elected to the presidency the word spreads that The Government is going to go door to door confiscating guns. (I first heard it during the Carter administration.) It’s never happened and nobody has even suggested it, but the gun-owning right is 100% terrified of it. The left does want to reign in guns. The US has the highest murder rate in the world by about 1000%. I simply don’t believe that gun owners are happy about the murder rate and if they didn’t have to worry about the gun grabbers they might come up with some kind of way to improve the situation, if not solve it completely.
There are a lot of sensible solutions to the gun problem that don’t involve someone’s worst nightmare. And I don’t believe even liberals are interested in erecting the kind of overwhelming government machinery that would be required to confiscate guns door-to-door.
If politicians were honest
If politicians were honest, they would stop trying to scare us. They would stand up and say “I know liberals admire the simplicity of the Canadian and UK health care systems, but half the US population is worried about cost and access if we switch to one of those systems. We need to find something that most people can be comfortable with.” (Hint: The Swiss System)
If politicians were honest they would say “Yes, I know campaigns are expensive and I have to take money from oligarchs. But I will pick my battles and my donors so I can represent your interests.”
If they were honest they would say “Mitch McConnell/Nancy Pelosi are not monsters and I will negotiate with them to get as much of what you want as I can.”
And if they were honest they would say “Not every problem can be solved by government, nor can every problem be solved by the free market. Some things can’t be solved and some things need to be solved by you and not me.”
But Americans are going to need to do some growing before they can hear that message.
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