Politics and the realities of change

Why we stick to what’s broken while yelling about it all the same

I’ve spent a good amount of time during this election cycle thinking. Thinking about why America is in this situation in the first place. Thinking about why people support one candidate over the other, or why they support no candidates at all. Thinking about how people can end up saying “fuck it all” and completely tune out. To that end, I’ve come to a few conclusions:

It takes a lot to get people to step off party or policy lines

A prevailing sentiment amongst people every election, but especially this one, is that they will vote for the candidate that “most aligns with my beliefs” or “the lesser of two evils”. Even faced with a man who is outwardly hateful toward minorities, females, and non-white males alike, they will vote the ticket and not the man. For a country that previously disqualified candidates for flubbing or forgetting a phrase, having an affair and boasting about it, or shouting excitedly, it is odd that Trump has done all of these things and is still allowed to represent their ticket. And much of this is because of party lines. It’s clear Republicans have been hopeful that they can withstand Trump’s crazy to continue pushing their policy agenda should he be elected. But they made their deal with the devil and now they have to live with the consequences.

Many Trump supporters feel this way too. They make feeble attempts to defend him or, like Donald himself, immediately deflect to say why he’s great. Even dismissing all of his vulgarity and general awfulness, he doesn’t actually have a plan for anything he says he will do. Hillary Clinton, for all her issues, at least has a plan to present when asked about policy. And that’s the problem with voters. They believe that because Trump is part of the party that takes the position they agree with on certain issues, they need to vote for him. But that ignores the fitness one needs to actually be president. If we were voting for someone to build a car that we were driving, would we vote for the person we agreed with or the person who was best fit for the job?

We want change without putting in the time or the work.

Political and party outsiders have had an appeal to voters in this this election, which makes very clear that American voters want to change the status quo. Bernie Sanders was the party outsider version of this, as he proposed more progressive changes than the typical Democrat ticket would pursue. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina offered voters political outsiders that at least had expertise in a respected field, which made them viable in the eyes of some voters. But the issue with Carson, Fiorina, and to a much larger extent, Trump, is that these candidates aren’t qualified to be president, much less hold a high political office. This trend of political outsiders attempting to shake things up is buoyed by the reverance of Ronald Regan’s terms as president. His values are touted as the modern conservative standard that the party claims to uphold today. But there are key differences between Reagan and the politicians who love to say his name:

• Reagan was a politician before being elected president. He served as California Governor and was on campaign trails before that as key speaker and advisor.
• Reagan, while holding modern conservative beliefs and proposing and enacting policies based on those beliefs, worked across the aisle as a mostly bipartisan leader. This is not the way the parties play today.
• He had clear policy proposals and solutions, wrong or right, and didn’t just say he was going to fix a problem without a plan.

Now, I don’t want to get into the whole Reagan era (that’s an entire essay and more), but the point stands that even the grandfather of the modern conservative movement understood that sweeping change took time and cooperation. It has become natural to seek the quick fix or the big change. But there is no evidence that says it happens that way.

Take same-sex marriage for example. Imagine if a president had run on a campaign to legalize it a decade ago. That candidate would have had a tough time selling that change to a country that was much less open to the idea then. Even if the president used veto power to make something happen, ultimately the other branches of government would have their say. Instead, the process took years. It took states taking the steps on their own and influencing other states to do the same. It took a supreme court decision that finally made it happen and even then it was met with all kinds of backlash.

This is how change works. Change is gradual and full of compromise and hard work. Change requires strategic thinking and it often does not make sense to completely break something down and start over instead of iterating and improving parts of the existing structure. And yes, the political system is broken. It is corrupt. It is paid for. But one presidential candidate isn’t going to change that. If you look at it from a pure numbers game, even the most bull-headed president isn’t going to stand up to every other corrupt politican and interest group and take them all down. No, the real solution is to replace one by one. It’s not about voting in the presidential election, but in all the other ones.

Elections are not about policy

This election has barely touched on policy. If policy were important, Hillary Clinton would be running away with the election. Not because her policies are all right, but because the policies she has have been well thought out with specific actionable goals in mind.

Despite this, the narrative of this election hinges on just about everything but policy. The media always focus on scandals, attacks, and character. Sure, it would be nice to have a morally perfect president, but we all know that’s practically impossible. One, because humans aren’t morally perfect. Two, because being a politician requires maneuvering and positioning which doesn’t always lend itself to being morally perfect. As my colleague Wendell also notes, moral perfection is relative and by definition can’t be globally applied to one person. In lieu of moral perfection we can only rely on skills and behaviors.

But the argument for Trump is that it doesn’t matter what kind of person he is, just that he gets things done. He tells it like it is! He’s brash and that would be “refreshing”. But Trump doesn’t tell it like it is. And being brash is just a personality trait, it has nothing to do with how effective he would be. Sure, one can be an asshole and be effective, but it also require compentence, which Trump hasn’t shown.

If we based support on qualifications to be president and the actual policy proposals, it might result in more competent candidates. It sure would make it more difficult for incompetent candidates to gain traction. But the ugly truth is that elections are not about policy. Candidates like Trump are the equivalent of the bombastic candidate who interviews and scores a job based on their personality and not their qualifications.

The solution isn’t simple or even clear. But shifting focus to the right things would be a start. Focus on the policies and the issues. Focus on the lower political offices that enable this behavior. Focus on the solutions and not on a singular platform. Don’t dismiss politics because they are frustrating, change them.

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