DEMOCRACY IS NO GONG SHOW

Election time is when a person’s mind turns to improving our political system and government, especially after both have taken such acute beatings.

Yet, despite our good intentions, such trains of thought often go nowhere, because we are working with hypotheticals. Everything is unknown, except that the present cannot be allowed to continue into an endless future.

Pre-election daydreaming is inherently passive. It evaluates the possibility of broad improvements by focusing on what a small cohort—politicians—can and may be able to do. It draws most of its arguments from what they’ve done before and by what they promise to achieve. But the past cannot predict the future, and promises are palliatives, not facts. They express an intention but no guarantee.

Ordinarily, when considering improving politics one omits what ordinary citizens can and should do to effect a propitious end. In such a vast nation as ours, government seems unresponsive to individual needs, so it is normal for us to feel abandoned and powerless before it. Yet voting is perhaps our only power.

Daydreaming about better government poses another dilemma. Even an earnest voter, paying close attention, may emphasize the wrong things. This is because many people tolerate politics only as entertainment. Voters focus on candidates' personalities and ignore policies they are likely to advance. We prefer to evaluate how a person looks and speaks, the clothes he wears or what his wife looks like, than to study his policies and record.

I can predict that much of the chatter prior to this election will focus on which candidate is less senile and infirm, or which one is more corrupt. Each campaign will do its utmost to paint the other candidate in a revolting light and we will all be left with that numb and futile feeling that our vote is no more than a vacuous formality to endorse the lesser of evils. But this response is a copout.

We must tune out extraneous noise about personal matters. It matters what kind of person the president is, but far more relevant is what he has done before and what he is capable of doing and willing to attempt if elected.

This is why considering how to improve government must lead us back to study not a candidate’s personal life and attributes, but his past actions and future plans. Circumstances will ultimately determine the extent to which these policies are fulfilled; yet without clear positions, a candidate stands only on his two feet and sells nothing but his smile—or glare.

When we personalize elections, we also forget that standard bearers comprise a fraction of the government they will form. We elect a ticket and forget that government is is usually not a one-man show or a duet. We always vote for a team, whether we know it or not. Therefore, we should keep in mind not only the visible figures but the group of political figures whom that candidate will bring into his administration.

As I watched and listened to the Democratic debates and interviews last summer and fall, I was impressed with the breadth of intelligent and energetic candidates assembled on those stages. I thought, “What an impressive group of public servants!” My next thought was, “What a waste that most of them will drop out and we won’t hear from them again!”

Then it occurred to me that if the ultimate primary winner won the general election, many of these also-rans might serve in the next Democratic administration or in Congress. If they were to be given posts in the administration, they might reverse many of the disastrous policies instituted by the current one, e.g. to sell off public lands to private firms or to drill for oil on the Alaska ice shelf.

Or they might land in the Senate and push through progressive legislation that has languished on Mitch McConnell’s desk, as the Senate Majority Leader fulfills his destiny to obstruct progress. The collective creativity, judgment and insight of the many qualified and dedicated Democratic candidates who briefly vied for the presidency could right this foundering government. 

To this end, Democrats need to think slate not ticket. All of the great candidates and hopefuls who debated last summer and fall—Yang, O’ Rourke, Steyer, Warren, Castro, Bennet and Booker—will be available to give their phenomenal intelligence, experience and passion to public service.

But to be absolutely candid, the biggest improvement that needs to be made in our political system is with the electorate. We stand accused as most responsible for the political and social stagnation our nation has endured in the past half century.

Many voters see ourselves as victims of politicians’ broken promises and a squabbling and constipated government. But we are far from innocent in our political quagmire. We may be suffering from conflicted and self-negating government, but we played a role in causing it.

We deserve the entire responsibility for our halting progress, because electorally speaking, we behave in a capricious, querulous and impatient manner. We cannot tolerate complexity. We’re like hundreds of millions of bad bosses who shout, “We don’t want excuses, we want results!” This is especially true when we give Democrats a chance to run the government.

We seem to expect so much more from Democrats. Characteristically, we will give a Democratic president one year to effect change. If the Democratic administration we elected with high hopes faces political headwinds in Congress, and fails to deliver a coherent and effective agenda in one year, we feel betrayed, and lash out in a midterm backlash.

In this self-defeating manner, people who voted for change, punish the president they have elected to advance it by prematurely undoing all he has proposed and propelled with a harsh midterm Congressional rebuke. This refractory gesture ensures that the wishes for progress and reform that prompted the public to vote for this president will be undermined and undone.

Is it any wonder that we often feel that our government is hapless and broken? It is because we lack perseverance and faith as an electorate. We treat our politics like The Gong Show. Out of childish frustration, we pull a lever and yank the president before he can achieve what we asked him to do.

Rather than daydream about how our government can improve, we should take a long, hard look in our collective mirror and vote in our private ballot boxes to change ourselves—electorally speaking. To obtain political results, we must see politics realistically, not as a faith healing spectacle but as a deliberative human process and interaction that requires patience and resolve.

Everyday someone asks in bewilderment how the nation with the most advanced medical technology, facilities and therapies can founder in a public health crisis that every other nation has successfully managed. You don't need to consult the Sphinx to answer this facile conundrum.

If we want to understand why America has stumbled against COVID-19 we need only glance at the average percentage of Americans who vote in presidential elections—a meager 56% in 2016, which was one of the most hotly contested, intensely debated and widely followed elections in recent times. If Americans cannot be bothered to vote in their most consequential elections, how can they be relied on to take precautions against a pandemic? 

Ask Americans if they love their country, and they will answer an unequivocal, “Yes!” Yet too many Americans are not good citizens. We often speak of entitlements pejoratively as social programs, like social security, and welfare, that dispense funds or benefits to qualified individuals. Yet too many Americans view democracy as an entitlement, or as an attribute they’re born with like their surname or eye color. They don’t see their rights, privileges and freedoms as precious items they must work for to preserve. Our democracy has survived multiple wars, economic downturns, natural disasters, epidemics and civil disturbances, but voter apathy is one assault our democracy will not survive.