According to polls, Americans are in a mood to hold their breath until they turn blue. Voters appear to be so fed up with the Democrats that they’re ready to toss them out in favor of the Republicans — for whom, according to those same polls, the nation has even greater contempt. This isn’t an “electoral wave,” it’s a temper tantrum…. The nation demands the impossible: quick, painless solutions to long-term, structural problems. While they’re running for office, politicians of both parties encourage this kind of magical thinking. When they get into office, they’re forced to try to explain that things aren’t quite so simple…. But the American people don’t want to hear any of this. They want somebody to make it all better. Now.
I’m not opposed to the idea of instant gratification. I’ve often joked that delayed gratification is highly overrated. There comes a time, though, when any rational, thoughtful, realistic American has to admit that fixing our problems isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight. My oft-proffered partisan argument is that Republicans spent eight years breaking it before George W. Bush handed the reins to Barack Obama. You simply can’t expect eight years of neglect and incompetence to be rectified in 20 months. True enough.
While that argument may be simple and satisfying to those of us of a decidedly Liberal persuasion, the reality is far more stark. Many of the problems we face today seem so intractable because they’ve been ignored for so long- sometimes for generations. The sad reality of our crumbling infrastructure is not something amenable to a “quick fix”. Restoring, repairing, and/or replacing that infrastructure is something that will take significant time, money, planning, and, most of all, commitment. Road, bridges, sewers, water treatment plants, even the national electricity grid are just a few of the many things sorely in need of attention. The problem, though, is that they’re not “sexy” political issues. It’s difficult for a candidate to run on the promise of fixing sewers. No one’s going to vote for a politician who promises to modernize water treatment plants. It’s not that we don’t care…but the reality is that we really don’t care. Being Americans, we want simple, we want easy, and we want it NOW. Except that we’ve acquiesced in putting off the problems we face for so long now that simple, easy, and NOW are not even remote possibilities. We’re up against it, and until and unless we admit to that reality, matters are only going to get worse. This country has become a Potemkin village; it looks good on the outside, but there’s nothing behind it that honestly addresses the problem of our crumbling infrastructure.
Americans vote on pocketbook issues, not infrastructure. We want to know that we’ll be able to buy a new house or car. We want to know that we’ll be able to send our children to college. We want to be comfortable in our retirement. We DON’T want to hear about the need to invest in roads, bridge, or sewage treatment plants- those things we just expect to work. They’re just supposed to be there. So politicians have pandered, and they’ve told us what we want to hear…because that’s what politicians do if they want to be elected.
Here’s the problem with that, though: by pandering to Americans for years, politicians on the state and national level have put off addressing the issues that require real leadership. If politicians had shown leadership in maintaining, upgrading, and repairing infrastructure as needs became apparent, we’d be in a much better (and far less expensive) place than we are now.
Politicians have created (because we’ve allowed them to) an atmosphere where “low information” (it sounds more charitable than “stupid”) voters believe that if things aren’t fixed immediately they can just vote the rascals out. It’s silly and it’s exceedingly short-sighted, but the expectation of instant gratification is the attitude du jour. Politicians, being the self-interested sorts they are, pander to the lowest common denominator. After all, these folks vote, and career preservation is Job One for polticians devoid of vision and leadership.
I guess this is the mood of the electorate this year, as far as I can tell.
-We are fine with the trend of an ever-greater share of the American economy going to the very richest people. We like a tax policy that encourages this trend. We don’t feel that power follows wealth and so do not fear any negative consequences from this.
-We oppose any actually workable plans to rationalize the health care system in this country and feel that the long trends of ever-increasing costs for ever-shrinking coverage will fix themselves.
-We prefer more religion in government and schools and less science, and we feel this will lead to good outcomes.
-An opinion that climate science is wrong will make it be wrong.
-Deficits didn’t matter before, but now they are all we can think about.
-We blame President Obama for the bad economy, but anything he does about it can only make things worse and make us blame him even more.
-We like Republicans even less than Democrats but plan to elect them in a landslide, and that this will improve things.
Did I miss anything? —Tom Toles
Sadly, no…and I think that sums it up quite nicely. And so we find ourselves in a situation where “low information” voters cast their votes for politicians who may be skilled at demagoguery but couldn’t lead a pack of hungry Cub Scouts to a Dairy Queen. Problems aren’t discussed during campaigns because candidates are too busy engaging in personal attacks and appealing to emotions instead of engaging in rational, productive debate. Stupid people vote for self-absorbed demagogues concerned only for their political future. In the end, nothing happens, and when the next election cycle rolls around, fed-up “low information” voters rebel, toss out the miscreants they voted for previously…and the process starts all over.
This theory holds true unless we’re talking about Congress, where incumbents maintain their seats by bringing home the bacon to their districts or their states. They convince their constituents that Congress may be Of The Devil, but THEY’RE working their tails off to take care of the people at home. Demagoguery and clever marketing campaigns abound…while leadership and vision are afterthoughts, left to wither and die on the vine.
Meanwhile, nothing changes, nothing gets done, and we’re stuck with a cabal of idiots who think Barack Obama is a Kenyan Muslim who hates America and is the head of an al-Qaeda sleeper cell ensconced in the White House. Winston Churchill once said that democracy is the worst possible form of government- except for every other form out there. I doubt he had any idea of the depths to which American democracy could and would sink.
I’d like to be optimistic. I’d like to think that there are leaders out there who can and will speak honestly to the American people. I believe that there may well be…but the problem is that they’ll turn out to be unelectable, because Americans don’t want honesty. We want things fixed…NOW…and we don’t want to hear that it can’t be done simply, quickly, and cheaply. We’ve become impatient and unreasonable in expecting the impossible from the incapable…and we have only ourselves to blame. We deserve better…but we consistenly vote against our own interests as we fall victim to lies and propaganda. With the passage of time, America really does feel like the set of Idiocracty.
