Politics And Good Sense

    Politics is the science of good sense, applied to public affairs, and, as those are forever changing, what is wisdom today would be folly and perhaps ruin tomorrow.  Politics is not a science  so properly as a business. It cannot have fixed principles, from which a wise man would never swerve, unless the inconstancy of men's view of interest and the capriciousness of the tempers could be fixed.
                                                              Fisher Ames
                                                             U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts, 1789-97
    

   Dogmatic: Inclined to lay down principles as undeniably true.
                                                           Oxford English Dictionary







     A friend of mine is offended by the chicanery and mendacity  of the incumbent presidential administration.   Politicians are all alike, he says, in sinking to the lowest available expedient.  They want to  lead us around by the nose. They will say anything to keep their hold on power. They care not about service, only self-preservation.
     In a lifetime of journalism, this was not my experience. Most of the officeholders I met were genuinely interested in service. They worked hard and withstood constant criticism. Many sacrificed financially. Their reward -- they hoped -- was in seeing their communities, their states and their nation become better places.
     The ablest among these officeholders were skilled politicians. They had to be. Ours is a political system. Election was not a grail. It was the portal to the workbench of service. Politics was not a game of tricks. It was a craft for reconciling the interests of constituents who pressed varying and even conflicting demands.
     All of which brings us to certain officeholders of today, and to the reasons for my friend's dismay.  The president, for his part,  has lowered standards of public behavior past the descriptive capacities of conventional vocabulary. His stock in trade is broken trust. On a given day he is either doing it or accusing others of doing it.
     The president is an exemplar of personality disorder. Beyond this, his administration displays two systemic weaknesses. One is amateurism.  The White House is in the sway of people who genuinely believe that the most complex government in history can be run as if it were a real estate company.
     The second weakness is a foolish belief in the sufficiency of ideology.  The president's own ideology is very personal and  very narrow. He is a scoundrel in his bones. Into the vacant space left by this stone-hearted ethic his minions have poured their own right-wing doctrine. Critics fault it for being extremely conservative. I think it is better faulted for being extremely simple-minded.
     The crafty men who created this nation would scorn a notion that governance could be as simple as enthroning the right dogma. Their system was meant to shelter contending ideas, not to discourage them. The proper job of American government is to serve both me and the neighbor who deeply disagrees with me -- not to put one of us over the other.
     In Congress, right-wing dogmatists have hamstrung proper process, abetted by leaders who would dance naked on the Capitol steps to preserve a Republican hold on power.  They have not so much lowered politics as abandoned the craft altogether. A my way or the highway standard prevails. The body that is supposed to serve all of us has become hostile to the interests of millions of Americans who do not share the controlling point of view.
     There is no happy perspective on these circumstances.  No rose-colored view of fools and mountebanks.  However it is useful to see them as the exception that shows the rule. To borrow an image, we don't complain that a line is crooked if we don't know what a straight line is. History and even the experience of modern times offer plentiful examples of politics as conscientious service in the public interest. What we're watching offends us because we know better.
     Change is stirring. Change is always stirring. Legislators are being booed out of their own town meetings, or ducking them outright. Tomorrow is on the way, with unforeseen and unforeseeable problems that will dramatize the bankruptcy of the solutions on offer today. Given the advancing Russia investigation, and the president's stumble-bum efforts to obstruct it, tomorrow may arrive with welcome dispatch.