[Originally published in the Vermont Journal]
“Stay the Course”
“Cut and Run”
“Tax and Spend”
Government isn’t supposed to be like this. Like, well, like politics.
People routinely lament the coarsening of the political dialogue. Of course, anyone who’s been paying attention can tell you that it’s nothing new. Sure it’s gotten worse in the last decade, particularly since the impeachment of Bill Clinton, which at the time seemed to permanently lower the bar for what is acceptable in the political realm.
The truth is that recent polls suggest a bottoming out. In states like Virginia, where desperate incumbents have seen the anti-Republican wave batter their poll numbers and have reacted with campaign sleaze attacks, the result has been an increase in their own negatives and the continued deterioration of their poll numbers.
After the better part of a generation of extreme, shrill distortions and mudslinging from the party in power, much of the swing voting public is becoming numb to it. This leaves politicians who live by the smear – stuck. After all, when you’ve had the slime turned up to eleven nonstop for a decade, where else is there to go?
So the American public can survive the politics of the soundbite. The simplistic three word slogans that are meant to condemn your opponent (“tax and spend”), force him or her into a corner (“stay the course”) or paint them as unworthy (“cut and run”).
But we’ve been in a brave new world for the past six years. Behind the scenes, we’ve taken for granted that the simplicities of the soundbite must always give way to the complexities and nuances of actually governing the most powerful and complex nation in history. We?ve assumed that the posturing is to large extent for show – even if it does crudely present a general governing philosophy for public view, and that when it comes to actually running things, the policy makers behind the scenes are too smart for their own soundbites, right?
Not anymore.
Under one party rule, weve seen the posturing before the cameras become the policy behind them. No longer is a line like “stay the course” merely a marketing and branding tool for the microphones, it aptly describes the actual governing of our nation.
Under soundbite government, every answer is an easy answer. Under soundbite government, anything that isn’t simple is to be rejected, ignored, thrown out, discredited.
This includes questions, the complexities of foreign policy, inconvenient disasters (such as Hurricanes), due process, morality, any who advocate looking before leaping, and even the facts themselves.
When reality proves complex and unwieldy, reality itself becomes the enemy – and reality, as it turns out, can be suppressed and subdued by going trillions of dollars into debt.
But only for a while.
One party rule has begun to cripple and destroy our nation. It’s time to force the simpletons who would hammer our country and its people into acting out their simplistic, self-serving worldview to account.
It’s also time to admit that those local or state officeholders who have enabled those in power in Washington, through their explicit or implicit support, are neither worthy nor qualified to hold positions of authority in Vermont. It’s time for the definitive termination of soundbite government.
On Election Day, it’s time for a big, big change.