Re: Obama XI: Turn And Face The Strange
Try the political class on for size.
If you're referring to the staffers, reporters and researchers who work on the Hill (in the interests of disclosure, my wife is one), or even the members, I think they are in actuality even
more sincere in their beliefs than the average person, which is one reason they made politics a career. I meet those people all the time, R, D and I. They've got advanced degrees and would be making far more money on Wall Street or Main Street or as attorneys. Sure, some percentage of them are there for cynical motives (a certain northwestern ex-governor comes to mind), but no more nor less than any other profession.
One of the worst things to happen to my political cynicism was moving to the DC area and actually meeting the people I thought I knew all about. Politics is by nature "unidealistic" in that it's about getting things done, and that means creating coalitions and compromising promises and values, but it isn't the people who are dirty. Put the CEOs of the Fortune 500, or the managing partners of the top 100 law firms in the country, or the USCHO Forum, or the membership of the Major League Players Association in Congress, and you'll wind up with exactly the same thing. I have met the enemy and, what an anti-climax, he's us.
That's why Congress after Congress is unpopular but everybody loves their member. It's not the members of Congress, it's the consequences of a representative form of government that are so frustrating. People believe in it to the degree that the things they want happen. Anybody else's ideas make headway and that's (enter ideologically charged Mad Lib exaggeration here). We are now
so sensitive to the people that nothing can get done, because the force against is always stronger than the force for. (And, since I do have some cynicism left, because there are powers who have feathered their nest with the status quo and don't want to see any change). It's bad enough that the Senate, which used to at least be somewhat above the fray, is now just nearly as bad as the House, which is why the majority is tempted to really make it just like the House and run it by majority rule. We have both sides' intransigence to thank for that. Or, maybe, it's the next step in the evolution of the Senate, and it will be a way to get things moving again -- first by one side, then the other. I'm old and stodgy enough to think it's not a good direction to move in.
