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"And This Passes for Politics" Jerome Huyler PhD. This selection is adapted from the Preface of the forthcoming book, Unintended:
The Consequences of Liberalism How may we assess American democracy as the curtain rises on the 21st century? How sure should we be that the challenges we will face in the coming years will be successfully managed? And what can we conclude about the nation's management "style?" To answer these questions, we will have to get just a little technical. Philosophers sometimes distinguish between two very different models for governing our behavior. The first is the intentionalist approach. It lays out firm, uncompromising rules, we may call them principles, that are designed to direct human conduct. Thus Moses came down from the Mount carrying ten strict commandments burned into two sacred tablets. And the God he met at Sinai instructed him to see that his fellow-travelers followed those rules religiously. The disciples of Jesus, from Peter to Paul to Luther to Calvin, handed down successive sets of moral commands to guide the faithful. Each illustrates the intentionalist's method of dealing with the complexities of human choice and moral conduct. But the approach can have a strong bearing on political affairs, as well. Here, too, it is first principles that prevail. Jefferson's immortal Declaration of Independence invoked a "higher law" doctrine that proclaimed the "natural rights" of mankind. His colleagues in Philadelphia concurred and on a summer day in 1776 declared not just the separation of thirteen North American colonies from Great Britain, but every free-born individual's "unalienable" right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Jefferson's great friend, James Madison, went on to enumerate a body of specific political rights. Sewn into the seam of the fundamental law of the land, they were designed to check the natural, time-tested tendency of avaricious "Power" to snuff out the felicitous, yet fragile, fires of freedom. The first ten Amendments to the U. S. Constitution, adopted three years after its ratification in 1788, perfectly exemplifies the founders' intention to consciously steer the course of human events - not just let them drift. And in many ways, the founders achieved what they intended. The intentionalist disposition, in short, paints clear lines in the road. It may let us drive as far as we like. But it doesn't permit us or our governing institutions to cross those lines or paint over them. The second or consequentialist approach is much more liberal and far less demanding. It simply seeks satisfactory outcomes. Thus notable utilitarians, like Jeremy Bentham and J. S. Mill would sanction whatever could be construed to be conducive to "the greatest good of the greatest number." And the preachers of pragmatism, such as William James, John Dewey and all their modern disciples are even more "practical." Rejecting all sublime theories, in theory, they merely want to know whether the last legislative act or latest policy innovation worked. If so, good. If not, try something else. For the consequentialist, it is only results that count. Touting the experimental method, they nonetheless uniformly professed a programmatic faith in large-scale, collective social action organized by public institutions. For centuries, serious thinkers from both the intentionalist and consequentialist camps helped to shape the course of events in and after their respective times . Today, however, social philosophers play much less conspicuous a role in shaping social and political outcomes. In fact, the modern outlook might almost be called inconsequentialism. The great questions of the day are anything but great questions. For the most part, they are trivial pursuits of the least consequential kind.
Ideological combatants, today, hotly debate whether a reduction in the projected rate of spending growth should be called a spending cut? On the question of a $5 trillion national debt, little more has divided the two major political than the brief span of 36 months (the difference between a seven or ten year wait to bring the federal budget into balance). Confronted by really tough and daunting dilemmas, our leaders bang out a steady supply of piecemeal reforms. Deals are struck and hard-fought compromises reached to show that Washington is serious about the issue at hand and that all sides are cooperating in a bi-partisan fashion to do something about it. Only the problems persist, as does the need for new bi-partisan deals and ever-more-difficult compromises. The first fruit of inconsequentialism is very often the bitter taste of spoiled expectations and a rotten harvest of new headaches.. The second is the shallow planting of more expensive experimental orchids in the same barren political soil. Consider the persistent call for fundamental campaign finance reform and, more broadly, the troublesome role of money in politics. Across the 20th century, a long list of reforms were enacted to deal with the problem. To be sure, each revision dramatically changed the structure and process of electoral politics in this country. But while the details of the process underwent change, its unvarnished nature (and dubious character) remained unmistakably intact. So we continue to debate the need to limit campaign contributions, while grappling with the unforseen rise of "soft money" and the unflappable power of the political "PACS" (the unintended, but unmistakable by-product of past reform efforts). The financial pain produced by the sudden collapse of a single corporation may emotionally move a legislative body to rush through a long-sought-after reform proposition. But, being the result of concession and compromise, missing the underlying root of the problem, the new measure will more likely than not end up creating a perilous new set of problems somewhere down the road. The same can be said for what nearly all sides today casually call the welfare "mess." No one is minimally satisfied with the results of this nation's expensive anti-poverty effort. So what now? After forty frustrating years of fighting to eradicate human hardship in America, national attention is riveted on the irascible question of "welfare" vs. "workfare." Should states force recipients to work for their benefits or leave them alone? To be sure, the experiment is well underway. But what energies and resources will have to be expended to prepare and train this population for the rigors and responsibilities of steady work? What ingenuity will go into finding "work" for the new workforce? How productive will the new jobs be? How much will it all cost? And for how long will the experimental bill have to be paid? Well, we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, the pressing question is "are you for the reform or against it? Do you want to do something about the welfare mess or don't you?" That, we are told, is the choice we must make. Or consider the crisis in the classroom. The more money we spend on our public schools, the poorer they seem to perform. And the debates rage on: whether to centralize or de-centralize bureaucratic control; whether Washington or each state capital should take primary responsibility for the problem; whether teachers need to be tested every ten years or twelve months; what is the right class size and how much should our teachers be paid? "Radical" reformers call for educational vouchers and the right of school "choice." The voucher panacea has been around for decades. And there may be much to be said in their favor. But the absence of school choice did not prevent generations of public school children, packed into crowded classrooms and instructed by an "underpaid" staff from getting a sound education 25 or 50 years ago. The root of the problem clearly lies elsewhere. The battle lines of political inconsequentialism are continually drawn around purely peripheral and incidental questions. What is worse, we fail to fix a steady focus even on these incidentals. We run from one single-issue contest to the next with our view of both the past and future obscured by a myopic, fight-of-the-moment focus. Public debate proceeds not from fixed principles or any fundamental outlook, but from some immediate confrontation with a distressing concern. Public interest, therefore, is not sustained, but applied only intermittently. It lasts only as long as the worrisome situation is perceived to exist, or until it is pushed off the front pages by other late-breaking news .What is more, since it is the fact of dis-ease, discomfort that spurs political leaders to action, policy positions can shift with shifting popular moods, electoral results or the latest focus group findings. In 1978 the people of California went to the polls and passed Proposition 13, a sweeping tax cut reform. The great American "tax revolt" was on, or so some in public service feared. In fact, you couldn't get a new appropriations bill through Congress that year if the Soviets had landed in Brooklyn and were eating hot dogs at Nathan's - a famous Coney Island eatery. Once it was discovered that Prop 13 was merely a local reaction to an unusual set of state-wide circumstances, the situation "stabilized" and the crisis passed. In time, a succession of new tax increases would gain bi-partisan support and be adopted. In the process, George Bush I would give "lip service" a whole new meaning. Or take the case of President Bush's Democratic successor. In January, 1995, having lost both houses of congress to the Republican Party, Bill Clinton came before the nation, bit his lower lip and declared that "the era of Big Government is over." Two years later, with the electoral tide shifting back in his Party's favor, the same President could call for a sweeping grab bag of new federally-mandated social programs and a stronger regulatory posture. The dire need for budgetary restraint, or stiffer gun control legislation, or campaign finance reform, or a beefed-up military, or you name it, may be felt one week only to dissipate the next. Indeed, all pressing national problems notwithstanding, a presidential sex-scandal had the power to push every other issue to the back-burner of American politics for more than a year. And so it goes. The factor of intermittence has another dastardly dimension. The basic outlook is this: if no crisis exists, there is no need to think. If a crisis does exist, there is no time to think. The emphasis is on action. A plan is formulated and executed and the experts wait around for the results to roll in. Remaining flexible and nondogmatic, they will adjust for unexpected turns and return to the bargaining table whenever necessary. A welter of variables can be juggled about. Unfortunately, the variables are invariably of little real consequence. The nation ends up dealing in details, debating issues that are essentially inessential and therefore, inconsequential. Confronted with the crisis of the moment, needing to show their concern, our elected leaders see their mandate clearly. They must do something! And so an interesting game of bait-and-switch gets played out. A suspicious equivalence is drawn between supporting the latest proposed solution and actually working to solve the grave social problem. Thus, for example, to favor stiffer gun control legislation is, ipso facto, to solve the problem of gun violence. Never mind that the measure under consideration differs from every earlier "sure-fire fix" only in some insignificant detail. Those who care about the problem will signify their concern by supporting the solution (H. R. bill # fill-in-the-blank). Those who don't, won't. Now, the more honest politicians will tell you that a whole bunch of Brady bills will not stop bad people from obtaining firearms or prevent the innocent from being tragically cut down by gun violence. But at least our leaders are doing something; it is said, at least they care. And the beat and the bills goes on. We do not consider carefully enough the long-range implications of the short-sighted measures we adopt or the uncanny power of the precedents we set to send us to places we never wanted or expected to go. To contrast the short range and long-sighted approaches, consider the burning question of late-term or "partial birth" abortion. A bitter battle is indeed being waged over this issue by liberals and conservatives. But hanging in the balance is much more than the right of a woman to end her pregnancy late in the third trimester. What other fundamental alterations in public policy would the pleaders for a ban on partial birth abortion propose and adamantly campaign for,should they see their partial-birth ban enacted into law? The basic issue is not partial birth, but life, itself. And for the "right-to-life" movement that is spearheading the drive to ban the terribly disturbing practice, life begins at conception. And that faithful belief is bound to beget a far wider legislative agenda, since it is fundamentally informed and energized by a fundamentalist commitment to Judeo-Christian Scripture. The real issue here is not the relatively rare "partial birth" abortions that are annually performed, but the role of religion in politics, per se. The deepest questions revolve around religion's relation to the essential rights and privileges guaranteed by our form of government - including toleration toward those who refuse to order their lives around the notion of religious sin. Is this nation grounded in God's word, as read by Christians and Jew, alike? Or was there some source other than Judeo-Christian Scripture on which the founders relied? Begin to deal with that "little" detail, and you can see how a whole host of recurring legislative and judicial controversies can be put to rest. Now, inconsequentialism does not just pose a problem for political adversaries. Those on the same side of the ideological aisle can also get embroiled in debates over questions that are essentially inessential. So distracted by these tangential issues, the quest for root causes and really fundamental solutions basically goes unattended. Consider the Reagan conservatives who cry that "government is too big and spends too much." They relentlessly complain about the consequences of that condition, the heavy tax burden that American wage earners must bear and the deleterious effect this has on economic performance. What is the solution? Some today insist that a 2% or 10% cut in the rates (perhaps over two or ten years) would help a lot. But the movement's "deeper" thinkers know that the problem is more "fundamental." Insisting on the need to dismantle the income tax code and abolish the IRS, outright, they would plunge the nation into a protracted debate over whether it is wiser to adopt a so-called VAT (i.e., value-added, consumption tax), or an even simpler flat tax in its place. But why quibble over the relative merit of these competing fiscal plans or hotly quarrel over the perils that a drastic upheaval of the tax code might or might not precipitate? As long as the levels of public spending continue to climb (owing to an unexpected recession, urgent national security and defense needs or the funding of any new unmet social "needs"), then whatever the financing arrangements, the working life of the average American is bound to grow ever more taxing. When it comes to financing the expense of "runaway government," you would expect the political conservatives to step up to the bar and ask, "what's your poison?" Instead, they rally the troops on behalf of preserving last year's modest tax rebate or extending it for a few more years. But, then again, a lot of the projected budgetary red ink faded to black, the economic indicators turned positive, and last season's urgent cry for IRS abolition and deep tax reform "lost its constituency." What was one to expect? Here is the politics of intermittence in full effect. Of course, now and then, the parties to a political contest come to appreciate the deeper implications contained in the details they are debating. Consider the question of "medical" marijuana. Believing that this naturally occurring substance can relieve the pain and discomfort those who suffer from terrible, terminal diseases have to endure, various groups now urge us to treat pot as any other prescription "pain killer" and allow physicians to distribute it to their patients. Their opponents wisely insist that this is just the first slippery step designed to send the nation down a steep slope, i.e., headlong into the full legalization of the drug for the whole population. They are probably right. But the deeper point is that, when it comes to action in the political and policy arenas, there are no un-slippery slopes. The narrowest legislative measure can contain the broadest policy implications. No matter what the circumstances, today, the essential questions whose consideration and resolution could produce real and lasting reform rarely arise. Inconsequentialism in public discourse invariably ends in incrementalism in public policy. The nation is moved tiny step by tiny step toward future circumstances that few envisioned and none desired. In other words, the politics of INCONSEQUENTIALISM invariably gives way to political UNINTENTIONALISM. Time and again we awake to the unintended and counter-productive consequences of well intentioned, but tepid and purely ephemeral, policy reforms. And this is what passes for politics, today. What has been the result? While popular opinion grows more cynical of the political process and apathy spreads, educated opinion warns of the glaring Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy, of The Poverty of American Politics or The Corruption of American Politics, of Power Without Responsibility, ofAmerican Democracy In Peril and The End of Liberalism, itself.. William Greider looks around and wonders, in exasperation, Who Will Tell the People? He thereby begs the obvious question, who really wants to listen? ©Copyright by Jerome Huyler 2000 END NOTES 1. To be sure, the great consequentialist theorists of the past, rejected the intentionalist proclivity to seek out universal truths and firm moral imperatives; but they did at least confront and address the great questions and grave challenges posed by the philosophic tradition. 2. As if moved by a hidden hand, the federal budget came beautifully into balance on its own timetable - one no one of either party had anticipated. 3. We shall look at the checkered history of campaign finance reform over the 20th century efforts and the unexpected and always frustrating results they produced in ch. 5. 4. Today, as in the past, private money buys public influence. And as public power goes up, it seems that the perceived need to have it in one's purchase rises, commensurately. For a very revealing and dramatic example of how pervasive and longstanding the question of money in politics has been, and how very little progress has been made combating the untoward and undemocratic implications and actualities that flow from that fact see Grant McConnell's Private Power and American Democracy (New York: Vintage Books 1970 ), ch. 1. "The Open Secret." 5. By the summer of 2000, fiscal experts were predicting just such a rosy future. But what will our political leaders do with those good tidings? And just what guarantees are there that the projections will bear out? How certain are they? On what deeper economic and budgetary assumptions are they ultimately supported? And how really reliable are those supports? After all, just 24 months earlier official Washington was hotly debating whether it would be possible to achieve a budget surplus in four, six or even ten years. 6. . Robert A. Dahl, The Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy: Autonomy vs. Control (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1982), Theodore Lowi, The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), William E. Hudson, American Democracy in Peril: Seven Challenges to America's Future (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1995), H. Mark Roelofs's, The Poverty of American Politics: A Theoretical Interpretation(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), David Schoenbrod, Power Without Responsibility: How Congress Abuses the People Through Delegation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993). Elizabeth Drew, The Corruption of American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why (New York: The Overlook Press, 2000). William Greider, Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy (New York: Touchstone, 1992). Still relevant and important is the penetrating commentary of Grant McConnell's Private Power and American Democracy (New York: Vintage Books, 1966).
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