And This is What Passes for Politics

Adapted from the Preface of Unintended: the Consequences of Liberalism (forthcoming)

How may we assess American democracy as the curtain rises on the 21^st century? How confident should we be that the challenges that will arise in the coming years will be successfully overcome? Philosophers sometimes distinguish between two very different approaches to governing ourselves and guiding public policy. The first, the intentionalist, sets forth firm, uncompromisingprinciples designed to guide social and political relations. Thus Moses laid down what he claimed to be God's commandments on two tablets. The disciples of Jesus, from Peter to Paul to Luther to Calvin, propounded a series of firm moral precepts. They all illustrate the intentionalist's method of dealing with the complexities of human choice and moral conduct. But the approach also has a strong bearing on political affairs. Declaring not just the separation of thirteen British colonies from an oppressive motherland, but the independence of the individual from tyranny, per se, Jefferson invoked a "higher law" doctrine, viz. the individual's possession of "certain unalienable rights" that no government may abridge or abrogate . James Madison went on to enshrine a far more specific set of rights in the fundamental law of the land. The constitutional protections he indelibly inscribed in the Bill of Rights were designed to limit the scope of political power. All this, too, reflects the intentionalist ethic. This outlook, in short, paints clear lines in the road. It allows us to drive as far and as fast as we care to. But it prohibits us (or our governing institutions) from crossing those lines. The second or consequentialist approach is much more flexible. It simply seeks satisfactoryoutcomes. Thus noted utilitarians, like Jeremy Bentham and J. S. Mill simply desired to achieve "the greatest good for the greatest number." And practitioners of pragmatism, those who follow the lead of William James and John Dewey, are even more "practical." Just tell them whether the last legislative act or latest policy innovation worked. If so, good. If not, they are ever ready to try something else. For them, it is only results that count. The experiment is king

For centuries, serious thinkers from both the intentionalist and consequentialist camps helped to shape the course of human events in and after their respective times . Today, however, social philosophers play much less conspicuous a role in shaping social or political outcomes. In fact, the modern outlook might almost be called inconsequentialist. The great questions of the day are anything but great questions. For the most part, they are trivial pursuits of the least consequential kind. Should U.S. presidents have the authority to veto a single budgetary line item? Should federal lawmakers be limited to two or six terms of office? How many days should a person have to wait before being allowed to purchase a hand gun? Should a driver who is stopped and found to have a .1% blood alcohol level have his or her car confiscated? Or is that level still too high? Should a reduction in the projected rate of spending growth be called a spending cut? On the question of a $5 trillion national debt, little more has divided the two major political parties 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 new 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. A long list of reforms have already been enacted. 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 bankruptcy and financial horror induced by the sudden bankruptcy of a single corporation may emotionally move a legislative body to hurrying through a long-sought-after reform bill. But that bill might stop miles short of the real root of the problem, and only end p creating a perilous new set of circumstances to resist and reform..

The same can be said for what nearly all sides casually call is the welfare "mess." No one today 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 now riveted on the irascible question of "welfare" vs. "work-fare." Should states force recipients to work for their benefits or leave them alone.

But what energies and resources will have to be expended to prepare and train this population for the demands, rigors and responsibilities of work? What ingenuity will go to finding "work" for the new workforce? How how much will all of that cost? And for how long will it have to be paid? Suffice it to say it will be years before any real results come in?

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: whether to centralize or de-centralizebureaucratic control, what is the right class size and how much should we pay our teachers? Radicalreformers demand educational vouchers and the right of school "choice." But the absence of school choice didn't prevent generations of American school children, packed into crowded classrooms, 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 non-basics. We run from one single-issue contest to the next, our view of both the past and future obscured by a myopic, fight-of-the-moment focus. The nation seems to suffer from an abiding attention disorder. Public debate proceeds not from fixed principles or any fundamental outlook, but from some immediate confrontation with a distressing concern. Public attention and interest, therefore, are not sustained, but applied only intermittently. They last only as long as the worrisome situation is perceived to exist, or until stories concerning it are pushed off the front pages of the national press. 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 polling surveys. 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 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 H. W. Bush would give "lip service" a whole new meaning.

Or take the case of President Bush's successor. In January, 1995, faced with the recent recapturing of both houses of congress by the Republican Party, a sitting Democratic President could come before the nation and declare that "the era of Big Government is over." Yet, within two years, 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 and economic programs. The dire need for fiscal austerity, or stiffer gun control legislation, or (fill-in-the-blank) may be felt one week only to dissipate the next, as a new set of headlines hit the dailies. 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. This is the politics of inconsequentialism in full effect. Its consequence is intermittence.

The factor of intermittence has another 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. A welter of variables can be juggled about. Unfortunately, the variables are invariably of little real consequence. Often they are immaterial, even trivial, in nature. The nation ends up dealing in details, debating what are essentially inessential technicalities, never quite getting to the bottom of things.

Confronted with the crisis of the moment, needing to show their concern and commitment, our 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 pragmatic 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. At least our leaders are doing something; it is said, at least they are concerned. And the beat and the bills goes on.

We do not consider carefully enough the long-range implications of the "necessary,"short-range measures we adopt or the uncanny power of the precedents we set to take us to where we never wanted to go. To contrast the short range and long range 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 admittedly 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. And there are even deeper questions than that that must be raised.

Now, inconsequentialism does not just pose a problem for political adversaries. Those on the same side of the ideological aisle can also get bogged down and hung up debating topical 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." And they rail against the consequence of that condition, the "excessively heavy" tax burden that American wage earners must bear. Some 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" - i.e., institutional. 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 wise to adopt a so-called VAT (i.e., value-added, consumption tax), or a very simple 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 demands or the funding of any other 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?" Of course, should the future be filled with budget surpluses as far as the fiscally "trained" eye can see, all the hubbub over IRS abolition and deep tax reform might abate, fora time. Under these circumstances party battle lines may be drawn on the question of what kind of modest tax hikes might be needed to address longstanding social needs or start retiring the nation's accumulated debt. Here is the politics of intermittence in full effect.

Sometimes, the parties to a political contest come to appreciate the deeper implications implicit in the details of their debates. Consider the question of "medical" marijuana. Believing that this naturally occurring substance can reduce pain and discomfort for many who suffer from terrible, often terminal diseases, 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.

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 ever envisioned or desired. In other words, the politics ofinconsequentialism invariably gives way to political un-intentionalism. Time and again we awake to the unintended and counter-productive consequences of well intentioned, but tepid and purely ephemeral, policy reforms. 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, of The New Politics of Inequality, of American Democracy In Peril, and The End of Liberalism, itself.. William Greider looks at what is going on and wonders, in exasperation, Who Will Tell the People?

Endnotes

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 20^th 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).