By Mike McCabe
In a democracy, the role of government should be whatever the citizenry wants and needs. That inevitably means government’s role will vary over time.
There are moments when the majority of citizens believe government is taxing and spending and doing too much, and there are times when the prevailing opinion is that essential common tasks are being left undone and critical needs are being neglected. Democracy requires government that is sensitive to these mood swings.
At the same time, a just and moral society demands a government that prevents a powerful few from manipulating the rest of society for personal gain and safeguards the weak from exploitation, ensures that minority viewpoints are not suppressed and that minority rights are respected and protected, and promotes conditions under which dissent is not only tolerated but actively encouraged. In this regard, the role of government is constant – to promote the common good.
It is how a society deals with the tension between government’s constant purpose and its sensitivity to the public mood that defines how just and how democratic it is.
By this measure, we currently get very low marks. Our society is neither very just nor particularly democratic.
Much is made of how divided we are. Our differences have even been color coded for television. Red or blue. The truth is, what truly divides us is not whether you are on the right or the left, it’s whether you are on the top or the bottom. What matters in government is whether you can make $10,000 campaign donations or have $200-an-hour lobbyists prowling the halls on your behalf.
This is why only 6% of Wisconsin residents believe elected officials are representing them.
People see right through the game. We all see the money flow in and the favors and perks flow out. And we all see there’s no debate on health care reform when there are 600,000 people in this state who have no health insurance. We all see there’s no serious debate on access to higher education even when tuition has increased more than 50% in just four years and countless families are being priced out of the higher education marketplace. More than half of African American men in Milwaukee are unemployed and there’s no discussion of black unemployment in the lobbyists’ Legislature. We notice these things.
We know that the uninsured and the unemployed and the uneducated don’t make big campaign donations. And we know the privileged few who get all the perks and favors give plenty.
Poll after poll says two-thirds of state residents don’t want their neighbors packing heat, yet state politicians keep pushing legalization of concealed weapons. Poll after poll says a considerable majority of Americans support a woman’s right to choose, yet elected officials at the state and national level keep restricting abortion rights. Local communities across Wisconsin passed “living wage” ordinances, and state legislators overruled the people and blocked the local attempts to set a higher minimum wage.
We know why. We can plainly see that the NRA and the religious right and the suits in corporate boardrooms matter more in the political arena than ordinary folks.
That’s why 6% trust elected officials. And that’s why the rest of us are disgusted, not to mention alienated.
If the disconnect between the governors and the governed were merely the product of distrust, repairing our broken democracy would be comparatively easy.
But the problem runs much deeper than distrust.
Part of the problem is the commercialization of the First Amendment. Speech is no longer free by any measure. It has been turned into a commodity that must be purchased and it costs a bundle. The cost of paid political speech is so prohibitively high that most citizens have been effectively priced out of the political marketplace. Many good people who would have much to contribute to public service can’t afford to enter the modern public arena. This has had a devastatingly negative impact on the quality of democratic dialogue in our society.
The primary cause of the commercialization of speech is television. TV is the reason election campaigns have become so insanely expensive and the reason office seekers now have little choice but to take out a second mortgage on their souls to seriously compete for the attention of voters. Because the campaign arms race is the driving force behind the corruption scandals of our times, TV is the primary culprit in the pay-to-play criminality that now afflicts our government.
TV is a formidable anti-democratic force in other important respects. TV is making us dumber. In the interest of reaping windfall profits, TV executives emphasize entertainment and avoid at all costs educational programming that could equip citizens to meaningfully participate in a democracy. At the same time, TV’s omnipotence has badly wounded the newspaper industry and has done great harm to the value of the printed word in general.
Along with, and perhaps in part because of, TV’s corrosive effect on democracy is the pathology evident in the major political parties. Belonging to a political party used to be like joining a club. Now it’s more like getting caught up in a cult.
The frightening characteristics of religious cults are on prominent display in the two major parties. Even in a state like Wisconsin with its long history of independent politics and maverick politicians, party leaders now make constant references to what “their team” thinks. They enforce an unwritten rule forbidding lawmakers and their staffs from socializing or otherwise fraternizing with members of the opposing party. They feed members “talking points” that at first seem innocuous enough but after awhile resemble indoctrination in a terrifying group-think that rationalizes corrupt and even criminal behavior. Rank and file members who do not walk lockstep behind their leaders are stripped of choice committee assignments or otherwise punished. If they don’t fall in line then, more pliable replacements are recruited.
The people of Wisconsin or America are not as hopelessly divided as the political pundits like to claim. We all have much in common. But the party bosses thrive on playing up what distinguishes them from their political enemies, and this leads them to ceaselessly drive wedges between groups of citizens.
The leaders of the major political parties who populate Wisconsin’s state Legislature and our nation’s Congress are not remotely representative of the people. These bosses are obsessed with who’s right and who’s left. If they’d spend half as much time thinking about what’s right and wrong, we wouldn’t be in the midst of political corruption scandals of historic proportions. And the majority of citizens might not feel politically homeless, as they do now.
There’s much that needs doing if we are to recreate a just and democratic society. But while we endeavor to throw the bums out and we turn off our TVs or at least demand more from those who profit from the use of our public airwaves, we also need to think about creating a home for the politically homeless.
We need a common party. A political home for common folks. One where common sense matters more than ideological purity. And one where talk of the common good is not so uncommon.
Maybe one of the existing parties will finally take notice of the public's wholesale retreat from public life, sense a growth opportunity, and make an offer the commoners can't refuse. Maybe.
Just as likely, we're approaching one of those historic turning points that calls for the creation of something brand new and that tests our capacity for democratic renewal.
Either way, the near future promises to be exhilarating . . . or petrifying, depending on how you take to social upheaval. Because the status quo is not sustainable. Something's got to give.
Mike McCabe is executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks the money in state politics, fights government corruption and advocates for campaign finance reform, media reform and other pro-democracy reforms. The Democracy Campaign’s web site is www.wisdc.org.
