IN my 12th year on island, I finally realized that CNMI news and issues were, more or less, what they had always been. The pattern, however, was easy to miss because of the Commonwealth’s constant turnover of people — reporters included.
The complaints of today had been heard long before. The same was true of the “solutions,” which were often presented as though no one had ever thought of them — or tried them — before.
If you hear some folks talk, you’d think that political shenanigans, misgovernance, and corruption were invented here. Imagine what their reaction would be if they learned a little more about U.S. and world history — or even about current events in other countries and jurisdictions.
One of the most popular ways to “solve” a nation’s problems is to “throw the rascals out” at the next election. But as economist and historian Robert Higgs once pointed out, “Here in the United States we have been flinging rascals hither and yon for more than two centuries. But what do we have to show for it?” He wrote that in 1997.
Higgs also noted that as early as the 18th century, politicians were already practicing the kind of politics that has long been compared unfavorably to the world’s oldest profession. As Britain’s Lord Bolingbroke (1678-1751) put it in a letter to a colleague: “I am afraid that we came to court in the same dispositions that all parties have done; that the principal spring of our actions was to have the government…in our hands; that our principal views were the conservation of this power, great employments to ourselves, and great opportunities of rewarding those who had helped to raise us, and of hurting those who stood in opposition to us.”
More than a century earlier, Higgs said, the Marquis of Halifax (1633-1695) made a similar observation: Political parties are often like pirates flying a false flag. They claim to want what is best for the public, but their real goal is to capture power and wealth. And whenever they win, instead of using their victory to help people, they immediately begin dividing up the loot.
To be sure, politicians have improved vastly since then. Many are not as blatant or shameless as their predecessors. Almost all of them, moreover, are sincere in their desire to help the public through the enactment of good laws and policies.
This may come as news to some of us, but in every election year, you never hear a candidate promising to make things worse. Not a single one has ever pledged to cut funding for education, health care, public works, better infrastructure, public safety, or workforce training. No one campaigns on corruption or abuse of power. No one openly declares support for bigger government. Everyone claims to be for the people. And most of them are not lying.
Then, in the next election, many unhappy voters cast their ballots for a new set of candidates promising much the same things.
As for the workings of key government agencies — have you ever sat through a confirmation hearing for board nominees? Did you hear the part about how highly qualified they are, and how they possess the educational background and experience to do the job in the best interest of the Commonwealth?
As author and economics professor Bryan Caplan has argued, most of us believe democracy fails because it does not do what voters want. Not really. “Democracy fails because it does what voters want.”
And what many voters — then and now, in many places around the world — want is a government that acts like Santa Claus. That is fine as long as there is a thriving economy to pay for all the goodies voters demand — in the CNMI’s case, good-paying government jobs, a generous government retirement system, health care on demand, virtually free education, homestead programs, affordable loan programs, low taxes, and even CUC fuel expenses subsidized by the government, among other delightful benefits that sadly came to an end when the local economy collapsed.
That said, the CNMI is still a vast improvement over the Trust Territory era. For starters, local residents of the Commonwealth are American citizens, who can vote with their feet. The CNMI is not their “country”; the United States is. And the U.S., despite its tiresome, toxic politics, remains the greatest nation in the world. Reports of its decline — an international pastime for decades now — remain vastly exaggerated.
To quote physician and author Hans Rosling, we should learn what life was really like in the past so we do not mistakenly believe that no progress has been made. Certainly, bad things are happening, but many things have improved or are continuing to improve.
If, in any case, you think the world is already ending and that the apocalypse has begun in the CNMI, I suggest going online and reading the news from other Pacific islands — and then from other countries around the world.
The real challenge is not to expect politics to suddenly transcend human nature, but to place present conditions in historical context and view them with a sense of proportion.
Despite all the familiar complaints, the Commonwealth today is still better off than it was when it was first established. Many of the opportunities, freedoms, and standards of living that people now take for granted would have seemed unimaginable in those earlier days.
But that does not mean we should stop demanding accountability or better leadership. It simply means we should resist the temptation to believe that every problem is unprecedented, every politician uniquely terrible, or every setback proof of impending collapse.
A little less hysteria, a little more perspective, and a little more gratitude for actual progress might improve public discourse more than any election slogan ever will.
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Zaldy Dandan is the recipient of the NMI Society of Professional Journalists’ Best in Editorial Writing Award and the NMI Humanities Award for Outstanding Contributions to Journalism. His four books are available on amazon.com/.
