IT is usually “painful” to watch politicians talk — interact, I believe is the word — with voters. Like other members of the public, many voters lead busy lives. They have jobs, families or other more immediate, more pressing concerns. Hence, the main point of having a representative democracy is to elect officials who can study and think about the major socio-political-economic issues that affect their constituents before coming up with possible “solutions.”
Problem is, many voters believe that government exists to “listen” to them, regardless of what they know or not know about a particular public issue that currently irritates them. (Right now, that should be rising prices, specifically of fuel and, consequently, electricity.)
To paraphrase author and National Review senior political correspondent Jim Geraghty, the last thing an elected official wants to do is come across as an unsympathetic jerk to a voter. That elected official is unlikely to tell a voter complaining about high fuel prices and power bills to plan his daily trips, ride a bike, and conserve energy at home. So the elected official ends up “expressing deep concern and sympathy,” and calling for “investigations” and “hearings.”
The elected official, in short, ends up echoing his or her ill- or mis-informed constituents who happen to be the loudest and the most insistent in publicly airing their concerns…that usually reflect their political opinions and/or personal biases.
And these are, more often than not, the same folks who demand that government “do something.”
As Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger pointed out recently, government “doing something” is supposed to produce the desired result. But, he added, step back “and it’s hard not to notice: The American political system has accreted so many solutions and sub-solutions to so many problems that what we have created is a system mired in sludge.”
He added: Take “a closer look at what the ‘system’ actually has become — whether the public schools, health care, criminal justice, mental health, climate or for that matter, the Pentagon. It’s a morass of laws, follow-on laws, rules, administrative procedures, court decisions and revisions of revisions that have produced both unresponsive sludge and, increasingly, disasters. A sad political truth is that over time, ‘do something’ often produces less of its intended good.”
But not to worry. Not many of us — politicians included — are eager or have the time to “step back” and take a “closer look” at the “system,” especially its history and how it actually works compared to how it should work.
Many voters will continue to clamor for politicians who promise to “solve” problems, many of which are the direct results of previous government “solutions.”
Thus:
A generous but underfunded government pension system.
A generous but underfunded healthcare/medical referral system.
A utilities corporation that is supposed to provide reliable and quality services but without charging rates that can fund reliable and quality services.
Overstaffed, overspending, overreaching central and municipal governments with many offices and agencies that have overlapping, redundant functions and/or programs/services, and whose primary reason for existence is to provide good-paying jobs and/or contracts/services/favors to voters.
Not surprisingly, then and now, “hope!” has been the go-to campaign slogan of politicians.
Hope! That voters don’t remember a lot about what exactly happened in the past — the past solutions implemented, and the dismal results of those solutions.
Hope! That voters will again believe recycled campaign promises.
Politicians, too, are into hope.
They hope! that governing is as easy as they think it is — and that in the next elections, not a lot of voters will remember anything about previous campaign pledges.
To quote another political writer, Andrew C. McCarthy, “No one ever went broke underestimating the memory of voters.”
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