American Politics in One Lesson

Here's how American politics can be swiftly summarized:

If I give you five dollars in exchange for consideration in your decision-making process in the voting booth, that's illegal.  If I give a member of Congress five-thousand dollars for the same purpose, that's politics.

Many Americans seem to be fond of a sort of ersatz independent politics, though for the most part these people are transparently partisan.  Glenn Beck claims he is independent.  Lou Dobbs calls himself Mr. Independent.  The list goes on.

But Glenn Beck, who criminally lifted the name of Thomas Paine's revolutionary pamphlet for his book, won't tell you that Tom Paine was one of the first Americans to advocate progressive taxation, even going so far as to draw up his own tax schedules.  How's that for American socialism?  Lou Dobbs will seethe over reforming our immigration policies, but have you ever heard him suggest that we erect an economic wall by criminally prosecuting those who employ illegal aliens?  Nope, of course you haven't.  That's because that would harm Dobbs' friends in the business community.

With so many transparent pretenders to the cause of "independence" it behooves us to ask what they're really trying to sell us.  Superficially, it's easy to observe that partisanship is seen as the greatest of all political evils at present.  Even our Democratic President eschews the trappings of partisanship, openly pining for a post-partisan politics.

But why is this the case?  Why is partisanship so evil and independence the sought after position?  If I'm to believe the polling data, Americans are in fact sharply divided on a number of issues.  Especially when it comes to social issues, "independence" doesn't seem like something people desire at all.

Yet on other issues, like healthcare reform, it seems clear that the American people do want to change the system.  Even beyond the polling data, Americans made their choice known in the polling place when they elected Barack Obama, who campaigned at least partially on what, at least last year, was being discussed as "universal healthcare."

What's amazing though is that this reform seems so difficult.  You would think that if the majority of Americans want it, then politicians would get it done for them.  Right?

It's okay.  I'm laughing, too.

Nevertheless, here we are in a place where Congress can't pass legislation that the majority of people want.  Why is that?  Furthermore, what have the great "independent" voices to say on this issue?

Oh, that's right.  It's a socialist endeavor that's rapidly bringing on the downfall of Western Civilization.

But I still don't understand what this "independence" is.  The one thing that I do observe in claims of independence is that it's always preface to a political position, as if to create an air of credulity.  "Hey, I'm an independent, so you can trust that I'm not being partisan at all when I tell you that Barack Obama is the spawn of Satan."  Something like that.

What exactly are people distancing themselves from when they claim independence from partisan affiliation?  Perhaps for the more right-wing examples, the answer is "George W. Bush."  But then there's the President himself, unquestionably the top Democrat in the nation, denouncing partisanship.

I have a suggestion as to what is generally driving this phenomenon: When people are making claims of independence from partisan affiliation, they are trying to distance themselves from the obvious corruption in the American political system without addressing it.  You see, this way you don't offend your keepers, whether they be lobbyists or advertisers, and you can keep espousing your view in order to forward your agenda, which is, after all, the reason for politicians and pundits to exist.

And this is perhaps no more clear than when we examine the world of finance.  Last year, I blogged in favor of the nomination of Barack Obama.  One of the things that I was most excited about was his apparent penchant for transparency and his shunning of so-called "soft money."  I have to say at this point that those views were at least somewhat naive.  It's not that I was wrong about soft money, but the nearly $1B election of Barack Obama tells me that the soft money ain't running the system.

No, despite Obama's dismissal of soft money, he collected and spent a fortune.  And like pretty much every other politician that's successful at the national level, plenty of that money came from the financial sector.  In fact, the only sector that sent more money his way (by one popular breakdown) was lawyers and lobbyists.  However, it's very important to point out that he's not unique in this respect.  The same can be said of Hillary Clinton, John McCain, George W. Bush, etc.

It's been about a year since Hank Paulson's magnum opus, his criminally broad bailout proposal, was drafted.  How has team Obama done when it comes to dealing with the banks?  Apparently, not much better.

I'll summarize the findings of the federal government's negotiation with AIG counter-parties for you:

1. Geithner proposed that counter-parties take a haircut.
2. Counter-parties said, "Umm, no."
3. Geithner said, "Okay!"

That's all folks!  I bet those dumb auto-manufacturer bond-holders are really kicking themselves right about now.  All they had to do was refuse to take less than they wanted!  Okay, in fairness they were actually faced with the offer the government gave them or the almost certainly worse scenario they'd get from a judge, but this only serves to underline the stark difference in the way these business entities were treated.  Why?  Because there was never even the slightest hint at the pretense of a suggestion that the i-banks were going to end up in bankruptcy court.  Receivership, like impeachment, was off the table.

This underscores what I would argue is the single biggest problem in American politics.  It's not crazy Republicans.  It's not one party or the other.  That much is true.  The ersatz independents might even glean that much.  However, it's obviously not that there's no difference between the two parties.  All you have to do is look at their issue platforms to understand that.  No, the problem is that the two parties are little different when it comes to one issue, but that's because it's a systemic issue and they function within that system.  The issue is that the system is hopelessly corrupt.  The issue is, as I summarized above, that what we would call bribery on an individual level is simply how we do business at the national level.

I like the idea of no PAC money.  What I didn't bargain for is that this new era of hard money politics was going to double-down on the flows of capital into the political system.  That's not the right direction to head in.  Americans from every part of the political spectrum ought to be mad as hell about this.  Partisan demagogues in the robes of the Independent aren't going to get the job done.  In fact, people don't even need to give up their political views to rally around the cause of getting the money the hell out of our political system.  If we don't do that, then I think you can take all of the hope and change, flush it right down the toilet and let it float down the Potomac and out to sea.

People need to wrap their heads around this: If the currency of politics is the dollar and not the vote, then those with the most dollars have the most political power, votes be damned.