My enemy’s enemy’s friends
Or, Travails in the Modern Political System…
Watching Obama and the democrats struggle to get a stimulus bill kills the post-election and inaugural euphoria and reminds me of what it is like trying to get politicians to do what I want. You may not know it but for a short while in 2004, I was on Kentucky’s Capitol Hill in Frankfort nearly every day. I was trying the impossible: I wanted to convince our legislature to do something in their citizen’s best long-term interest while two huge corporations (BellSouth and Alltel at the time) were trying to convince the legislature to make things far more convenient for them while lowering the likelihood that there would ever be consumer choice in broadband by stacking the cards in favor of the massive telephone companies. The story is a good one, and probably worth telling some other time.
What I’m most taken by today is how it was to talk to the legislature and try to get them to go my way. What strikes me as most memorable now is how absolutely slimy most politicians are. I have known many politicians via family since I was little. They have, without exception, struck me as friendly, gracious guys who are always jovial, always have good timing, sometimes modest, often appropriately inappropriate, and most of all “grandpa-ish”. Lively, earthy, and kind: definitely grandpa. Another thing: without exception, they are all old white men, of significant means, often ex-lawyers, and ex-farmers.
So you can imagine, seeing these guys, you start to talk and you instantly feel like you can lay all your troubles down at their feet. And that’s what you end up doing. If you’re walking, within a second they’ve got their hand across your back, helping you share the burden. If you’re sitting, they’re leaning forward listening directly to you. In the hands of a good politician, you know that you are important, you are making a difference at the highest possible level, and you are a smart, resourceful citizen. Politicians always smile and nod, interjecting with important supporting points, sighs of frustration at your frustration and vociferous agreement with your overall position. During the short time I tried to stop the phone companies from destroying cooperation clauses in state law, I have left many wood-paneled offices of politicians. I never left with any doubt. They were behind me 100%. Rookie mistake.
What didn’t I do? I didn’t seal the deal. I never got them to answer that they would support me. In politics, you can make all the other noises, but if you don’t quack you aren’t a duck. Nobody, it turned out, supported our side. Why? Well they were in the pockets of the phone company lobby which spends billions to make sure that their oligopoly stayed that way. They have a number of tools at their disposal: their own corporate lobbies, an association that lobbies for them, and most potent of all, a telecommunications workers union that lobbies on their behalf. For everyone one visit from me or one of my competitors, they received four or five visits from the arms of the telecommunications empire the Bells created. More importantly, I wasn’t carrying checks for campaign donations or promises of voting blocs from endorsements, which they were.
So it ended how it did. But what I will never forget that these guys, some of whom I had known my entire life, would do everything short of lying to me to make me feel good and then after “weighing” the arguments in private, they voted unanimously to pass this bill out of committee. There was never any doubt in their minds. I was for the best thing for competition, for the state, and for the long-run. But I was worth $0 and one vote. So I wasn’t even worth disagreeing with because there wasn’t even a bridge to ceremonially burn. Despite being on the right side in our minds and, I believe, the minds of the legislators I visited for days on end, I and my ilk got what was coming to us: nothing.
The stimulus bill was caught the same crap this week. It is because politics at its natural peak of evolution is such a complicated calculation of money, power, votes, influence, and party platforms that the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Everyone does exactly what is in their best interest and no one, and I mean no one’s interests are best served. It is an offense to democracy that we are in the state that we are. The stimulus bill is a horrible mess. All those expecting Obama to use his mandate to steamroll through a sensible and responsible bill, good luck. Every vote that he needs to get this passed comes from politician. A $1 trillion dollar omnibus stimulus bill is a blank check. What are we getting for this? We’re getting guys reelected. How much is that worth? Well about $1 trillion dollars. These guys know that their performance is measured by what they bring back to their donors, so they’re bringing it all home.
And what of the Republicans? Well, they’re not in power, but their influence could have made this bill sensible. But the cost of getting one, just ONE Republican to switch sides is so high that the party considers it high treason to jump ship. Any Republican caught even contemplating a vote (in exchange for money to their district as well as some leeway on provisions) would be castrated on the spot by the party whip. So having a weakened Republican party has hurt the nation because the only votes left to get are the ones from the dems, and they can basically write their own ticket.
But don’t mistake this for high political theatre. No, this is dead serious business. These guys are operators and manipulators who have made it to the highest levels. Every single one of them could get oil from gold nuggets and comparatively a constituent is an easy mark. Next to a Congressman, the guys in the Kentucky Legislature are small fries. And the lobbyists in Washington, dear God, if they weren’t in it for the power any of them could make their first billion from selling Mary Kay in the greater DC area.
Plummeting back into reality after thinking that things could change, the whole episode with the bag of cats that is Congress and the stimulus bill makes me realize that it’s a continual, despicable calculation of who’s my friend and who’s my enemy. And my enemy’s enemy’s friends… well they’re mine too. At this point, I honestly believe that the solution is to wipe out the major source of revenue: campaign contributions, to zero the playing field. If these guys were just playing for votes without massive media boosts that campaign donations provide, the game would still be as dirty but at least it wouldn’t be hog wrestling in a hurricane.
The moment that lawmakers are forced to serve the nation’s best interests, the moment that their ticket to ride isn’t attached to serving the needs of the (rich) few over the many, that’s when we’ll see change. More than a stimulus bill, more than righting the wrongs of the Bush era, if Obama could produce these reforms, he’d have a real spot in the books. But remember again that the opponents of the bill would be exactly those who need to pass it before he can sign it. And so long as that happens, despots will continue to play the old game.
