I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the state of politics in America, even at the state and local levels.
The political fabric of this country is torn. The machine is broken and somehow it keeps spiraling farther and farther away from a representative government of the people.
Let’s be completely honest, it has been a long time since members of Congress could be considered common citizens, though that was the original idea. Sure, the founders of our government weren’t poor, but what set them apart from the common man was intelligence and vision for the future of America. They cared about the prosperity of the country, even if they were fiercely divided on how to attain it.
Can you tell me that you believe even a fraction of our national leaders are as concerned with the advancement of the country as they are with the longevity of their own political careers? Congress will bog down governmental operations or stall appointments solely as a springboard for their party’s own agenda. They hold budgets hostage while grandstanding on cherry-picked line items. They would rather see a problem persist than to see the other party take credit for fixing it.
They spend more time campaigning than legislating and dirty campaigns are the baseline, rather than the outlier. Politicians bootlick for donations and become beholden to the entities with the biggest checkbooks. Our political system now allows corporations to climb, using Congress as a handrail and the citizenry as steps.
The current system rewards longevity rather than achievement and that is wrong. The most important attribute of the modern politician is an exhaustive knowledge of how to play the game of favors.
The 2024 Presidential race has divided the country but there is a unifying thread among a majority of voters – the idea that these can’t be the only options. These two geezers can’t be the best of us. One is feeble and forgetful and the other would brand the moon with his name if allowed.
Congress isn’t any better. Mitch McConnell and Dianne Feinstein? They are/were Muppets, led to meetings and prompted how to vote.
Even our state government, as the First Energy scandal showed, is polluted with those more concerned with back-room handshakes than meaningful policy.
And make no mistake, the system corrupts. I have seen young, well-intentioned politicians pack up their lunch pails and head to the capitol (state or federal) only to morph into one of the cogs they swore to dismantle.
I don’t have a ton of faith in people, but I have enough hope to believe that we are made of better men and women than we are currently electing.
So where are the true leaders? Where are the smart, empathetic Americans who value people over power?
The sad answer is, those people are smart enough to see the blackened heart of government and they want no part of it. They know you can’t trade favors like a school-lunch dessert and then make principled reform to broken programs. If a new politician rigidly clutches to their ethics, they will exit the capitol with them in tact – in two to six years.
There are a lot of truly good, civic-minded people who don’t want to open their lives to ugly, expensive campaigns.
If you need a local example, look at the Marysville School Board. In 2023, two seats on the board were open and three qualified candidates campaigned for them. Back in 2021 a single seat was vacated and the board asked residents to simply apply for the position. Nineteen individuals threw their names into the hat, ready to serve. The candidates, a near even split of men and women, were from a variety of backgrounds, ages, occupations and, gasp, political parties.
The people of Marysville have done a pretty good job lately of infusing some new blood into city council. Younger members dot the board now, bringing the voice of “new” Marysville to the council, though the group is without a single female voice right now.
This got me thinking about how beneficial it could be if filling local boards and councils could capture a piece of the what the school board saw by simply seeking applications.
Think of the voices that could be represented if you didn’t have to campaign for a local position. Imagine a Marysville Council where the four city wards each elected a council member, as they do now, but the three at-large seats were drawn, randomly, from a pool of qualified candidates. You could set eligibility criteria to weed out the truly unqualified. But if a resident met the criteria and affirmed they would put the time in, they would be eligible to serve. If selected at random, the term could be capped at four years, after which the individual would have to run for a ward seat if they wished to remain on council.
A ridiculous notion? One far less strict is used to determine the guilt or innocence of people in court. A large percentage of those serving on juries see the undertaking as a nuisance. If a person’s freedom, or very life, could be put in the hands of someone annoyed by the process, surely a citizen interested in service, devoid of campaigns and politics, should have a path.
Clearly, I’m just spit-balling, but my point is there are strides that can be made to improve government. The hurdle is that those entrenched in the briar bush of politics are protected by its thorns. Much like the tar pit of gerrymandering, those who benefit from the problem are the only ones empowered to correct it.
The Founding Fathers knew the dangers created by a government that dissolves into partisan feuds. They had seen them in the civil wars in England in the 1600s. Because of this, they made no mention of parties or “factions” in the Constitution. It wasn’t an omission of ignorance. They hoped to avoid the blood cost of infighting. James Madison specifically addressed the danger of political factions in the Federalist Papers, written to support the Constitution, saying, “Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.”
Thomas Jefferson was less optimistic, writing at one point, “men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties.’’ And it would be supporters of Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton who would go on to form the first two American factions.
History aside, my point is effective government is impossible until the hurdles to service are cleared. You can’t fix a car’s engine from the driver’s seat and, similarly, we can’t rely on politicians to straighten out the political machine. Only a grassroots movement by citizens could ever hope to level the playing field so that the America’s best minds might consider helping to lead the nation.
I believe there are a lot of principled people that would serve in government, if politics didn’t get in the way.
-Chad Williamson is the managing editor at the Journal-Tribune