Some Problems with American Politics

I spent a good bit of time before New Year’s flipping between CNN, MSNBC and Fox News to find out about the progress being made on the “fiscal cliff” talks. The more I thought about that fiasco the more I decided to share my view of the problems in American politics.

The average American seems to understand much more than our elected officials. Married people know if you want a marriage to work you need to learn to compromise. For the most part the ability to compromise is seen as a good thing in life – except with our politicians.

In order to get out of the primaries, representatives have to pander to the extreme elements in their party. That means politicians take a hard line on many issues. They soften only slightly in the general election with a goal of winning over as many undecided voters as possible because neither party has such a stronghold that they can rely solely on their base to get them elected.

Once the elected officials get to Washington they’re beholden to those who elected them and the extreme positions they espoused. The principle of consistency, the psychological trait that tells us people want to be consistent in word and deed, makes it difficult for politicians to move from their original positions even if new data dictates that doing so would be best for the majority of Americans.

Despite what we learned about democracies and majority rule it’s never that simple because of procedural rules that allow each party to bring things to a halt or a snail’s pace. While there are good reasons for these rules, they seem to be abused by both sides and the result is the gridlock we’ve seen in Washington for far too long.

Another issue is the mentality politicians seem to have about re-election. It’s almost the same mentality American businesses now have about quarterly earnings. Businesses can be so focused on the short-term that they make bad long-term decisions. For example, too often companies don’t make needed investments in things like technology in order to keep expenses low and boost quarterly earnings which makes the stock price look good. In the same way politicians seem to do what’s best for them in the short-term (i.e., get re-elected) as opposed to the long-term good of the country. Personally I think term limits would help alleviate this to some degree.

Lastly, I’ll share what I call “the law of the gym.” When I was just out of college I was competing in bodybuilding contests. My weight was around 225 lbs. and I would diet down to about 195 lbs. for competitions. I quickly learned I could not burn enough calories through exercise alone to lose those 30 lbs. In fact, exercising too much would eventually be counter-productive to my goal. To put this in perspective, consider this – running two miles burns approximately 250 calories or the equivalent of a Snickers bar. Which is easier to do, run two miles or skip the candy bar? It was obvious I needed to restrict my diet in certain ways. The good news was, between the exercise and dieting I was always able to reach my goal weight.

Let’s apply “the law of the gym” to politics and our current debt situation. Tax revenues are like exercise; we can’t raise them enough to get out of debt and raising them too much could actually hurt us if jobs are lost. Our nation needs to go on a diet – spending cuts – in addition to our exercise – recent tax increases. To go on spending as we are will only cause the debt to grow. Hopefully our politicians can reach some compromise and start reducing government spending so the debt begins to come down.

And speaking of the debt, we’ve become desensitized to how large it’s become. Hundreds of millions, billions and trillions are figures that no longer cause us to bat an eye. Only when you compare and contrast the debt to something can you begin to wrap your mind around it, so here’s a comparison point for you.  If you spent $1 million a day since the time of the Egyptian empire you would only pay off a trillion dollars of our debt. More than 2,700 years at a million dollars a day hardly makes a dent!

Now consider our national debt at roughly $16 trillion. If we could pay it down by $1 million a day it would take us more than 48,000 years to pay it off! When politicians talk about it being immoral to pass on our debt to the next generation that’s not as big a problem as passing our debt on to  thousands of generations! How would you feel if we were still paying down the debt of the ancient Egyptians or Romans?

I no longer consider myself an affiliate of either party because neither represents my views any longer. There are elements of each that I agree with but there’s so much with both that I disagree with that I can’t consider myself a Republican or a Democrat. It’s my hope that sometime during my lifetime we get a third or fourth alternative to choose from because right now most of us find ourselves choosing between the lesser of two evils.

Brian, CMCT® 
influencepeople 
Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”.