In sports, we are often taught that true fans root for (or against) the laundry, not the players. A roster turns over, players get traded, retire, or leave through free agency. It doesn’t matter who plays for the Red Sox, I am always going to want them to beat the Yankees. I would be downright gleeful if they didn’t lose a game to New York for the next five years. I have trouble understanding how Yankees fans date Red Sox fans, but I have seen it happen.
The problem is that this mentality has spilled over into politics. You root for Democrats, or you root for Republicans, and the politicians themselves act as if the two parties were adversarial, rather than collaborative. Imagine if your company’s divisions acted like this. What if the Display team and the Search team couldn’t agree on how to divide the Digital budget for 2011, so they simply froze it so that neither side could get anything done. Meanwhile, the client is stuck on the sidelines watching their products not being advertised. That would last for about 10 seconds, until your agency were fired.
In theory, both parties belong to the same company, with the same goal: to ensure peace and prosperity for the citizens of the country. The idea of a party isn’t strictly terrible, either. A group of individual representatives coming together to achieve common goals and push forward a collective agenda makes sense, as long as it works. Any organizational structure is the right one if it contributes to a functioning body, be it a government or a corporation.
The issue is that it isn’t working, and it has been slowly descending into paralysis for years as allegiance to parties became more important than individual contribution. This is ultimately the crux of the biscuit, and what brings me to the most obvious solution:
Get rid of the useless categorization.
How about instead of choosing a team, voters actually elect individuals. Vote for an official because you think he/she has integrity, or has good ideas, or is an able administrator. Make every candidate run on their own merits, with their own funding. Then, you will have a collection of bright, capable people whose views are actually somewhat representative of their constituents, and can work together unrestrained by party lines.
As it stands now, politicians have no choice but to adhere to party stricture, if they want to have a chance of winning/keeping their post. You aren’t likely to replace an incumbent without the financial and PR backing of a party. If you won’t toe a line, they will nominate someone who will. The laundry is what matters in the election process, not the player. If you put the party war chest and PR machine behind basically anyone, they become a viable candidate.
Ultimately though, this is a matter of practicality. Would I love to live in a country where we just elected the best 100 individuals to be Senators, locked them in a room and said “solve some problems?” Hell yes. Do I think it will happen? Of course not. But what they are doing right now, isn’t working.
We live in a results-driven world. When your job is to legislate, and set budget allocations so that the government can do its job, that’s what the people expect you to do. If the current system isn’t working, it is completely unacceptable to stubbornly keep on doing the same old thing. When things don’t work, you have to identify the problem, and then come up with a solution that involves doing something different. In my industry, and I suspect most industries, “test & learn” is a phrase you hear a lot of. If your results are satisfactory, develop a theory, and run with it. If it doesn’t work you stop, but at least you a.) gained some valuable information about what doesn’t work, and b.) YOU DID SOMETHING.
Doing nothing isn’t a solution, and neither party can sell the current service that they are providing to the “consumer” (in this case Americans) with any degree of honesty. I would rather see our politicians try something to fix the economy and see if fail, than see them refuse to do anything because it’s either a potential liability for them if it fails, or a potential win for the other party if it succeeds.
You (I am shifting to speaking directly to the politicians, because it adds narrative force) aren’t doing your jobs right now, period, and a lot of people depend on you. We as a people are sick of excuses, and finger-pointing, and empty rhetoric. Just show us that you are even trying to help. Pretend for a moment that you aren’t athletes playing in the big Republicans-Democrats rivalry game, and that you actually care about the people you supposedly govern for. Make sacrifices, think outside of the box, don’t factor the 2012 elections into your decision making.
Can’t figure out how to compromise on budgets? Here’s an idea: Every Senator takes the 2011 budget and has to make a 1% change somewhere, in any program. He writes it on a slip of paper anonymously, and hands it in. That’s it. If you personally hate Medicare, you can choose to take 1% away there. If you feel that the Pentagon budget is too high, take 1% away there. If you think that infrastructure is a pressing need, add your 1% to the Highway Department. By making it anonymous, everyone will feel free to actually do what they think is best for the country, not their party. By making it an aggregate, naturally, less popular programs will lose money and more popular ones will gain. Chances are the final result won’t make everyone happy, but no one will be able to say they didn’t have a hand in it. As Calvin & Hobbes taught us, “A good compromise leaves everyone unhappy.”
Is that idea unreasonable? How about this: TAKE TURNS. We can learn from children on this one. You don’t think the Democratic plan is a good one? Fine, that’s an opinion you can have. But let it pass, give it 6-12 months, and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, do a post-mortem and try to figure out why, take some lessons from it, and then give the Republicans a shot. Keep taking turns trying solutions until you hit on a fix, if you aren’t able to work together on one.
We recognize that this is a tough situation, and that you guys have an uphill battle in front of you, but give us a little credit. We can forgive mistakes, and we can forgive failures, but inaction is unforgivable.
Very effective use of the second person. A+ for appropriate POV shift.
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