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newest.
The midterm elections are now a few weeks behind us and, with
enough showers having washed away the stink of it all, I can reflect with
perhaps a little less anger than I had when the results were more immediate.
I know the conventional thinking is that the Democrats lost
this election and the Republicans won it; I’m here to tell you that the
conventional thinking is wrong. The real losers of this election were the
Republicans.
You remember the Republicans, right? The party that used to be,
right up until the extreme right wing—those people too cowardly to form their
own party—took it over? Yep: that party. The one that originally defined
progressivism, that understood that a “free” market and a “fair” market would
never be the same thing, and so took careful steps to insure a free/fair market
for all. The one that deplored the military/industrial complex. The one that
fostered science and education and charity and spirit. Yeah. I
remember ‘em, too. Now the only thing left of them is the elephant logo. Oh,
wait. That’s not the only thing left of them.
Everything (and everyone) is
left of them. And these people—these representatives—of
this unnamed new party keep getting elected.
More and more I’m wondering if the battles we’re fighting
over our political system are the right battles to wage. Our form of governance
seems condemned to end up even more corrupt, more purchased, than it already is yet, like the pulped, second-rate
prize fighter who doesn’t know that his career is already over, we keep
fighting against the count of ten only to take one more devastating punch.
Perhaps it’s time we took a lesson from Willie Stark, the
anti-hero of Robert Penn Warren’s brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, All the King’s Men. Based (loosely,
according to Warren), on Huey Long’s Louisiana dynasty, the novel portrays a
politician who fundamentally wants to do good things—build safe schools, a
fantastic research hospital, better roads—but is also fundamentally corrupt because he knows that the system is corrupt,
and the only way to do good things is to do them corruptly.
In our political system the corruption seems endemic.
(Actually, “seems” is a word that belongs to a less cynical time. It is endemic—let’s just admit it.) Perhaps
the real problem isn’t that we have a system so prone to corruption, but that
we’ve stopped electing fundamentally good people. Our perspective, if we focus less
on the system and more on the individuals we elect into it, might just shift.
I recognize that this is a form of giving up, of giving in,
of saying that “we can’t change things.” And that’s true: I do believe the
battle is basically over. But the battle has been largely about changing the
game when maybe it should be about changing the players. Perhaps less time
should be spent on where dark money comes from and more time on who that money
supports. Perhaps less time should be spent on whether the Democrat or
Republican Party wins, and more time on the individuals who choose either
mantle.
We are supposed to be a nation of individuals, but we elect
by group. We are supposed to be a nation of individual achievement, but we
worry about system and process. Let’s focus, one at a time, on
the quality of the individuals we choose, selecting those that can breathe the
inevitably corrupt air yet still exhale safe schools, fantastic research hospitals,
and better roads.
Maybe it’s time for us to look at this Stark reality. Good
people can do good things even as they embrace a bad system. So, between now
and the next election, let’s look more at who
than we have in the past, worrying more about the quality of the people we vote
for and less about the system they engage in.
When I began this essay I pointed out that the real losers
in the election were the Republicans. I have to correct myself, though. We are the
real losers, and it’s probably because we’ve stopped electing winners,
regardless of party.
Read since last
post:
·
Foreign Affairs, Alison Lurie (1985)
·
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Robert Olen Butler (1993)
·
The Keepers of the House, Shirley Ann Grau (1965)
·
All the King’s Men, Robert
Penn Warren (1947)
·
The Late George Apley, John
Phillips Marquand (1938)
·
The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck (1932)
Currently reading:
·
The Stories of John Cheever, John Cheever
(1979)
·
Honey in the Horn, Harold L. Davis (1936)
·
Collected Stories, Jean
Stafford (1970)
Count: 59 read, 28 to go
