If you took all the deception and fraud out of politics, there might not be a lot left.
Nor is this peculiar to our country or our time.
Back in eighteenth century England, Adam Smith referred to “that insidious and crafty animal,
vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whose councils are directed by the momentary
fluctuations of affairs.”
Yet large segments of the public, across the political spectrum, continue to look to political
messiahs for “solutions” to our problems.
To understand political issues, you have to understand the incentives facing the politicians
who frame those issues and craft “solutions.”
To expect politicians to put the public interest above their own personal interests is to defy
thousands of years of history, in countries around the world.
Exceptional leaders in exceptional times may put the nation’s well-being ahead of their
own interests.
But to bet the survival of a nation on having an unbroken succession of exceptional leaders
would be one of the most reckless gambles imaginable.
In a democracy, especially, an informed and skeptical citizenry is a crucial bulwark against
the short-sighted political expediency which remains as much the norm among crafty politicians
today as it was in Adam Smith’s time.
One of the trends that can become part of a perfect storm of disasters for American
society has been a decades-long dumbing down of education, producing a citizenry poorly
equipped to see through political rhetoric, and even more poorly supplied with facts and
the ability to analyze opposing arguments.
Thousands of students graduate each year, from even the most prestigious schools and
colleges in the country, with no real knowledge of history and no real analytical skills at
dissecting opposing views.
It was once the proud boast of educators that “We are here to teach you how to think,
not what to think.”
But today, all too many educators see the classroom as a golden opportunity for them
to indoctrinate a captive audience.
The specifics of their indoctrination are not the biggest problem.
Quite aside from the merits or demerits of the specific indoctrination—whether “global
warming” or the new trinity of “race, class and gender”—what the indoctrination
process does is get students used to hearing one side of issues and being urged to reach
conclusions and act on that grossly inadequate basis.
Such an “education” sets them up to become victims of the next skilled demagogue who
comes along and who knows what kinds of rhetoric will get them to respond as automatically
as Pavlov’s dog.
Too often voting is conceived as some sort of expressive outlet for the voters, rather
than as a solemn responsibility to pick the best people to lead the country.
The emphasis is on getting as high a voter turnout as possible, even if that means pulling
into the process people who have only the most meager knowledge or interest in the issues
at hand.
Such people cannot preserve freedom, or perhaps even survival, in the face of politicians
looking out solely for their advantages of the moment.
Not all political leaders are like that of course.
Perhaps the most striking examples to the contrary were the men who created the United
States of America and wrote the Constitution.
But it is well worth noting that most of these men were not career politicians.
They had very different careers that they put aside in order to serve in extraordinary
and historic times.
We cannot wait for another such remarkable set of leaders and circumstances to come along
again, for a whole society can be destroyed from within or without, long before there
is such an assemblage of leaders again.
When Benjamin Franklin was asked what the Constitutional Convention was producing, he
replied, “A republic, madam—if you can keep it.”
Those who wrote the Constitution of the United States understood that a self-governing society
was an experiment, and one that was not guaranteed against failure.
Generations later, Abraham Lincoln raised the question whether “government of the
people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
Today, perhaps more so than ever, it is the people who ultimately will provide the answer
to that question—and that answer is by no means guaranteed.