Past and Present, The Interpretation of Reality
Esquire magazine conducted a survey whose goal was to determine
the political leanings of the American community. Such surveys have been done
in the past, and have established the popular assertion that the country as a
whole is “center right”, meaning we as the American public are mostly
independent, but lean towards the conservative side of the spectrum.
This newest survey of the American public’s political leanings
has led them to move from the more traditional metric of left, center, and
right. Instead, the new metric establish two divisions on the left, two on the
right, and four in the center. The conclusion reached is that there is a new
center in the public’s political ideology and that despite impressions, the public
is no more divided than it has been in the past.
The Esquire Magazine “New American Middle” is an example of
the problem. It’s not that there is a “new” center. It’s that there are too
many people who are either apathetic and don’t care about anything political enough
to do more than offer kneejerk answers on the hot stove issues of the day, or
are a mish-mash of conflicting ideas.
I don’t dispute the idea that the majority of people have
answered honestly, and that as the survey suggests a large portion of the
public is in the center of the political spectrum. But it’s not enough to know where
ideological tests segment the public when you get them to sit down and answer a
battery of questions. There is a serious need to examine the engagement level.
I took the survey and they ask two or three questions
through the entire survey directed towards that question of engagement; who did
you/did you vote in the last national election, how much do you think you pay
attention to politics. I suppose the extent to which you are even willing to
take the survey, or the optional second set of questions that they let you opt
to take for “a more accurate survey”, could reveal a little about how much you
pay attention to politics, but that could just as easily be a matter of the very
same random urges that drive many of the policy stances that the very survey
suggests fuels a portion of the “new middle”.
This survey is a snapshot. It looks simply at a very
simplistic question; what do this collection of people feel about this set of
questions at this moment. That is the nature of many polls and surveys. If you’ve
spent any time at all in a class studying how to actually create and administer
good polls and surveys, you learn that every one of them is flawed in their methodology
and execution, partly because you can never get into the hearts and minds of
the respondents.
People are not fully engaged in the political process –
never have been and likely never will be. They generally don’t “follow”
politics. They’ll see the headlines on whatever their favorite 24 hours news
channel they watch, they hear that sides characterization of the other side’s
coverage. You look at the current mess and you can plot out a very apparent
flow to public sentiment.
In the beginning you had everyone simply saying they were
fed up and that it was everyone’s fault. All sides are to blame, everyone is
screwed up. You had the repetition of death of the phrase, “a pox on both your
houses”. And that was what many were content to settle on – everybody is
terrible, no one has any good ideas, no one is good for anything, just get rid
of the whole lot of them.
Then things changed a little. Because the broader public began
to hear a slightly different narrative. You still have the Democrats blaming the
Republicans, and the Republicans blaming the Democrats. But now you had the
fact that the Democrats were claiming that the Republicans shut down the
government over their obsession with ending Obamacare, and the Republicans
claiming the government was shut down because the Democrats wouldn’t agree to their
changes to the ACA. In other words it was laid bare for the public that it
really was mostly about the Republicans’ demands over the ACA that we met this
mess. As a result, the polls shifted, and the Republicans began to receive an
increased share of the blame over the situation.
However, nothing about the situation had fundamentally
changed. The government didn’t open up and shut down again. No one really
changed any of the facts. Anyone who was paying attention knew all of this from
the beginning, saw this coming days, weeks, maybe even months ago. But as I
said, the public is not engaged. They hear a problem is going on in Washington
and they want it solved. If it’s not solved, their first impulse is to default to
their political leanings. Their second impulse is to then claim that both sides
are equally to blame. Their final position is that everyone is terrible and
they all need to go.
The problem is that this is the formula taken for all
manners of Washington problems. The public isn’t engaged, so they default to
blaming the other side, then retreat to sharing the blame to some on both sides,
and then just derision of everyone. None of which takes any real thought,
engagement, or understanding of the issues at play. You can criticize any
impasse or stalemate with these rudimentary positions of thought and not know
the first thing about the actual conflict or its origins.
The other thing we tend to hear a lot is the exasperated on
the street interview where the citizen says, “I wish they’d just come together and
agree on something”. That happens to be the least helpful advice you can
possibly give. The source of the conflict is obviously a disagreement on what
the proper course of action should be. If it was as easy as just sticking your
hand into a hat and pulling out a random answer then there wouldn’t have been a
problem in the first place. And I don’t know that simply following random lines
of action is any more beneficial than being stuck in a protracted battle over
what the best option is. Just picking an answer is the definition of reckless,
what we have here is simply a horrid mess – in my opinion a mess, even a
recklessly made mess, is better than pure recklessness.
So how does history play into this issue? We are bad at
remembering. We are collectively terrible at being students of history. It is a
fundamental problem that humans are bad at recalling and learning from history.
We tend to morph the lessons of history, our and other’s experiences, to fit a
broader theory or impression. We glaze over the bits that don’t fit so well
with our expectations, whether they be good or bad.
As I’ve noted before, one of the most annoyingly
disconnected tendencies is the constant recollection of some “past” that was
better than the future. For my generation it has mostly been listening to talk
about how great things were in the 80s. Before that it’s about how great the
70s were, and then the 60s, and then the 50s… If you go back every generation
you will find talk about the generation before it, or two generations before
that, or some abject statement of some point in time further back in history
that we must all return to as a better time.
But it doesn’t have to go back that far. The memory over the
creation of the Affordable Care Act has already been whitewashed. Going around
during this debt ceiling and government funding fight is the portrayal of the ACA
being a hastily slapped together, rushed through a Democrat controlled government,
ignoring the needs, wants, and opinions of the Republican opposition.
This view of the passage of the ACA is deeply flawed by the way
in which it keeps some facts and ignores so many important others. Yes, the government
had Democratic majorities in the Congress and controlled the White House. But
the bill wasn’t rushed through Congress. In fact, healthcare reform has been in
the process for decades before a bill could be had. It is a bill that was
twisted and compromised specifically to appease the Republican minority in Congress.
The fact that it isn’t a single-payer system, that it is only now being implemented,
and many other less publicized provisions, were added to the ACA to appease
Republican members of Congress and gain their votes. In fact, that was one of
the biggest fights during the months of argument that went on – the nights of
late night negotiations and trying to establish compromises.
The fact that those very Republicans still voted against the
final measure is indeed the final score, but it isn’t the whole story. It would
be the same of seeing a football game end 21 to 7, but not paying attention
that on the winning team the QB threw a half dozen interceptions, opposing the star
running back couldn’t catch a thing, and the kicker on the losing team missed
three field goals within 35 yards in the second half. None of that changes the
outcome, but it does tell you how you reached that outcome. Or to put it
another way, think about your favorite sports moment – an amazing catch, an
amazing homerun, a buzzer-beating shot. Chances are you remember that moment a
lot easier than the actual outcome.
When many people look back on history, they tend to recall
only the bits they like or that prove their point. They ignore some of the
constructive parts that help to shape and inform the lessons that are supposed
to be applied towards the present. That is what learning from history really
means. It requires not just lining up a couple points to try to hang something
on. It’s also about recognizing where the differences are and figuring out how
that affects the way in which current events will transpire.
For the survey, or to test where you fall in its estimation, head here. Till next time.
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