Three-Point Shots, Vol. 2, No. 18: December 28, 2024
Why is our political and civic culture so messed up? A moment of reappraisal.
Welcome to another edition of Three-Point Shots, a part of my Life Its Ownself Substack page. If you enjoy reading it, please 1) hit the Like button, 2) subscribe to the Life Its Ownself, and 3) share it with others in the link below. Comments are welcome and encouraged.
Friday, December 27, 2024
Quote of the Day: “Like a dull-witted Icarus, she has now flown too close to the dumb.”
USA Today’s Rex Huppke, on Marjorie Taylor Greene’s unsuccessful attempt to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson. One of a collection of the year’s best sentences published in the New York Times.
Christmas 2024 has come and gone. The wrapping paper has been gathered up and thrown away, unless you’re one of those households where your mother makes you painstakingly open a present, like you’re performing brain surgery, because she reuses the wrapping paper. Not that I’m not over the trauma of my boyhood Christmases …
Now, a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of New Year’s Eve. I am out in the Trans-Pecos, and New Year’s Eve is looking to be full of good food and beverages, music and cheer. The Broken Wheel Bar, that paragon of gemütlichkeit, will enjoy a steady stream of visitors on both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
We should enjoy this respite while we can; by mid-January, some serious sh*t will be hitting the fan. Will Pete Hegseth dodge the “too incompetent to Secretary of Defense” the way he dodged the sexual assault allegations? Will the internecine MAGA fight over immigration finally dislodge Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy from their self-appointed roles as Tech Bros Nonpareil? Will the Texas House choose a Speaker whose first act is to exclude the chamber’s 62 Democrats from meaningful leadership?
Maybe, during this calm before the storm, we can benefit from looking at the dynamics of our politics to better understand what drives their bizarre and self-destructive energy. And so, today’s post will try to back up a little and ponder root causes.
1. “Too Much Winning”
One of Donald Trump’s signature promises during his first term was that the American people would “get tired of winning.” It didn’t quite work out that way. (Spoiler alert: it won’t in his second term either.) Maybe that’s because we’ve already done the winning.
I have been noodling around with the theory that part of the reason for our anxious, aggressive political culture is that we no longer are jointly committed as a people to survival and growth. We are the most healthy, wealthy, educated, rich, powerful, secure nation in the history of humanity. The need to unite against and surmount external threats is gone, and we stand astride the nations as a military power. The great postwar projects of building a powerful, broad-based economy and securing the blessings of liberty for all our people have succeeded, although both constantly face reactionary attacks.
Part of the reason for our anxious, aggressive political culture is that we no longer are jointly committed as a people to survival and growth. We are the most healthy, wealthy, educated, rich, powerful, secure nation in the history of humanity.
America is a dream land, and if you doubt it, just ask the millions of people around the world who would happily trade places with you.
But our success has made us fat and lazy. After uniting to defeat the 20thCentury’s twin threats of fascism and communism, we now flirt with them both in our domestic politics. Distrust in our social institutions – government, science, the media, academia, even organized religion – has dumbed us down and left us prey to conspiracy theories and “doing our own research.”
In Texas, the takeover of state government by the Republican Party, followed by its hijacking by the Tea Party and the MAGA cohort, have left us with state leaders who compete with each other to be the most cruel (Abbott with his border razor wire, Paxton with out-of-state abortion providers, Patrick with transgender kids) while critical state services, like protecting kids in foster care or ensuring rural citizens have meaningful access to health care, stagnate.
(It is too easy to blame Texas’s current problems on its 30 years of Republican leadership. Democrats, when they ran the joint, were equally happy to underfund schools, deny health care, and shoot holes in the safety net. Bad governance has a rich bipartisan history in Texas.)
2. Work Horses and Show Ponies
You’ve probably heard the distinction between workhorses and show ponies. The workhorse is slow and methodical, even plodding, but gets most of the work done. The show pony prances brightly, puts on a great act, but has little to show for it at the end of the day.
Nowhere is that distinction more evident, or more important, than in politics. Our representatives — local, state and federal — are entrusted with enormous responsibility, given authority over billions and trillions of dollars, with the welfare of millions of people at stake.
When I first started working around the Texas Capitol 35 years ago, there were very few show ponies. Oh, there were the usual collection of morons, grifters and poltroons, but they did not comport themselves like the show ponies of today. That’s because no incentive structure existed to reward being a show pony. In fact, if a legislator tried to act like one, their colleagues and the Capitol media corps would rapidly put them in their place.
When I first started working around the Texas Capitol 35 years ago, there were very few show ponies. Oh, there were the usual collection of morons, grifters and poltroons, but they did not comport themselves like the show ponies of today. That’s because no incentive structure existed to reward being a show pony.
The interwebz and the algorithmic ability to pick your audience changed that, to the detriment of governing all over the country.
An almost-textbook example of the show pony/workhorse dichotomy is Texas Senator Ted Cruz and his predecessor, Kay Bailey Hutchison. Hutchison was revered for her ability to “bring home the bacon” to Texas and was a respected member of the Senate “boys’ club.” Cruz is neither. He quickly made it clear he had no interest in the hard work of governing, preferring instead to sling invective on Fox News and the like. When he did engage on legislative matters, it was always performative, as when he read “Green Eggs and Ham” on the floor of the Senate to support defunding Obamacare.
And now, we have the bizarre phenomenon of politicians running as show horses – promising up front to do no work, pass no bills, and to occupy themselves totally with being in the press and on social media. This, they believe, is more “immediate” than the slog of committee hearings, floor debate, and passing bills.
But wait -- isn’t that the job? And why would constituents, presumably looking for someone to represent their values and bring boons to their districts, want to elect or re-elect such show ponies?
3. The Curious Case of Frank Corte
Frank Corte served in the Texas House of Representatives from 1993 to 2011. He got on my radar screen because he represented the North San Antonio neighborhood in which my mother lived.
Corte was a veteran, and initially added value with his expertise in defense and veteran’s affairs. But after a while, he became what legislative insiders might call “a pain in the ass.” He slowed down or killed seemingly uncontroversial bills.He made obstreperous observations from the back mic during floor debate. He crusaded against “wasteful spending” in completely arbitrary ways. In short, he displayed little of the collegial behavior expected of a successful legislator.
His demeanor puzzled me because of its seeming delf-destructiveness. I thought he was weakening the ties that bind with his fellow House members, which would eventually limit his effectiveness. And that, I reasoned, would eventually cost him with his constituents, who expected him to deliver for the district.
But Frank turned out to be an early prototype of a common phenomenon today: a legislator whose constituents expect him to advance their values and grievances rather than accomplish concrete improvements to their lives. His constituents were well-off and, frankly, did not need much from the government. Their schools were well-funded. Their streets and highways were given loving attention and frequent uopgrades from TXDot. They did not need (as a whole) food stamps, or housing assistance, or any of the other services the State (grudgingly) provides to its neediest citizens. And so, they thought Frank Corte was doing an OK job.
That profile – the legislator who prefers an ideological identity and profile to a high bill passage rate – seems increasingly common in the Texas House, and to have overtaken the U.S. Congress. All to the detriment of the quality of our governance.
The solution is evident but challenging. To improve the quality of our legislators, we must improve the quality of our voters. However, both the values and the skills of civic engagement are no longer taught or comprehended. How to change that?
As the new year emerges from the timeless miasma of … well, time, we will be accosted by fresh outrages on a daily basis. They will come at us like a game of whack-a-mole. Let’s resolve to keep our eyes on the structural defects that make such irresponsible governing possible.
And let’s also resolve to count our blessings and live in gratitude for the lives we are able to live. I care deeply about my country and my state, which is why I get exercised so easily. But those frustrations exist in a background of abundance and quality of life for me, as I believe they do for most of you. Let’s not forget it.
I was impressed years ago by a field experiment organized by Professor James Fishkin (U.T. Government Department) and others regarding deliberative political discussions in which groups achieved positive outcomes after discussions between persons who were initially in disagreement. Similar research continues.
The problem, of course, is there are few incentives or opportunities for people of different political groups to meet and listen to one another. Even in my classroom experiences over the years, students often seemed unyielding and adversarial when differences arose.
❤️