The Wrongologist

What’s
Wrong Today:

“Institutions will try to preserve the
problem to which they are the solution.” – Clay
Shirky

Today
we return to a question that dominated this blog in 2012: What kind of country
do you want? The quote above by Clay Shirky, a writer on the
social and economic effects of Internet technologies, is a great place to start.
In a sense, we are defined by the problems we are solving. The Shirky Principle,
describes a co-dependency, in which the entity tends to prolong the problem it
is solving.

This
describes the politics of deadlock
that drives our country today. But, progress demands that we must let go of
the current political process. 

This is
the most fascinating issue of our current time: The fact that electoral strategies have little to do with creating
consensus around ideas. Getting elected and staying elected isn’t just a part of the equation, it IS the equation: These
guys are trying to eke out a living by getting elected, and then by becoming millionaires, if they are not one when they arrive in DC.

Self-perpetuating
polarization is a feature of democracy, designed create and then solve political differences. If there were no differences, resolution wouldn’t be necessary. It
requires opposing candidates for us to choose between, and then our elected
representatives will occasionally vote on contested
legislation.

We need to
develop an entirely new understanding of politicians, parties, and elections,
because what we tell ourselves about our democracy does not mirror reality. Maybe
there’s no politics left and it’s all business.

The Shirky
Principle explains why neither party is interested in attempting to vanquish
the other. This is America, after all — you can barely swing a cat without
hitting someone whose self-interest can be bought for six figures.

In order
to compete with the Republicans financially, the Democrats have to raise equal
amounts of money. There is no way out for the Dems because they need the money to
compete. There is no way out for the Republicans because they need the extremist
voters that push them further away from the mainstream.

Both
parties must keep moving the solutions just beyond their reach to stay in power, and Americans are screwed as a result.

Lawrence
Lessig has an interesting column at the Atlantic
about campaign finance post the Supreme Court’s latest outrage, McCutcheon v. FEC, which struck down
aggregate limits on campaign contributions. He asks; What can we do to take control of
our government back from entrenched interests? Are Americans even interested in
doing so? Lessig quotes a July 2012 survey by the Clarus Research Group that asked this question:

80% of
people surveyed said they thought that reforms were only self-serving, designed
only to “help current members of Congress get re-elected.”

We are
resigned to the current system precisely because
we view the very process by which we would effect change as corrupt. This
causes us to steer away from the politics of reform, and focus our (dwindling
level of) political attention on other issues instead. The ordinary way we do
politics in America—Democrats yelling at Republicans, Republicans yelling at
Democrats—won’t move this issue, because neither side wants to change the
system under discussion. From Lessig: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

We’ll only get campaign finance reform if the people in Congress or our presidential
candidates ask for it. There are
proposals for fundamental electoral reform, and at least a few (e.g., the Government by the
People Act, or the American Anti-Corruption
Act) that could genuinely change the system, if enacted.

We won’t
get extensive reform though; we’ll get some sort of reform that preserves the
influence of money in politics while reducing the amount of time they have to spend
raising it.

What we
need is to enact legislation that places a hard,
absolute cap on the amount of money that can be spent for/by each candidate.
This would vitiate Citizen’s United
and McCutcheon and create a level
playing field in each race. The cap could vary by level of office sought, from
town councils to governors, to congress, the senate and the presidency.

Passing
legislation based on this idea requires a narrative that Americans will rally behind. The Wrongologist wrote here
about the importance of building a narrative that will convince voters that they
can actually create change:

Most people
in this world are focused on the things directly in front of them, finding the
resources to house, clothe and feed their families, to find jobs and just
survive. But the right narrative can unblock both practical and motivational issues, and can lead to real change.

So, let’s
work on changing how political influence happens.

Let’s
start with a hard cap on all campaign spending by candidate.