About Politicians, Barrel Clowns and Reasonable Expectations

Whowuddathunk? Miss Sarah, the charming storyteller and patron saint of the Tea Party, actually did get one thing right in her speech at the Tea Party convention last week. Which is not too big of a sensation, though, since even a blind chicken does find a kernel every now and then. Here is the kernel of truth she found: "candidates are humans."

My initial response to that was, "fair, as long as those candidates, after being elected, still understand that their constituents are humans as well. Humans who get sick and need healthcare; humans who deserve to live in dignity; humans who have dreams and the right to pursue them; humans whose needs deserve priority over the needs of corporations and foreign investors." And that still stands; always will.

But it is also true that, more often than not, we constituents confuse the political process with a rodeo. We enthusiastically support a candidate for office and after the election strap him/her onto a bull, then let that beast go and watch how long he/she manages to stay on top of it. For entertainment.

Then there are lobbyists, playing the part of barrel clowns. They zip back and forth across the arena, making bull and rider frequently change direction, and dive into the safety of their barrel should the beast come charging after them.

Did the rider well, we elect him/her for another ride. Sometimes we re-elect someone in reward for a spectacular crash. Sometimes we punish someone for being unspectacularly successful. The country may go to hell that way but, boy, what a show! Worth every penny of our children's future.

Politicians are the managers that run our communities, states and the country. We hire them to do that job; they are our employees. Employees do make mistakes, but rarely - extremely rarely - on purpose. It happens mostly because of bad supervision or lacking qualification.

Every business has the employees it deserves. A manager who complains about his/her employees, effectively complains about him/herself. Which means, if we complain about our politicians, we effectively admit that we failed to hire the right employees and supervise them properly.

Campaigns are the hiring process, the job interview, where we have a chance to screen the candidates before we make a decision on election day. They will try to impress us with professional resumes, delivered via TV ads, web sites, direct mail, phone calls and whistle stop tours, often with the intent to obscure rather than inform. Campaigns are getting ridiculously expensive and the more money they cost, the more likely it comes from the same parties that hire the barrel clowns. The job of screening the candidates gets tougher and tougher. But it also gets more important than ever.

Mostly because of the decay of the fourth power, the press, which used to watch our elected officials and keep them in line. The replacement of investigative journalism with entertaining journalism has de-clawed this cat, and it now purrs where it used to hiss. We owe this to a number of factors. One of them is our preference for cheaper (= someone else pays for it) and better (= more positive) news, and it's hard to blame the media for adapting to that. However, the consolidation of newspapers and the adoption of the franchise business model for the distribution of news have made them part of the same corporate culture that hires barrel clowns, which results in self-censorship for the benefit of advertisers and share holders.

But most important is, that our expectations of the office holder are reasonable. We wouldn't expect a car mechanic to repair a car in 1/8th of the time it took us to roll it into the ditch. Yet, some constituents expect a mess that the predecessor created over an eight year period, to be straightened out by the successor within a year or less. They boo him for being slow and at the same time cheer the friends of the predecessor for monkey-wrenching all efforts he makes.

We need to judge politicians based on what they quietly achieve on our behalf, rather than the sensational headlines they create. We must not listen to the propaganda that demonizes seasoned office holders who have high integrity and are committed to protect their constituents against special interest.

Because, if we elect candidates only to strap them onto a bull and have the barrel clowns dictate the direction of the show, then Frank Zappa's words that "the government is nothing but the entertainment department of big business" will come true.