15 May 2023
Politics: Career or Mission?
There are two mutually exclusive reasons for devoting one’s life to policy-making in a liberal democracy. The ideal objective of those who seek election to positions of influence in government is to represent the views of a significant constituency or to convince them to conform to one’s point of view. This model of political service is most likely when those acting on behalf of citizens to run the institutions that fulfill the community’s general needs have backgrounds shaped by their experiences and means that are derived from having personally succeeded as a functional member of that society’s economy.
It has become common, however, for politicians to have no other purpose in life but to perform the function of policy-making as their primary or even sole means of making a living. They may have no other rationale for the policies they advocate but to appeal to a sufficient number of voters to guarantee their election. They often have abdicated the formation of their group of supporters to influences other than their own ideas. This turns politics into a statistical game of finding a winning electoral “base” rather than the purposeful satisfaction of common and personally-shared needs.
For example, popular concerns have become very volatile and trendy owing to the explosive growth of unedited interpersonal communications made possible by social media sites on the Internet. One way to correct a structural cause of this distortion of the design of America’s democracy would be to extend the terms of members of the House of Representatives to four years. This doubling might make those law-makers responsive to the longer-term interests of their constituents; it might even help those voters to think farther into the future.
The Federalist, unfortunately, offers no valuable guidance on this issue. It addressed the concerns about representative government at a time when politicians were expected to act guilelessly primarily in the best interests of their constituents, and not some special interest or themselves. If that was assumed to be adequate assurance of the proper performance of state legislatures, argued the Federalist, then the Constitution was considered correct to use the same structure for the federal House.
In fact, Madison advocated a short (two year) term for federal representatives in order to assure their ability to be aware of and consequently respond to the sentiments of their constituents. His belief in the critical thinking of the populous and in their representatives’ scrupulous adherence to their views is remarkable.
In 21st century America, rumor and the drumbeat of mass media are more responsible for popular sentiment than factual analysis. Even facts are considered to be challengeable by “alternatives.”
In the end, the role of the people elected to operate America’s government is always determined by the level of critical thinking among their constituents. Certain voting districts are populated by potential voters who are more likely to think for themselves; the majority of voters in other less dispassionate districts may be more accustomed, and satisfied with abdicating their decision-making to the loudest, most media-savvy, influencers who reach them.
How far we’ve come from the innocent days of the Federalist. Reforming the state of our liberal democracy will require distinguishing the mission of our political leaders from the exclusive advancement their careers and requiring them fulfill the Constitution’s primary objective—promoting the general welfare.
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