American Politics 101: Persons, Policies, or Paradigms
P. Schultz
It dawned
on me recently, when thinking about an email I got from a really good friend
who I have known since high school, that there are different ways of thinking
about American politics. The friend wrote that she had noticed that I didn’t
care for Hillary Clinton and, more generally, didn’t care for anybody in the
political arena these days. She concluded, rightly, “It is hard to see where
that goes.”
She was
correct in her characterization of my opinion and in her question about where
it left me or others, and it got me wondering just what it was I was doing. Am
I just a cranky old man who doesn’t like anybody involved in politics these
days? And, if so, where does such an attitude take or leave me? Hmm?
Then I
realized that while my friend was correct in her summation of my attitude
towards those involved in our political processes these days, she missed the
reason or reasons underlying that attitude. And to see the reason[s], it is necessary
to see that it is possible to think about our politics in at least three
different ways: In terms of persons, in terms of policies, or in terms of
paradigms.
If you
focus on persons, as an awful lot of Americans do, then you will focus on, say,
Trump versus Obama or Obama versus Bush. Who is the better person? Who made or
is making a better president? Who is more or less trustful? And, more
generally, why can’t we the people seem to elect the right people, those who
will fix our allegedly broken political system?
If you
focus on policies, again as an awful lot of Americans do, then you will focus
on liberal policies versus conservative policies. Under this view, government
and politics is or should be all about making and implementing certain
policies, namely, those that will serve the national interest or the common
good.
If you
focus on paradigms, however, you are not so much interested in who gets elected
or what policies get made as you are with the paradigm within which our
political process plays out. For example, if you focus on the contention that
we in the United States, in the pursuit of national greatness, have consented
to the creation of a national security state resting on what Eisenhower called
“the military-industrial complex,” then who gets elected or what policies they
recommend or make is not of great importance because unless the paradigm is
changed, the outcomes are going to be pretty much the same regardless of who is
elected or what policies are made.
For
example, Trump supporters like to say that he is a proponent of “small
government” and that his efforts to limit the reach of the national government
through deregulation are evidence of this agenda. But insofar as these efforts
take place within and don’t challenge the legitimacy of our national security
state, it can only be said that, at most, Trump favors smaller, not small, government. Moreover, so long as the
established paradigm goes unchallenged, Trump’s “smaller government” will still
be a pervasively powerful national government, able when it deems it necessary
to invade our privacy in almost anyway it wishes. The fact of deregulation, which
is what Trump endorses, does not undermine in itself the legitimacy of
regulation and, so, the next president will be able to reinstate
regulations that Trump trashed.
In fact,
Trump’s own actions or proposed actions have illustrated this very phenomenon. He
trashed a Democratic/Republican inspired regulation that allowed state
governments to drug test certain categories of people who qualified for and
received unemployment benefits, tests that previously had been illegal.
However, now Trump is proposing that another such regulation be created, one
that would be even broader, cover even more people, than the regulation he
trashed. This is hardly a way to create “small” or even “smaller” government. And
it puts the lie to Trump’s claim, more generally, that he is a proponent of
“small” government. He isn’t and he could not be so long as he accepts the
legitimacy and desirability of the national security state or the goal of “making
America great again.” A great nation needs a great government and a great
government will be, always and everywhere, a pervasively powerful government.
To think otherwise is to be delusional.
It is
fairly easy to see that the first two ways of viewing our politics serve to
preserve the status quo because unless the underlying paradigm of our politics
is challenged and changed, it won’t matter so much who gets elected or what
policies are enacted. They will, willy nilly, serve the status quo. And those
like Trump, who likes to think he is challenging that status quo, will in fact
merely serve to reinforce it.
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