Bloodless Coup

Wonkery

The Slacktivist has an interesting post about the role of real policy debates (as opposed to just partisan bickering/warfare) in present American politics. The Slacktivist's position is that policy debates have two real goals: finding a good solution to a real societal problem (increasing the general welfare), or using the policy process to gain more political power for your side (welfare gains are irrelevant). He notes that our present president is of the latter camp. This article partially echos a Washington Monthly piece from a few months back.

I have little more to add. The two articles sum up what others have noted: this administration has little patience for real policy debates. Everyone is either driven to win at any cost (Rove and the re-election) or over-committed to an ideological position (the neo-cons and Iraq) that an actual debate over the costs, benefits and unintended consequences of any particular policy are immediately shown the door. The fact that this is the rule, rather than the exception, in this administration is just mind-boggling. Real, reasoned debate over policy is essential to any democracy, and certainly essential in this dumbed-down political system we use. Willfully ignoring (or suppressing) policy debates is incompetence, and that should lead to people being fired (at least, that's what's supposed to happen in the real world).

At least for me, this is the key issue that turned me away from this administration. I am ideologically closer to the republican party than the democratic one, but the relentless ignorance and lack of interest in exploring the consequences of this adminstration's actions stuns me. Fine, be ideological, but if the round peg won't fit in the square hole, don't keep smashing it with a hammer again and again and again and again. Either find the right hole for that peg (find a new problem that your solution works for) or find a new peg for that hole (find a different solution to solve that problem). This seems so obvious that it scarcely seems worth mentioning, but it seems missing to this president and administration. There were plenty of problems back in January of 2001. The lack of reasoned policy debate has created new ones (Iraq, budget, "no child left behind", civil liberties - I could go on) and let old ones fester (social security, terrorism, environment, etc). Hence, ignoring policy in favor of ideology has made things worse. Thus, having never voted democrat for president ever, I gladly will go off in November and do so. I prefer solutions that are not ideological to ideologies that don't solve problems.