Simple Political Competence

Media keeps calling it "leadership"—the thing that had been missing in 45's administration, that Biden restored. But 45 was a leader of sorts. His base was drawn to that. What he lacked was the competence to manage the parts of government we rely on.

As a public, we lack competence too. We interview prospective leaders but not on how policy will work. Just please sound sure. We'll vote promises, fear, hope. That's why education must be in reach of everyone: so we ask harder questions and understand the answers. Democracy cannot not survive an uneducated public.

Politics must care about science because policies must address what the world throws at us. Science can't fully predict the future, but it can report the odds, letting us be more prepared. To Ignore such a potential edge shows willful lack of competence.

Climate Change is here, gaining steam. To oppose addressing it is willful denial and plain incompetence. A partisan divide over simple, unavoidable truth makes no sense, but if the GOP wants to draw the line there, say it plainly: They're the Party of Incompetence.

There is a lot of work to do ahead. 45 left things in shambles, some borne of evil profiteering intent, other parts of manifest incompetence of the highest order. Even when dug out from that, we have big problems afoot. We need competent solutions.

Let go of centrism, which says no matter the problem, modest solutions are enough, an incompetent claim. Big problems may need big solutions.

• Identify compassionate goals. (Or why bother?)
• Fairly express problems.
• Offer competent solutions.
• Only then, lead.

Recent shifts in diversity and inclusion are a good start at compassion and fairness. Campaign funding reform is key, too. Properly representing We The People lays foundation to solve the right problems. Competently describing and solving problems will do the rest.

Democratic Values

✓ Compassion
✓ Fairness
✓ Competence
✓ Leadership
  (democracy)

The GOP fancies itself the party of values. Dems have values, too, but have been incompetent at articulating them. That must change.

Compassion. Fairness. Competence. Leadership.

Pick a simple set like I've offered here. Repeat them every single day for 4 years.

The previous President had very few competencies, and terrible values. There is not a lot to learn from him other than what not to do. But he knew how to get a message out. The messages he picked were terrible. But repeating them daily clearly had an effect on many voters.

Democrats should learn from that—not the messages, but a way to deliver messages so they sink in. Daily repetition is essential.

And did I mention repetition helps? It's part of competent messaging.

Bill Clinton's campaign was famously designed around the mantra "It's the economy, stupid." I would almost suggest the phrase "It's the competence, stupid." but calling each other stupid won't get us far.

Also, competence isn't the whole of it, just something recently and conspicuously missing in the GOP. Actually, all of these important qualities are lacking in the GOP, except leadership.

Republican Values

❌ Compassion
❌ Fairness
❌ Competence
✓ Leadership
  (autocracy)

The GOP does offer leadership, but of a pure authoritarian kind.

• GOP policy lacks compassion.
• GOP policy lacks fairness.
• GOP policy lacks competence.

That's why articulating values in this way matters.

• These are not words you can usefully attack.
• These are not words you can easily forge.
• These are words that most voters would say they care about.

Plus, in difficult times, well-articulated values can cut through political disagreements. They serve as a compass to remind us of where we're going, why we're going there, and why it matters to choose plans that really get us there.

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This post began as a Twitter thread I posted on Feb 20, 2021.

The “Two Unprincipled Parties” System

A lot of noise is made from time about how our so-called two-party system is what makes America strong. That might be so. But I wonder if it works the way people think.

The first thing I notice as I think about this issue is that we don't have two parties. We have a number of them. But it's true that there aren't a lot of people voting for these other parties, and voters pretty quickly learn that under the present rules (I'll blog about the virtues of preference-order voting another day), a vote for a third-party candidate is just a wasted vote. If you do vote for such a third-party candidate, you'd better be happy with the most popular of the big two candidates because you're throwing away your right to vote for the other of those two.

But my personal theory is that what's really useful about our system is not that it's about two parties, but that it's two unprincipled parties. Ok, perhaps I'm slightly stretching the meaning of the term “unprincipled” because I really don't mean “without any principles” and I'm not even meaning to say they're “hypocrites.” But I do mean “without specific and unchanging principles.”

I hear murmuring out there in the audience, but you can spare me. The Republicans are not the party of fiscal conservatism, small non-invasive government, patriotism, etc. I might have been a Republican myself long ago if something as simplistic and reliable as that described that crowd.

And before you get too comfortable, because I know this forum is mostly full of Democrats, the Democrats have their share of deviations from alleged principle, too. I don't see Obama talking about how he wants to give all gays the right to marry, for example.

What people will say or refuse to say is market driven on both sides. At any given time, both parties usually have an articulated platform, but over long periods of time, that platform shifts. And I claim that's mostly a good thing.

In fact, the opinion of Rush Limbaugh and the Rightwing Talk Media to the contrary, changing one's mind as one gains experience can be good. It's called learning, and it's good for us.

So I think it's no accident that the two parties enjoy almost exactly the same coverage and that some elections are right around 50%. I think what happens in many elections is that the party that perceives itself as being behind gives up just enough ground in terms of its' alleged principles in order to get people to cross the aisles. They don't want to give up more than they have to because they each perceive themselves as principled and they perceive shifts like this as being done somewhat under duress, in order to save the party from being permanently locked out.

I used to listen to Rush until I decided I was just tired of him and couldn't bear it any more. It wasn't his ideology that drove me away—I enjoy hearing people who think differently than me. It was his attitude and tactics that drove me away. The same with O'Reilly, Hannity and Colmes, and the rest of the Fox line-up. It's just re-runs after a while, with nothing new to learn, so I gave up.

One thing I remember Rush saying was that people who are middle of the road in their politics are without principle—in effect, that “moderate” is not a substantively meaningful description of a political position, that it represents unprincipled compromises between legitimate political positions. Cynically, I think he said this because he wants to drive his opposition to the far Left, or even just wants to pretend his opposition is already to the far Left, because it's just easier to make a case against extremists than against moderates. So it serves him to believe that that's all there are in the world: extremists, who are either himself (on the correct end), bad guys (on the wrong end), and people who have no legitimate positino at all.

I don't buy that there aren't legitimate positions in the middle; I think they're just not well characterized. It's more like the question asked Dorothy early in the Wizard of Oz, “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” It may indeed be that there is no legitimate other kind of witch, but that fact doesn't mean there isn't some third position for Dorothy to take, it just means the choices are not offered in a very useful way.

One of the reasons I think Nature has been so successful with Evolution over so many years is that I don't think it worries a lot about labeling itself. It just goes with what's working and doesn't fuss about how an animal or whole species is named. Survival is what counts, not labeling. And I think that while the Democrats and Republicans try to impose a lot of naming as a matter of tactic, the engine driving the political system as a whole, and the two major parties in particular, is more organic than is commonly acknowledged, and is interested more in surviving than in adhering to any fixed set of principles.

In fact, if you look around the globe at other countries that have more parties, you'll see there are serious obstacles to any of those parties growing substantially. The problem isn't the number of parties, it's the principled nature of the parties. Being principled holds them back. Because to change parties, the people within them have to give up their principles! And who wants to do that? Whereas since being Republican or Democrat really doesn't mean anything, it may be difficult but it's not impossible for at least those people who view themselves as living comfortably in the middle to wander back and forth, creating the market stresses that force the parties to change from time to time.

The situation right now is a perfect example. A lot of people who thought themselves Republicans realize they are not well-served so have crossed the line. For someone who grew up self-identifying as a Republican, it may be weird or annoying to be called a Democrat. But it doesn't mean saying “Ok, I'll be a liar.” or “Ok, I'll stop caring about fiscal responsibility.” Indeed, part of what they're doing is realizing these parties are capable of shifting and that theirs has shifted out from underneath them. But things will shift back toward the middle, or even sharply back to the Republican field, if the Republican party changes to be more like what is needed to woo voters back or if the Democratic party fails to offer what people are seeking. Each party represents room for change, and a vacuum won't last long there.

So three cheers for people having the principles and political parties not having them. It's what keeps things working.

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Originally published October 28, 2008 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman. You can find additional discussion by other Open Salon members there.

My notes from that time...

These ideas are something I've thought about for quite some time. The decision to write about this today was by a desire to respond to Greg Randolph's article The Implosion of the Republican Party. Thanks, Greg.

The public domain graphic came from freeclipartnow.com.

Tags (from Open Salon): planks, plank, platform, unprincipled, principled, principles, third-party, political parties, two political parties, two-party system, 2008 election, politics