How Did Things Get This Bad?

Posted Jan 8, 2010 by Kris DiGiovanni

Updated Jan 8, 2010 at 12:56 PM

I got an email from a friend today that purported to be column written by former Orlando Sentinel writer Charlie Reese.  In it, the column, actually written nearly 15 years ago, has been added to and doctored up to be a scathing indictment of the US current government.  It calls out all 545 of them – the 100 senators, 435 congressmen, nine Supreme Court justices, and the president - and blames them for creating everything that’s wrong with the country today.  It then urges the reader to vote them all out of office and “clean up the mess.” 

I get stuff like this almost every day, and I’m always amused by it.  It also frightens me a bit to think that people might read it and take it to heart

Charley Reese’s original column makes two strong points: (1) our elected officials should be held accountable for everything they do and not try to place blame elsewhere, and (2) the current (remember this was 15 years ago) group are incompetent and irresponsible. 

Let’s look at that last point for a moment.  If this was true 15 years ago, and it’s still true today, why didn’t the American public in effect, throw the bums out, and replace them with upstanding, competent folks who have our best interests at heart?  It’s not like we haven’t had any chances.  There have been eight congressional and four presidential elections since 1995.  Yet we’re still griping about how worthless our government leaders are.  Why haven’t we done something about it?

The reason is precisely that illustrated so well by the email I got today - inflammatory emotional rhetoric, and a demand for an immediate knee-jerk reaction. 

Think about the last few elections.  Have they been characterized by thoughtful, reasoned debate based on facts that have been well researched, and objectively presented?  No.  They been based on spin, half-truths, outright lies, smears, unqualified opinionating, scare tactics, extremism, and self-interest.  That’s what voters have to sort through to choose a candidate.

Many voters apparently have yet to realize that a candidate is a commodity that is being marketed to them, and there are no “fairness in advertizing” laws governing political campaigning.  While drug makers are required by law to disclose potential side effects, political candidates are not.  While foods are required to list everything that went into them, candidates are not.  Products aren’t supposed to use deceptive packaging – e.g.: a big box to make it seem like there’s more inside – but candidates are free to do so.

Celebrity endorsements are a well-known successful marketing trick to get consumers to choose certain products over other.  Expert opinion is another successful technique – people dressed like doctors on TV are required to tell us they are not real doctors when advertizing a product.  People on TV, radio, or the Internet providing opinions about candidates are not required to have any expertise, let alone reveal their actual qualifications. Rush Limbaugh and others like him are shining examples of the use of both these tactics in politics.

The fact is, anyone can say almost anything they want about a specific candidate, and a candidate can say just about anything about him or herself.  The secret to success is getting enough people to believe that it is true.

And so that is why we have the politicians we have today.  They are in Washington not because they are best qualified to do the job, but because their advertizing worked the best.  Whatever tricks they may have used to convince voters they were the right choice, worked.  More people we fell for them than saw through them.  Or maybe more people were so confused or disenchanted by the whole slimy process that they didn’t even participate. 

The bottom line is that the people who showed up and cast their votes put them where they are now.  If you are dissatisfied with what’s going on in Washington, you have only yourself to blame.  Either you fell for a bad candidate’s song and dance, or you recognized the bad candidates, but didn’t work hard enough to keep others from falling for their song and dance, or you didn’t bother to vote.

It is, after all, we have a government “of the people and by the people.”  Whether that government is also “for the people” is entirely up to us. 

The author can be reached at KrisDiGiovanni at gmail dot com