Political Exigencies

    American voters' attention is often drawn to 'sexy', emotional issues that have very little impact on their daily lives but about which they have strong opinions tied to their identity. As a 'conservative' they will vote for any candidate who will support their individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense (as they and the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) interpret the Second Amendment). As a 'liberal' they will express outrage at the willingness of SCOTUS to overturn the precedent set by Roe v Wade, allowing for individual state legislatures to outlaw abortion. 

    But how often do most Americans actually rely upon their own firearms to shoot another person in self-defense? How often does the average American get an abortion? Are most Americans seeking to have an abortion most days? 

    Contrast these issues with more boring ones. How often do most Americans find themselves driving on a public road? What about how often Americans find themselves turning on the lights or drinking, cooking, or bathing with water in their home? Yet these issues get short shrift at the ballot box. Why? Why don't voters focus more on issues that actually affect their daily lives? Why aren't politicians and voters more honest with themselves about what policies actually are in the public interest?

     Take the topic of speed limits. Many major American interstate highways have a posted speed limit of 55 mph. Why? It turns out that many highways were designed to support much higher speeds of traffic, sometimes above 70 mph. In the 1970s the OPEC oil crisis spurred a decision by Congress to mandate a reduction of the speed limit on interstates from 65 mph to 55 mph because at 55 mph cars experience less wind resistance and therefore have better fuel economies. But we no longer face a fuel crisis. Police cruisers across the country are actively pulling over drivers for driving above the speed limit ostensibly because doing so is a danger to public safety. Yet it is no secret that the true motivation for police department quotas are determined as a means of generating additional revenues for public coffers. 

    This practice of policing highways is fundamentally dishonest, is a waste of taxpayer resources funding police departments that send officers to pull over drivers as a means of generating revenue. This hypocrisy is rife throughout society, extending at the highest levels that has led to such absurdities as the U.S. Army's failed attempts to engage in nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

    If we look to other examples in other countries we see that, for example, Germany has no speed limits on many of their major public highways (autobahns). Yet automobile accidents rates are not significantly higher as a result. Interestingly, German bureaucrats are not too different from their American counterparts; German police are still able to pull over motorists for tailgating and thereby increase revenues for their respective governing entities. 

    There are many issues in America that don't make much sense. Why are tens of billions of dollars wasted on two-year presidential election cycles? Why does Congress contain more millionaires than not? Why do members of Congress spend more hours each day fundraising for their next election than they do governing? Taking the German example again, members of their congress (Bundestag) can spend decades in elected office without raising a single penny for their campaigns, which are formally limited to a few months prior to general elections (with no public primary elections) and which are funded by political parties that in turn are funded by dues paying members. Elections needn't be bought and sold. Politicians needn't be owned by the special interest groups that fund their re-election campaigns. That's just the way we do it in America. But it doesn't have to be that way. 

    It would make more sense if politicians were to increase taxes to fund needed programs if more revenues are needed. It would make more sense if America were to join the rest of the world by moving away from imperial measurements to the metric system (i.e. kilograms instead of pounds, Celsius instead of Fahrenheit, etc.). It would make more sense to have impartial bodies control the legislative redistricting process to prevent partisan gerrymandering that un-democratically skews election results in favor of the controlling party across state legislatures and the US House of Representatives. It would make more sense to streamline taxation statute by severely reducing tax credits and permitting very few deviations from a standard, simple tax structure. It would make more sense if firearms were much more heavily regulated to prevent mass shootings. It would make more sense ethically and fiscally if the federal government were to offer publicly-funded universal health insurance coverage. It would make more sense to have universally publicly-funded K-12 education plus 0-K all-day daycare to assist working parents plus tuition-free community and technical college programs and to eliminate the federal student loan program which only facilitates the exorbitant increases in college tuition that our nation has undergone over the past few decades. 

    But these policies are not enacted because all legislation requires the expenditure of political capital, an amorphous concept attached to elected officials that enables them to pursue their preferred policy agenda. For example, President Barack Obama came into office and had many policy areas that he wanted to advance but no one can get everything. He had to prioritize his policy wish list for his administration. He had to deal with the global financial crisis of 2008 and the bank bailouts with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. That sapped much of his political capital. He had only his first 2 years of his first term where the Democratic Party controlled both houses of Congress and the White House. He still had to manage the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan that he inherited from President Bush. That left him an opportunity for one ambitious item on his domestic agenda and he chose healthcare reform with the Affordable Care Act. And even that was a much watered-down version of his vision. Did he really execute on a decades long strategy, fortuitous timing, and a grueling presidential campaign to finally enter the Oval Office and put aside healthcare reform in favor of good governance, fiscal responsibility, and metric standardization policies that generally are boring, poorly understood by the general public, and frankly, uninspiring?  

    Policies that should be pursued for the good of the people, if they're ever achieved, are often done by happenstance instead of by noble, self-sacrificing politicians willing to fall on their sword for the sake of the public interest while being chastised and expunged from office by an ungrateful voting public. 

    The lack of political will, itself a result of popular political apathy, hyper-partisanship, and general selfishness by the American voter is fundamentally responsible for the political dysfunction that characterizes today's political discourse throughout society.