Political Incompetence: What's Wrong With Our System and How To Fix It

Political Incompetence:

What’s Wrong With Our System and How to Fix It

Olin Bray

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Published by Olin Bray at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Olin Bray

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Table of Contents

Part I - Introduction

Chapter 1: Introduction

Facts or beliefs: How to determine truth

Government by fact or belief

Reality vs Perception

Chapter 2: Political Competence

Introduction

What is political competence?

Exercises - Things to consider

Chapter 3: Political myths

Government is growing too big

Taxes are too high

US health care is the best in the world

A single payer system will solve the health care problem

Crime rates are rising and we are becoming a more violent society

Social Security is running out of money and needs to be privatized

Rationing of anything (especially health care) is wrong and should be avoided at all costs

You can cut the costs of a program just by reducing its funding

Only business creates value and wealth

Privatization is always (or is never) the answer

Part II - Political Competence Skills and How to Develop Them

Chapter 4: Methodology: Asking the right questions

Introduction

Paradigms and the policy shifts

Analyzing political statements

Evaluating the statement - Hypothesis testing

Taxing hypotheses

Other hypothesis testing approaches

Exercises - Things to consider

Chapter 5: Statistics

Introduction

Uses of statistics

Basic statistical concepts

Other types of statistical test: Correlation coefficients, causality, and regression analysis

Summary

Part III - Policy Frameworks

Chapter 6: Taxes

Introduction

Critical dimensions of tax systems

Sources of government funds

Some budget history

Expenditure categories and analysis

State and local taxes

Conclusion

Chapter 7: Health Care

Introduction

Health care framework

Four key health care issues

Health care cost: Who is paying for what?

Summary

Chapter 8: Employment and jobs

Part IV - Next Steps

Chapter 9: Conclusions

References

Acknowledgements

Author

Part I - Introduction

Part I describes some of the symptoms of a serious problem our political system faces. What passes for political and policy debate is often nothing more than two sides stating and restating incompatible opinions, beliefs, and myths. Facts and analyses rarely make their way into the debate or decisions. Undoubtedly, there is more analysis than we see being done, usually behind the scenes by professional civil servants who are actually trying to solve problems in spite of the barriers thrown in their way by ideologically based debates and decisions. However, elected officials seem to ignore these analyses, both in their decision making and in discussions with their constituents. To be fair to these officials, most of their constituents really don’t seem interested in these analyses either. Voting decisions are much easier if they are based on personality, opinions, ideology, and myths. Many people seem satisfied with this approach, as long as their side wins.

This book is for a different group of people. Its target audience is those who believe that politics should be about identifying and understanding problems and trying to solve them using facts and analysis, not ideology and myths. This book will help them become more politically competent and more effective citizens, which are essential in a democracy.

Chapter 1 provides some examples of the problems our political system is facing. Chapter 2 describes what political competence is and is not. It is not about agreeing with my position or even about electability. It is about taking an analytical approach to politics. It is about listening to candidates and issue groups and analyzing what they are saying rather than taking it at face value. Are they just voicing their opinions or are they providing facts to support their positions, and if so are they correctly interpreting those facts? Are they providing a balanced analysis so you can make up your own mind or are they just providing a sales pitch for their position? Politically competent voters can, and in fact must, listen to multiple biased messages, sort out the facts from the opinions, and make up their own minds. Politically competent voters may not agree with each other, but at least they will understand what they agree and disagree on, which provides the critical basis for the workable compromises that allow a democracy to work.

Chapter 3 shows the consequences of not doing this type of analysis. It identifies a number of widely repeated, often strongly held, political myths and provides the facts and analyses to show that they are just that - myths and perceptions, not reality. Unfortunately, these myths have a major impact on our political debate and policy decisions.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Our political system is in trouble. The quality of political discussion and debate is rapidly deteriorating. The quality of the debate is collapsing as a result of the increased ranting and raving about public policy issues and the increasingly hostile political campaigning. This leads to less open discussion, poorer analysis, and disastrous policies. Only a few people seem to be trying to find practical, reasonable solutions to our serious problems. Far too many people are loudly spouting ideology and refusing to consider any compromise - the key to any successful democracy.

Campaigns rarely identify a policy problem, state how the candidate would solve it, and explain why that solution will actually work. Most campaigns, saturated with negative advertising, have degenerated into propaganda wars almost as bad as what you see in real wars. My opponent is a fiendish, evil monster who must be stopped before he or she destroys the country. Every reasonable person can see that my position is right, so there must be something wrong with my opponent. Unfortunately, this approach is taken by the extremes of both parties at a time when the rational center of both parties seems to be disappearing. Some of the most vocal extremists see themselves as independents, unassociated with either party. While their positions at the two extremes differ, their tactics are almost identical.

Remember when campaigns were more about issues and policies? Yes, there was some negative campaigning even then. However, it didn’t dominate the campaign; it wasn’t as vicious and personal; and there were not the massive, uncontrolled funding sources interfering with the campaigns the candidates were trying to run. These problems are obvious both in campaigns for office and in policy or issue campaigns trying to build support for specific policy alternatives.

These problems involve the process and style of campaigns and policy/political debates. However, even if these problems miraculously disappeared tomorrow, there would still be an even more serious problem with the content of the debate. Public policy (and politics) involves serious, complicated issues and tradeoffs. They cannot be reduced to sound bites and bumper stickers. Anyone who believes they can should stick with advertising rather than policy and politics. Explaining policies and positions and tradeoffs is not the same thing as selling soap or cars or beer. It’s like confusing drug advertising with practicing medicine. They both may have a place and a role, but they are not the same and confusing them leads to serious problems.

To seriously understand and discuss policy issues, voters/citizens need to recognize some of their complexities and the tradeoffs. This does not mean becoming a policy wonk and understanding an issue in all of its complexity to the extent of being able to develop detailed policy and implementation alternatives. However, it does require some basic understanding of the policy area and the methodologies for analyzing it. At a minimum, citizens need to be able to look at and evaluate alternatives and the analyses supporting or opposing them. H.G. Wells foresaw that Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write. That day has definitely come.

It is not enough to simply parrot the comments made by others, who often don’t understand the issues themselves and are only parroting other pundits or officials they agree with. This relentless parroting of bad or biased analyses and inaccurate data simply contaminates the process and makes it harder to reach acceptable compromises.

Political decision making and policy formulation can occur in one of three ways. First, everyone agrees so there is no real problem. This does happen occasionally: recall that Senate confirmed David Petraeus for the CIA (94 to 0) and Leon Penetta for Secretary of Defense (100 to 0). The only risk with this approach is that you need to be sure everyone hasn’t been stampeded into agreeing to a bad decision.

Second, there may be disagreement, but one side has enough votes and is willing to use them to force the issue. This usually works only if you have a substantial majority or enough discipline within your party for a block vote. This is in effect dictating your choice as the decision. Broad-based, pragmatic political parties usually don’t have the discipline to use this method unless they have large majorities.

Although sometimes this approach may be necessary to make a decision and move on, it is usually not the best process. It can create long-term problems because it creates winners and losers. It can seriously polarize the parties and make progress on anything difficult. Just consider our current congress. Also after a subsequent election, when the majority changes, it can become payback time, which further hinders any serious progress on important policy issues

The third and most common approach involves negotiations and compromise, especially when there is a fairly even split over an issue. There is give and take and compromise to build a majority around an alternative everyone can accept - not necessarily like, but at least accept. One of the things that makes compromise hard is that legislators have to simultaneously deal with two audiences - their fellow legislators with whom they are trying to work out a compromise and their base of political supporters who may not understand the legislative process and who often today want no part of a compromise. True statesmen, who know that compromise is usually necessary to get things done, realize that there are times when they simply have to tell their constituents, no you can’t have everything you want. Sometimes they don’t have the votes and can’t force the second approach (just ramming it through regardless of the opposition). Sometimes what their constituents want is simply not a good idea and the compromise is better. In this case, the statesman has to become a real leader and educate his or her base about the issue and why the compromise is a better idea.

There is a clear test to distinguish between a decision based on compromise and one that is dictated (the second alternative). What is in the proposal that you don’t like? If there is nothing in it you don’t like and you are satisfied with everything there, then you are probably dictating your position. If you can identify things in the proposal you don’t like and would, if possible, remove, then it is probably a compromise, especially if the other side feels the same way.

In spite of what many people seem to think, compromise is not a dirty word. It is the fundamental core of what democracy is all about. State your case and then come up with a workable compromise that most people can agree with. If you can’t do that, then you should not be in the legislative branch of government.

The idea that compromise is bad - that it violates our principles and must be avoided at all costs —is an example of the deteriorating political climate. However, democracy is all about compromise, what seems to be the best and most acceptable solution. Hitler and Stalin did not have to worry about compromise since they could just eliminate their opposition. Fortunately, democracies don’t work that way. One needs to find workable, acceptable solutions. Remember when legislation was the process of trying to work out a compromise that everyone (or at least a majority) could live with? Stalemates were a sign of failure, not ideological purity. However, that was before everything became a question of ideological purity

Consider the recent fiasco about extending the Bush tax cuts. The basic issue was which tax cuts to extend, with the two extremes of extending none or extending all. An obvious first attempt at compromise could have been to extend half of them and drop half of them. The Democrats were prepared to compromise and proposed keeping 98 percent of them and letting only 2 percent of them expire. However, this was not acceptable. The Republican compromise was to keep 100 percent of the tax cuts. This was really more ideological purity than practical legislative compromise. However, even this was not enough because an additional tax cut was included, reducing employee Social Security withholding from 6 to 4 percent for one year, at a time when we are worried about Social Security funding.

Unfortunately, the lesson this teaches is why compromise when by holding out and threatening to block everything, you can get your way? It’s like the playground argument, "It’s my football, so I get to be quarterback or I’ll take my ball and go