Newsletter #125
On the Complexities of Politics and Government
Walk with me for a few minutes as we consider why politics and governing are even more complicated than we think.
What’s Happening?
Recently I was listening to two national sports opinion personalities on a podcast. One reason I like their conversations is because they go deeper on aspects of sports that they sometimes don’t discuss on their regular programs. However, the main reason I enjoy these conversations is because I get to hear what these two men think about other aspects of life and society.
Don’t misunderstand me: I don’t listen to sportscasters to know who to vote for, how to invest, or to learn social ethics. They’re simply not reliable guides on those issues. More generally, the way “social media influencers” exercise influence on all manner of issues about which they have no studied understanding is not only personally frustrating, but unhealthy for our world. Nevertheless, sometimes it’s simply interesting to see where public people in sports entertainment land on different subjects, and how their views on sports relate to their larger worldview.
One of the men recently said something to this effect: There used to be a time when we generally agreed on the ‘what’ when it came to politics and current events. We were all working with the same set of facts. Now, what to do in response to those facts was where people differed based on their political biases and preferences. Nowadays, we don’t even agree on the ‘what.’ We’re operating with different facts, so we have even less common ground.
The note he sounds here isn’t uncommon. I’ve heard this sentiment expressed for at least five years now, and probably closer to 10. Typically, the lamentation arises from someone working for one of the established news networks or a mainstream publication. “Oh, how fragmented our media environment is these days! It’s a shame people can simply tune into their preferred news source and hear whatever they want to hear!”
They’re not entirely wrong, but they’re certainly not entirely correct.
The idea that personal biases, ideological constructs, journalistic values, and simplistic interpretations didn’t color journalism in the pre-Internet and especially pre-social media age is utter nonsense. There are no bare, unadorned facts, save for perhaps the temperature in Phoenix today being 98 degrees. Facts about the social world always require not only discovery, but interpretation, explanation, and contextualization.
Just take the point about the temperature in Phoenix. High temperatures in Phoenix aren’t really newsworthy. Now, if it is 98 in February, that’s newsworthy! Of course, if we seamlessly connect a measurable fact like that to a cause, say, global climate change, then we’ve made the story more complex. We are ascribing a singular explanation to a fact that is not without complexity. At the very least, even if global climate change were an adequate explanation for such an anomalous temperature, the decision to bring that detail into the story is a journalistic decision. It doesn’t make it right or wrong. I’m simply pointing out the exercise of judgment involved.
There’s always been subjectivity in news because, by definition, we encounter and describe the external world as subjects. Of course, there are more or less severe forms of subjectivity. Ideally, we desire to be as objective as possible. Until we don’t.
This is why the complaint or lament mentioned above is partly correct. It’s certainly true that human beings tend to want to hear what they want to hear. We want to be affirmed, not denied. We want confirmation, not contradiction. We want to be vindicated in our desires, fears, and plans, not challenged with a different set of values, realities, and possibilities.
Thus, the rise of cable news. Thus, the rise of opinion blogs. Thus, the rise of opinion journalism. Some of this is new, but much of it isn’t. Whether you look to European or American newspapers in the nineteenth century, or tune into MSNBC, CNN, or FOX today, there have always been various expressions of naked partisanship and ideological bias in journalism.
To the extent that we aren’t committed to knowing the actual “what” (insomuch that this can be easily reported!), we deserve the news outlets we get.
More Than Candidates
Go back to the podcast episode I mentioned above. Another thing that struck me about one of the men’s comments was that it reflected naivete in another way. It seemed to imply that politics and even governing was reducible to the “what” (the facts on the ground about the world) and the “how” (what we are going to do about those). I know he’s much shrewder than this, but he opted not to go further, so I will, briefly.
Beyond the complexities of agreeing on the “what,” it’s worse than he imagines. The “what” is almost always loaded with value assumptions.
For example, “The suicide rate has risen from one in every 125,000 to one in every 98,000.” (I made up those figures, but just go with them.) I have reported something that can be measured, even if sometimes cause of death can be ruled as “unknown.”
However, this fact is more than a fact. It is judged by any decent person as a major social problem. We’ve now brought our moral values and consciences to bear upon the fact. The fact and our feelings about it end up becoming almost indistinguishable. “This is happening and it’s terrible!”
What will we do about it? Part of the work of politics and governing is to respond Constitutionally, legally, and ethically to the will and situation of the people. Suddenly, we’ve added two more layers. Now we’re dealing with a “how” and a “who.” First, how will we respond to this problem? Second, whose job is it to respond to this problem? Who is the “we” in the earlier sentence? (I could also add a “why” and a “when”, but I’ll focus on the others since I think they loom largest.) Let’s start with the “who.”
Is it the federal government’s responsibility to enact policies, change policies, or cease policies to ameliorate suicide? Forget whether they are capable of that, though that is a humongous question. Should they? Is that within their jurisdiction? Is this more of a local concern to be addressed by state or local government?
Is it more within the arena of parents, counselors, employers, and/or other social actors to respond to the suffering of people? Is some combination of these parties required?
You see, the “who” turns out to be a rather large question. It’s amazing how quickly we skip the “who,” and then smuggle into our political conversations deeply held, unspoken assumptions about who is responsible for these problems (in terms of both cause and response). Having a society or “polis” that is responsible, wise, and sustainable means we have to confront the fact that we don’t all agree on the “who.” This seems especially important in an election year.
Even if we could decide on the “who,” we haven’t settled the “how.” How will the relevant party/parties respond to the “what?” Which policy responses are legal, achievable, just, wise, and capable of building consensus? Too often policy proposals can’t be described by more than one of these adjectives. Small wonder they fail to be enacted, or if they are, they end up being repealed or in need of reform within a four-year period.
What I’m trying to show is that politics and governing are always more than candidates. Of course, they’re certainly not less than that. In fact, good candidates would not only acknowledge the complexities of their work, but they would be able to articulate them in a way that ordinary people could understand. (And our media ecosphere would cover this with the respect it deserves, incentivizing thoughtfulness over sensationalism.)
Regrettably, candidates of all stripes resort to nonsense like, “I alone can fix it.” Even those who build movements on slogans like, “Yes we can” end up showing us not long after, “No we can’t.”
The Ecclesial Turn
Almost everything I’ve written could be applied to other forms of organizational life and leadership.
I think we encounter these dynamics often in the life of the church. Who’s responsible for the decline in membership? Who’s responsible for our church’s evangelistic efforts? Who’s responsible for making “the big decisions”? What standard are we going to use to assess what’s actually happening, and whether it’s good, bad, or neither? Which problems can be addressed by practices and policies, and which must be addressed by culture?
We need to start looking at our churches as complex, living, breathing, spiritual organisms. If we individually are complex, how much more complex is the lot of us, covenanted together under God?
Be wary of members and leaders who know the “what,” “who,” and “how” all too quickly. Be sure they also appreciate the importance of the “when” and “why.” If they don’t know why we do anything, or don’t have the wisdom, courage, and self-control to know the when, then things won’t go well.
Quote of the Week:
If Biden is up to the job, he could just walk out to the briefing room and hold an impromptu press conference right now. Just do it. That’s it.
If Biden can’t field a bunch of questions from reporters without seeming cognitively impaired, he can’t do the job.
Look, I am the first to concede that being president is about more than being able to conduct a press conference. In fact, I think a lot of the performative stuff—including debates—should be given less weight in our politics.
But that’s the point: Being the president is about more than just being able to conduct a press conference, in the same way that being a professional basketball player is about more than being able to dribble the ball. If you can’t dribble the ball, it doesn’t really matter whether you can do anything else. (Happy Gilmore was great at hitting the hockey puck, but he couldn’t skate. So he took up golf.) A surgeon needs to be able to do more than make an incision. But if he can’t do that, we don’t need to inquire further about whether he’s qualified to remove an appendix.
Biden is asking the American public for four more years as president. Maybe there are people out there who think he can do that. I don’t know any of them. And I think they’re deluded. So in a very real sense the Democrats are operationalizing a lie agreed upon…
…If Biden wants to change people’s impressions of him, he needs to do scads of interviews, town halls, etc. He can’t. Again, if he could, he’d be doing them right now.
In other words, any other Democrat could actually run for president. The best Biden can do is shuffle for president.
Jonah Goldberg, “Shuffling for President.”
What I’m Reading:
James Davison Hunter, Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis.
Chris & Elizabeth McKinney, Neighborhoods Reimagined: How the Beatitudes Inspire Our Call to Be Good Neighbors.
Announcement:
Keep your eyes peeled for the forthcoming, inaugural edition of De Doctrina, an occasional leaflet published by the Commission for Theological Integrity. I’m grateful for my article being chosen to help launch this new initiative.
Parting Shot:
I’ve written a lot over the last two and a half years on the theme of trust, especially the importance of social trust, and primarily why we don’t have it. The whole “Biden should drop out” chorus that has been sounding throughout the opinion journalism landscape lately is an excellent illustration of the crisis we have. Though I’ve written more about problems with alleging that SCOTUS is illegitimate, this situation is more serious and consequential long-term.
As some trustworthy journalists have already pointed out, far more than Republican activists were calling attention to President Biden’s decline over the last few years. Voters could see it. Independent journalists could see it. Even many podcasters and bloggers could see it. They not only saw it, but they called it what it was.
However, this isn’t the damning thing. This is: Almost everyone now says that they saw it, from inside and outside the White House. But only a precious few said out loud what they saw then. The rest turned a blind eye, dismissed it, buried it, and tried to discredit those who stated what they were seeing.
Erick-Woods Erickson puts it as succinctly as anyone:
The scandal is not just Joe Biden but the sycophantic American press corps that gives Democrats the benefit of every doubt and doubts the veracity of every Republican claim.
For four years, Republicans have vocally said Joe Biden had mentally declined. The media dismissed it, denied it, or downplayed it.
Now, they claim they have not dismissed, denied, and downplayed it and are trying to claim they were kept in the dark.
The scandal is bigger than Joe Biden.
Buckle up for a wild few months leading into November. Heaven help us all.