Make Government Boring Again

Seattle college professor's ballot surprises exactly no one

At its best, governance is excruciatingly dull. Government competently executes the tasks we have set before it. The garbage is collected. Water and air quality are monitored and corrective actions are taken when a problem arises. Threats to public safety, foreign and domestic, are likewise monitored and addressed when necessary. Laws are enforced. Resources are put in place to help people and communities in their time of need. When a workplace injury makes it impossible for an employee to do their job, or a natural disaster takes out infrastructure, these resources mitigate the suffering.

There’s room for political debate in a world of boring but competent government. Technological or demographic changes make some laws or regulations obsolete while introducing the need for new ones. And there’s a lot of potential debate as to whether government has maintained a level playing field. Should the nation’s interests in preventing inflation take precedence over interests in raising wages? Should the nation’s interest in allowing success to carry rewards take precedent over the nation’s interest in having the cost of government born by those who can most afford to pay? Should the nation’s interest in promoting peace and democracy abroad take precedent over the nation’s interest in keeping its resources at home?

These, and countless more, are all debates where reasonable people can disagree, where evidence has its place alongside principles and rhetoric, and where the nation’s sentiment can and does naturally evolve over time.

There’s one problem with competent government punctuated by civil reasoned debates over prioritizing the nation’s interests. It makes for dreadfully dull television. And social media content.

Politics are at risk for disruption by those who make astonishing statements, regardless of whether those statements happen to be true. The astonishing statement attracts attention exactly because it is different, because it defies the decorum of ordinary political time. The media, particularly in an era where traditional sources of revenue have waned, finds the astonishing statement irresistible. If the astonishing statement attracts condemnation, so much the better. It becomes a story with legs.

This is not a particularly new phenomenon, one could date it to the time of McCarthy if not earlier. Ross Perot made astonishing statements in 1992. But it took Donald Trump to make the art of the astonishing statement the centerpiece of a presidential campaign.

Trump found an eager audience. An audience that wouldn’t make it through an extended discourse on the earned income tax credit, or the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, without changing the channel or scrolling to the next video in their feed. Trump was made for digital media, delivering pithy statements about building walls and repealing and replacing that were never really followed up with any sort of plan, or even the concept of a plan. The country had terrible problems, the worst problems, but Trump had the solutions, the best solutions. He’d tell you all the details but that would just bore you.

It was a fine recipe for getting elected, if not for actually governing the country. Presidencies are tested by unforeseen circumstances. Politicians are chided for failing to keep promises, but every leader must sooner or later face the inexorable impact of forces beyond their control. Dealing with the unforeseen, whether that be a natural disaster, war, economic calamity, or global pandemic, requires quick yet principled thinking and the work of many competent advisors.

Today I cast my vote for Kamala Harris. This may be one of the least newsworthy declarations you’ll read this week, especially as it’s buried at the end of this post. A college professor who lives in Seattle, Washington of all places voting for the Democratic candidate. I voted with a sense of nostalgia, an ironic sense given the repeated calls to “Make America Great Again.” Nostalgia for a time when debates were dull and wonky, when candidates conceded with grace, when decorum reigned. It made for boring television, but good government. May it be so again.