Back in 2015 I responded to a post by David Chung advocating straight ticket voting, the backbone of power politics. The victory of Trump and many GOP Congressional members has been attributed to stray Republicans returning to the party ticket, and while it’s not the only factor in their recovery, it’s an important factor, and resulted in many upsets. It”s a little depressing to see my points from that prior post starting to be fulfilled, starting right at the top.
Competency: As we’re seeing in the various nominations so far, demonstrated competency is not a component of most of the Administration’s picks; rather, it’s demonstrated loyalty. This lack of interest in competency, in turn, reflects on the Administration itself, in particular its methods. But, as Seashsells on The Daily Kos points out, the incompetence may have already been demonstrated on a more concrete level: the damaging weather in Georgia:
THIS is what American Carnage means. Just as FEMA failed to get help to NOLA after Katrina, so Trump and his team have dropped the ball after tornado storms ripped through the SouthEast this past Saturday and Sunday. There are 20 people dead and communities devastated with some areas looking like what many call a war zone. Officials are begging Trump to send help TWO-THREE DAYS after the tornado storms. Make sure you spread this story. Trump supporters need to see what voting for incompetent, anti-government Republicans gets them.
Positions are prizes: Magnifying the Bush Administration, it seems like nearly all the nominees are being handed awards for their donations and/or work. DeVos, Tillerson, Price. Even Haley, although in this case it’s not a reward to Haley, who didn’t support Trump, but for her Lt. Governor, Henry McMaster, an early Trump supporter. But now they have their cracker jack prizes for the money they donated – but what do we get out of them?
Reduction in public debate: While the volume of public clamor has increased, it’s not at all clear to me that public, productive debates on national policy are taking place. Perhaps I’m missing them. Or perhaps, as word comes down the chain of command that Trump has decided thus and so, the ideological faithful leap into line – no matter what they privately think. And this lack of debate means that the voices of those afflicted by the decisions are not effectively heard by those on top – by those who demand and expect absolute loyalty. For example, at the bottom are Iowa farmers and the TPP, as reported by The Des Moines Register:
President Donald Trump’s decision to jettison the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal and renegotiate U.S. trade with Canada and Mexico could lead to a trade war that could put Iowa in the cross-hairs, worried state leaders told the Register on Monday.
Agriculture and manufacturing, two industries that help form the foundation of Iowa’s economy, would be among the first casualties because of Iowa’s heavy dependence on exports.
For the party faithful, here’s a chilling comment:
“I would hope that President Trump wouldn’t take action that could start a trade war, given that it would damage the very people who helped put him in office,” said Dermot Hayes, an Iowa State University agricultural economist. “But that’s just a hope.”
I worry that the failure to hold Trump to a high standard by Iowa farmers is going to substantially hurt not only our Iowa farmers, but everyone else.
Selecting Party planks: Given the amorphous cipher that is President Trump, his actual position on many issues remains quite questionable, rendering this assertion of mine a little dubious. You don’t think he’s a cipher? Consider this report on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, from TPM:
During a joint press conference on Friday at the White House, British Prime Minister Theresa May seemed to go out of her way to box in President Donald Trump on his backing for NATO, declaring that he had told her in their private meeting that he will support the decades-old alliance “100 percent.” …
May’s portrayal of Trump’s comments on NATO diverge from his public statements on the alliance.
The strength of a democracy can be perceived as a weakness – the failure to speak in a single voice. For those who are in economic distress, for those who don’t tolerate dissent and multiple opinions and think they need certainty, it can seem as if the nation is adrift in a fog of voices. But it’s that respectful clamor, the opinions of many people, which bring us the political and moral strength that has made us a world leader. As we learn to use this tool called the Web, learn to discern false news from true news, lie from fact, we should improve our utilization of those opinions. At one time, the gatekeepers of the broadcast networks helped keep debate quality high; today we’re learning how attain that quality, as we gradually marginalize dubious sources such as foreign teenagers and its American equivalent, Breitbart News.
In order to understand the fallacy of team politics and its implementation, straight ticket voting, one must come to a certain realization: team politics is an instrumentality independent of the quality of the policies it enables and enforces. Once this concept of straight ticket voting gains acceptance and is used, it can be used for anything.
Repeat it with me, folks: Anything.
Such as a highly damaging trade war, because the leadership doesn’t understand the processes and limitations of international trade.
The concept of team politics, without context, is a profound abdication of responsibility. I shan’t deny limited applicability, such as against today’s GOP, which appears to be a highly competent marketing machine, and not much else. But once committed to voting for a straight ticket, there is no more judgment to make, and if one or more of the members of the ticket are bloody fools, or sociopaths – well, straight ticket voting is not a defense, not a rationale. You are still responsible if that ticket you voted for leads you into bedlam.
One final point. I worry that other parties will see what appears to be success for the GOP, and try to follow suit, holding out the siren song of straight ticket voting. As they do so, we should see the power mongers, the sociopaths, the leaders with no qualifications start to climb the ladder towards the top of the hierarchy. That’s a sign of pathology. Watch for it. Otherwise, we’ll have another generation of Hasterts, Livingstones, and Gingrichs, deLays and Lotts – and Trumps. People to whom the rules didn’t apply as they reached for power.
And got it.
The opposite of straight ticket voting is an embodiment of one of the most important, yet under discussed, American qualities: that of doubt. The realization that our answers to governance are contingent, tentative, and never definitive and final. We put forward solutions, but if they fail then we write them off and try again, much as FDR reportedly did – and Governor Brownback fails to do, fixed as he is on ideological purity and not effectuality.
Broken ticket voting recognizes that no one party has all the answers.
