Functionally Dysfunctional

I feel like talking politics today, since I haven't really done that much since my return to blog-land, and there always seems to be something going on there.

How about these folks that are being presented as potential presidential candidates by the Republican party? No, wait I'm getting ahead of myself. First, for anyone not familiar with my politics, I don't align myself with any particular party that we have in this country because I have serious issues with the way that the two major parties conduct themselves as a whole and with the way that many members of those parties behave as individuals. Neither party really resembles what either one is supposed to represent, and even worse is the fact that there are only two major parties in the first place. American politics tries to divide itself up into only two parts, black and white. They like this because it makes for an atmosphere that is very "Us versus Them", and that is ultimately what those with any power want. Divide and conquer, one of the oldest strategies of war, and make no mistake about it, politics is a battleground. The truth is, the vast majority of Americans are like myself insofar as their positions on the various political issues are a total scattershot, falling at any number of different points along the spectrum, and very few among us fit entirely as a liberal or conservative. At any rate, I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat, and as such, I have no problem critiquing either party.

That said, on the whole I tend to me more liberal on most issues, but I have a hard time backing Democrats because they don't really represent my values much anymore, and they are far too willing to take entirely too much shit from the folks on the other side of the aisle. Democrats not named Clinton largely have little willingness to fight for what they believe in, or are too frequently bogged down in bureaucracy to actually accomplish anything. There is something to be said for being the more mature and reasonable party (they are), but there is much more to be said for being willing to actually represent your constituents (they largely do not). For that, the Democratic party has earned my ire. The Republican party, on the other hand, is a total, unfettered mess right now, for reasons I will discuss shortly.

If we're going to have a two-party system (and apparently we are, since we seem to be so resistant to having any more parties than that), then it stands to reason that one ought to represent roughly half of the political spectrum, and the other party should represent roughly the other half. If that was the way it worked, it would be relatively okay. This country is allegedly a democracy, and the way it's supposed to work is that, following the elections, all elected officials are supposed to work together for the common good and generally move in the direction indicated by those who won the elections. This usually means small steps, which is fine. It lets the American public test the proverbial waters, see if they like the new direction, and if they do, then progress will be made, however incremental. This no longer works in this country because the party to the right is deliberately stubborn to a childish degree, and the party to the left folds like a chair at every opportunity. Consequently, center-right voters back candidates who are increasingly far-right, center-left voters support candidates who are increasingly center-right, and far left voters back candidates who are increasingly moderate. All of this causes the political spectrum to shift to the right, which it undeniably has, despite the fact that the American public is actually gradually moving to the left (on the whole, though there are also elements moving to the extreme right). Want proof? Our president is a black dude. Polls show that, for the first time, a majority of Americans support gay marriage. Support for the legalization of marijuana is growing (pardon the pun). Yet our policies are, at best, spinning their wheels. The only way we can get back to having policies that reflect what the people want (which is how it is supposed to work in a democracy) is if the politicians are actually reflective of the people who elect them.

Part of the problem is the lobbyists and the special interest groups and the corrupt politicians, and those will never go away, but they can be combated to some extent by nominating candidates for public office who are actually reasonably representative of the party they supposedly stand for, which brings me back to my original point. Look at some of these potential Republican presidential candidates: Rick Santorum. Rick Perry. Herman Cain. Michele Bachmann. Tim Pawlenty. Mitt Romney. Ron Paul. Sarah Palin (maybe). Except for the latter, those are the ones who appeared at the recent Republican presidential debate. Most of these folks are severely flawed as politicians and are long-shots at best, and rightly so. The first four and Palin are extremists to varying degrees, and represent only a small slice of Republicans nationwide, let alone Americans in their entirety. Ron Paul is ideologically a libertarian, which a surprising number of Americans identify as, either in part or in whole. Paul, however, has a problem where, for every one thing he says that makes a lot of sense, he says another six that are totally ludicrous. He is an extremist in a direction all his own. For the vast majority of Americans, extremists of any stripe are unelectable, which brings us to Pawlenty and Romney. These two are essentially middle-of-the-road Republicans, and if the GOP has any sense at all (it may not), it will embrace one of these candidates, or someone like them.

As a (more or less) liberal, I would be glad to see one of the extremist candidates somehow emerge as the Republican candidate in 2012, because any of them would get slaughtered in a general election against President Obama (or almost any other Democrat, really), and it would likely be such a thorough victory that it would give Democrats almost free reign to make policy. As an American, though, I would hope to see what I would term a "normal" Republican like Pawlenty or Romney run against Obama because, while I largely am at odds with their positions, they at least would force the issues to take center stage, which would be much better for the country than the inevitable train-wreck that would ensue from someone like Bachmann or Palin challenging the incumbent. A country where one of these dangerous people can even be considered as a legitimate candidate is a frightening country indeed, but someone like Mitt Romney, even if he didn't win, would at least help to return some credibility to the Republican Party, and would help to re-align our political spectrum. Whatever party or candidate you support, isn't that something we should all be in favor of, a political system that actually functions?