Self-interest before public interest

One can argue that given our current situation the two party system has not done so well in the last few decades. That was despite our advantages. There is discontent with both parties and that suggests some sort of failure. Reasonable questions include asking how and why we got here.

Human nature, human weakness

Although there are multiple reasons, three major factors seem to be involved: Special interest money, rigid political and religious ideology and self-interest before public interest. They seem to be three sources of political failure. The last one is harder to pin down than the other two. Politicians in office vary rarely admit they ever put self-interest above the public interest. However, politicians out of office occasionally do admit that self-interest can be a deciding factor.

Termed out of office and free to speak

A recent example is comments made by former California legislative leader Willie Brown, who recently said that the the civil service system was "set up so politicians like me couldn't come in and fire the people (relatives) hired by the guy they beat and replace them with their own friends and relatives. . . . . . Talking about this is politically unpopular and potentially even career suicide for most officeholders."

That's an admission against his own interest (his reputation) because he was involved. If it weren't true, why would he say it? Mr. Brown is no longer an elected politician. He was termed out of office and he has nothing to lose, reelection-wise. Mr. Brown did not say those things while still in office. That could have been too politically damaging, i.e., "career suicide".

This is an example of political self-interest coming before the public interest and why the public never hears about it. Mr. Brown's comments say that at least some of the time, politicians put self-interest (hiring friends and relatives) before the public interest (hiring the best public employee for the job; telling the public the truth about how politics really works).

Blown out of office and equally free

Another example is from former senator Max Cleland (D-Georgia). His story is sad.** After losing his senate seat to Saxby Chambliss in the 2002 elections, Mr. Cleland admitted that he voted in favor of invading Iraq, even though he was not convinced by the Bush administration's evidence for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. He admitted he did that partly because of deference to the Bush administration and partly because of political self-interest.

At the time Cleland's reelection campaign was underway and he was afraid that the people of Georgia would vote him out of office if he did not vote in favor of authorizing military force to attack Iraq (Cleland's interview comments at 14:15-19:02). To his credit, Mr. Cleland said that he will regret that vote for the rest of his life. Based on his comments, I presume that Mr. Cleland would have voted against authorizing force if his political self-interest was not a factor.

Those are two examples of political self-interest coming before the public interest. Is the human trait of doing that anything to worry about? Take Mr. Brown's example of politicians not wanting to tell the public the truth about how political institutions or government operations actually work. Apply that to how America conducts itself, for example, in war.

The apocalypse

If you believe that the government doesn't want the American public to really know what is going on, then when Americans say they support or do not support the Afghanistan war, how reliable is their opinion? What if it is the case that we really and truly need to stay in Afghanistan for another 8-10 years, lose 10,000 troops and spend $700 billion more to stabilize both Afghanistan and Pakistan? What if we needed to do that to avoid thermonuclear Armageddon here in the U.S. in 10-15 years, assuming our premature withdrawal caused the Pakistani government to fall and Pakistan's nuclear arsenal gets used against us?

Wouldn't you want to know as much as possible about how things are going, e.g., in Afghanistan or the rest of government? Wouldn't you want to be as informed as you could be? Or, are you willing to just let the politicians do what they want while keeping you in the dark? Is the human trait of serving self-interest a major political problem? I think it is.

How to fix it

So, what can be done? If this really is a human trait, it won't go away. As argued here before, one way to affect political behavior is to increase transparency. Obviously, that won't be completely effective, but it would help. In the case of lobbyists interacting with politicians, if that was required to be made public, the extent of political self-dealing would need to be decreased to avoid defeat in the next election.

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** In the fall of 2002, Senator Chambliss was running a dirty campaign against Sen. Cleland. He ran TV ads where Cleland's face slowly changed to Osama bin Ladn's face. In effect, he was calling Cleland a terrorist. It was so disgusting that even John McCain told Saxby to knock it off, which he did. What made it sad was the fact that Cleland had lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam in a hand grenade incident. He was willing to sacrifice himself to save his fellow marines. Chambliss never served in the military.