Defending sloppy politics or something else?

Over the last couple of weeks several commentators have expressed a really new and unusual sentiment. They have noted that U.S. politics is inherently messy, inefficient and chaotic. That sloppiness, for lack of a better term, is something we apparently just have to live with. The questions is whether that's true, partly true or mostly false. If its mostly false, why might some people express that sentiment?

When one looks at some areas of human endeavor, it is clear that there's little slop in it. Consider financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and what they do, even when the economy melts down and millions of people are economically injured. Is that sloppy or logical and efficient, i.e., very profitable over time? What about utilities and oil companies? How about scientific disciplines like chemistry, electrical engineering, medicine, economics and weapons research? Consider lobbyists and superpacs, backed by millions in campaign contributions or donations and what they do. Are their efforts sloppy and random or relatively efficient?

In normal operations, there are significant differences of opinion and fights between factions in business and scientific endeavors, but the overall enterprise typically remains reasonably efficient. Given that, nothing says that American politics inherently has to be an inefficient, chaotic morass. Humans can be focused and efficient when they want to, especially when they are (i) incentivised, (ii) reasonably well-informed and (iii) not manipulated into endless diversionary conflicts by very sophisticated interests with hidden agendas. If that is reasonably true, and it is, then why would anyone say that politics has to be inefficient and chaotic? Of course, in politics one often needs to compromise or the whole enterprise tends to bog down. That's a difference, but that's no reason that it has to dominate the situation. Intractable differences of opinion didn't seem to dominate and paralyze politics from the 1950s through about 2008.

Something is different now, or at it least seems to be. If there wasn't something new and ugly in politics, then why are some experts beginning to assert that politics has to be chaos and waste? Why didn't they say things like that in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s?

From a non-ideological, pragmatic viewpoint, there is an explanation. Its that the "experts" have bought into the modern conflict narrative the two sides have constructed. That helps preserve the status quo. It gives the two parties an easy excuse for delivering sloppy, wasteful, failed political policies. What the American public gets from liberal and conservative ideologues and from wealthy business interests is a lot of polarizing propaganda, useless ideological arguments and third rate political policy.

Who is the worst?

The Republicans are particularly at fault when it comes to spin, polarization and hate politics. Facts simply do not get in the way of the bizarre fairy tale world many (most?) hard core conservatives live in. Its not that conservatives are necessarily wrong about everything, they certainly aren't, but their way of doing politic is pure all or none political war. Its a zero sum game and conservatives play a vicious version of it. Many businesses play the same harsh game, but that's to be expected. They have to look out for themselves, not the public interest. Government is there to protect the public interest, not businesses.

When some experts assert that politics has to be a chaotic, wasteful sloppy morass, that's nonsense. Politics doesn't have to be that way. We can't afford for it to be that way. As argued here before, so long as ideologues on the left and the right dominate, politics will remain a sloppy enterprise driven by emotion, ideology and misinformation. Until a relatively virulent strain of pragmatism that rejects ideology as the way to solve problems takes hold, we will be stuck with chaos and waste. At least to that extent, the experts are right.