By
JAY COST
A
90 percent incumbency rate, legions of lobbyists, ignorant reporters, an
apathetic electorate . . . There’s no easy fix. Last week,
Buzzfeed published a provocative article by Eve Fairbanks about Mark
Halperin. For all the damage that Halperin’s sexual misdeeds have done,
Fairbanks contends that they pale in comparison to his destructive work
as a journalist, particularly in writing The Note, his “chummy daily
political newsletter” for ABC: The Note purported to reveal Washington’s
secrets. In fact, its purpose was the exact opposite: to make the city,
and US politics, appear impossible to understand. It replaced normal
words with jargon. It coined the phrase “Gang of 500,” the clubby
network of lobbyists, aides, pols, and hangers-on who supposedly, like
the Vatican’s cardinals, secretly ran DC. That wasn’t true — power is so
diffuse. But Halperin claimed he knew so much more than we did, and we
began to believe it. Once you believe that, it’s not hard to be
convinced that politics is only comprehensible, like nuclear science, to
a select few.
There
were those chosen ones — the people who’d flattered Halperin to get a
friendly mention in his newsletter, the ones he declared to be in the
know — and the rest of us. Halperin wrote about Washington like it was
an intriguing game, the kind that masked aristocrats played to entertain
themselves at 19th-century parties: Everyone was both pawn and player,
engaged in a set of arcane maneuvers to win an empty jackpot that
ultimately meant nothing of true importance. Fairbanks is hearkening
back to the court-versus-country distinction that was popularized among
English republicans in the early 18th century. The basic idea was that
the rulers (the court) are able to govern independent of the people (the
country), thereby undermining the principle of self-government.
Fairbanks’s argument is that Halperin created a court party out of whole
cloth — which makes him “the single journalist most responsible for
Donald Trump.” This essay has all the hallmarks of an online #hottake.
It seizes upon an overlooked aspect of a story and improbably turns it
into something of enormous consequence.
Normally,
such pieces are not worth giving a second thought to. However, Fairbanks
makes a basic error that is worth correcting, because it illuminates a
larger truth about our politics. Egypt mosque attack: Death tolls
surpasses 300 00:05 00:58 Powered by She claims that power in
Washington, D.C., is too “diffuse” for Halperin’s “Gang of 500” to be in
control. That is fair, but only up to a point. Power is too diffuse in
Washington, D.C., for a cabal of 500 to wield it effectively.
Nevertheless, it is spread among political actors who share the same
values, which Ted Lowi defined as “interest-group liberalism”: It may be
called liberalism because it expects to use government in a positive and
expansive role, it is motivated by the highest sentiments, and it
possesses strong faith that what is good for government is good for the
society. It is “interest-group liberalism” because it sees as both
necessary and good that the policy agenda and the public interest be
defined in terms of the organized interests in society. Significantly,
these “organized interests in society” do not sample randomly from
society at large. As E. E. Schattschneider once observed, “the flaw in
the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with a strong
upper-class accent.” Moreover, it is a fallacy of composition to suggest
that doing the bidding of various, organized interests is the same as
securing the public good. The two are often quite distinct, in fact. I
think this nicely summarizes the mentality of Washington, D.C. — on both
sides of the aisle. The power of government is to be wielded
unabashedly, and mostly for the interests that dominate the political
process. The main differences between Republicans and Democrats — with a
few notable exceptions on the left (Bernie Sanders) and the right (Mike
Lee) — is how they believe power should be wielded and which interests
should benefit. There is a kind of “court party” in American politics —
one that is actually strengthened by the diffusion of power across
Washington, D.C. It behaves like a cartel, restricting alternative
supplies of policies or ideas. Political theorists have called this the
“mobilization of bias.” In other words, there are just certain ways of
getting things done in Washington, D.C., and alternative methods of
policymaking are not up for discussion. The court party continues to
exist because the country cannot be bothered to do anything about it.
This
court party is sustained by several features of our polity. The first,
and most important, is the overwhelming rate at which politicians are
reelected. It tops 90 percent in most cycles. Apart from a handful of
bellwether districts, incumbents are all but guaranteed victory when
they choose to run again. Voters simply do not care enough to separate
the wheat from the chaff. The court party continues to exist because the
country cannot be bothered to do anything about it. The second important
feature is the way political campaigns are financed. Forget for a moment
the super PACs, those well-heeled, largely anonymous entities that swoop
in during competitive elections. Again, most elections are not
competitive. Incumbents in these contests raise funds by drawing in
large measure upon the interests that have business before the
government, particularly the jurisdictions they oversee in their
committees. This conflict-of-interest financing of our politics is a
bipartisan phenomenon. Third, there is lobbying. Put aside any
traditional views on how lobbying works. It is not a brown envelope
stuffed with cash, or even a fancy dinner on the corporate card. It is
the provision of information. Legislators are required to make judgments
on all sorts of policy matters that they cannot possibly hope to possess
expertise on. Where do they gain the knowledge necessary to make prudent
decisions?
Not
from the tiny congressional staff, which is overworked, underpaid, and
inexperienced. Instead, lobbyists provide a large body of information
about the political and policy consequences of particular legislation.
Such knowledge is hardly objective or comprehensive; naturally, it
favors the interests of those who provide it. The fourth is the
revolving door between the public and private sectors. This gives those
in government an incentive to look out for private interests, as they
anticipate that they’ll need to have a job after they retire from public
service. It also creates cultural and social affinities between people
with private interests and those who are in public service. Everybody is
in the same “club.” We have a fourth estate that often does little more
than transcription. These are the main pillars that support today’s
court party. Note that journalists are nowhere to be found among them.
In my view, the importance of journalism in sustaining or challenging
this architecture has declined dramatically over the years. Slumping
ratings for the broadcast networks, the sharp drop-off in newspaper
subscriptions, and the rise of cable-news talk shows have forced
mainstream media outlets to make all sorts of cutbacks in their
traditional journalism. The result is that journalists lack the
expertise necessary to understand, let alone dominate, the byzantine
pathways of Washington, D.C., power relations. Factor in as well that
journalists are themselves part of the revolving door: How many former
reporters ended up in the Obama administration? How many former Obama
officials now work in media outlets? Given this cycling, we have a
fourth estate that often does little more than transcription.
Think
back to Ben Rhodes’s quip, in an interview with the New York Times’
David Samuels, about playing journalists like fiddles on the Iran deal:
The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only
reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns.
That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing. Samuels observed: “In
this environment, Rhodes has become adept at ventriloquizing many people
at once.” It would be nice if one guy like Halperin was responsible for
the dysfunction in Washington, D.C. That would make for an easy fix. But
it is just not true. The problem gets down to power relations that
systematically favor certain interests and worldviews over others, and a
broader electorate that is unwilling to bear the burdens of citizenship
required to reform it.
Read
more at:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/454054/washington-dc-swamp-incumbency-lobbyists-ignorant-reporters-uninterested-voters