I had the privelege of hearing Tony Blair, former UK Prime Minister, speak this past weekend. While he discussed a wide range of geopolitical topics he threw out the quote “Policy first, politics second”, when asked about the state of the US elections. He said that he has been priviledged to work with each of the US presidents since Bill Clinton, and would attempt to continue to do so, but that it was up to us the American people to make the types of decisions on where we wanted to take the political landscape in our country, but if we wanted to have an effective government we needed leaders in power that looked to policy first and politics second.
A lot of wisdom in his statement. The current border patrol bill in front of the Senate should be a perfect example of this. I’m sure our government will find a way to fuck it up as well.
The fact that his statement even sounds sensible is a sad indictment on the state of the world. Politics is policy. Deliberately harming the country because you hope that it’ll harm your opponents more, like the Republicans have been doing for at least the past decade, is not politics.
Blair was always a solidly-grounded guy. My favorite quote of his was the “irreducible core” - about how, as national leader, you are bombarded with influences and requests and demands from a hundred different directions at once, and you must always know your irreducible core - what morals, values or stances you cannot afford to compromise on.
I’m not sure what great insight you think this is. It’s not as though anything hinges on understanding some subtle distinction that assumes some grasp on reality when the problem is that half the country has been brainwashed into a fascist theocratic cult and are unreachable because they only listen to a constant stream of lying propaganda.
Personally, I take “policy first, politics second,” to mean those in government have a first priority to govern and see to the well-being of the country (or city or whatever). After that, you can try scoring political points on the other side.
Of course, conservatives have largely thrown that out the window.
I do not see an equivalence here. I am sure you can point to a person here or there doing something similar but nothing like the scale republicans have taken it. I think it goes back to at least New Gingrich in the 90s but it was most explicit when, after Obama won the presidency, the republicans met the next day and, quite literally and explicitly, dedicated themselves to be the party of obstruction. No matter what Obama wanted, even if it was a thing republicans wanted, they would oppose him at ever turn.
Something for which I wish Obama would have done more about. He seemed naive about this obstruction and kept reaching across the aisle. I know he was not stupid. Far from it. Yet he seemed to keep trying like Charlie Brown kept trying to kick the football Lucy was holding.
Generally, I take a dim view of people who bemoan, “why can’t we put politics aside and just do what’s right for the country?!?!?” That this sentiment comes from Tony Blair of the “cash for peerages” scandal makes my eyes roll so far back in my head I can see behind me.
One area where I disagree with many Democrats/liberals today is the overemphasis on squeaky clean personal conduct. Like Al Franken. I don’t care that FDR cheated on Eleanor. The policies are a billion times more impactful. If you really think the world is burning, you really need to start giving up on some of this shit.
My conception of “politics” is the confluence of values and policy, which I’m the real world has always been hijacked in varying degrees by the acquisition of power by those with influence.
To that end, I think policy, stripped from the other ingredients of politics, is a more pre use term to communicate Blair’s point. But that’s just according to my definition of politics.