In thinking about the recent elections at the Federal level, the thing that keeps coming back to me are the popularity numbers. The most and second most unpopular Presidential candidates. Congress’ in-the-toilet approval ratings. And yet Federal politicians keep getting elected and re-elected all the same.
This happens at the state and local levels too of course, but at least there are political branches at those levels with consistently high (say >60%, or pick a threshold) approvals in some cases.
So, there must be a reason why the following is not a viable strategy at the Federal level:
Go out and poll the country. Ask them what they want from the Federal government.
Rank-order the responses to generate a list of priorities.
Tackle the problems, starting from the highest priority and working down.
Periodically (yearly?), review passed legislation against these priorities to see if it’s actually achieving the desired goal. If yes, leave it alone and review again next period. If not, re-raise the priority and come up with a different solution.
Every so often (5 years?), re-poll the country, asking them for a new to-do list.
My thoughts on the possibilities surrounding why something like this doesn’t happen:
It does happen, you dolt. You just don’t notice it. This is basically what politicians do. Fixing problems at the Federal level is just really, really hard, so they fail a whole lot, or
That’s a lot of work. It’s less work and more reliable to suck up to donors for campaign money. And then use the money to broadcast slick sales pitches every election cycle. Campaign sales pitches are a more reliable way of getting re-elected than “I fixed your problem like you asked me to, didn’t I?”, or
There’s no set of issues on which 60%+ of the voting public agrees are problems. The sentiment “If we really talked to each other, we’d find we mostly agree on 70%/80%/90% of the issues” is just false, or
People are ungrateful. You can give voters exactly what they asked for, and they’d still say you were doing a terrible job, or
People have no patience and are generally unreasonable. They don’t care that issues are complex, they expect 100% correct answers, immediately, and for the solutions to cost $0. They have no patience for trial-and-error, iterative and incremental improvements, and other such “slow and steady” methods, or
Congress and the recent Presidential race are anomalies. People really are satisfied with the Federal government generally, or
(other)
Really interested in others’ thoughts on this. Why do approval ratings appear to be so low at the Federal level?
Hating politicians is practically a national pastime. And while it’s really easy (and popular) to tell a pollster that you don’t like the job Congress is doing in general, many people are quite happy with their individual Congresscritter, and that’s the only one they get to vote for or against.
People in Utah want Congressmen that’ll go back there and defend our right to keep and bear arms, and help us get control of “our land” and things like that.
Californians think gun rights are killing babies, and would be appalled to let the hicks in Utah manage the land in Utah. They want abortion to be safe and legal and for everyone to drive a Prius.
Meanwhile, back in Utah, we think abortion is actually killing babies, and we like big, gas-guzzling, 4x4 trucks.
So, our Congressmen go back there and fight for the things we want. And California’s Congressthings go back there and fight for what they want. Congress fights a lot, but it feels like nothing really gets done. Californians see that Utahns are still driving trucks with gun racks, and Utahns see that Californians are still killing babies, and neither of us is very happy about it.
Right, but I guess this is sort of what I was getting at. Why would you be merely satisfied that your representatives were fighting for the things you want? At some point, don’t you want your representatives to actually win the fight? Why isn’t there more a sentiment of “You know [Representative/Senator], I really appreciate you fighting hard for the cause all these years, but you’re not really getting anywhere. I think we’ll have to go with someone else this time around.” Because then the resulting fear of getting-the-boot would encourage the Utah reps and the California reps (to borrow your example) to strike up some kind of deal to save their own asses, to spin the compromise as crowning victory for their side.
Individuals can be smart, but people as a whole are ignorant, and a lot of what they “know”, from the news, the internet, the talk shows and (worst of all) “common knowledge” just ain’t so. Instead of spending money where it actually needs to go, you’d end up spending money on whatever was newsworthy that week, and taking necessary money away from programs that are too boring to be talked about.
Before you start asking people what they want from the Federal Government, you should first ask them what they know about it in the first place.
The problem is not disagreement on priorities it is disagreement on how to achieve those priorities. Suppose the priority is peace in the Middle East, do we achieve it by bombing ISIS or backing the Syrian rebels, or staying out of if altogether. If anyone knew they real answer it would have already been tried and achieved.
I can somewhat agree with this perspective, but why should people need to know anything about the Federal Government at all? They just need to know their lives. Whether they need a better job. Or whether healthcare is personally risking bankruptcy for them. You get people to talk about their own personal lives, their own personal needs and wants, you ask them to be totally selfish. And repeat the same exercise a few to tens of millions of times to arrive at your wish list.
If you then receive what you personally want, at a cost that you find acceptable, why do you care how you got it? Why not just be selfish, say “hey thanks!”, and vote to re-elect?
Again, unless we’re back to “People are inherently ungrateful/unreasonable”.
Yeah, this is a certainly a problem. To which my surly standard-response, is “well, what did you expect? You can have more of or more of [Y], but you can’t have both, sorry, life’s like that. Choose.”
There’s a reason I’m not in a public-facing career. More realistically, I would expect a compromise, followed by marketing spin to paint the compromise as a huge victory.
Because humans have the capacity to empathize with the plight of others. It’s a bit of a curse at times. Could you be happy eating your dinner if you knew it was taken from a starving child to give to you?
Ignorance matters. If people don’t know that what they want just isn’t realistic, and some opportunistic lout says " Don’t listen to those naysayers!" and promises to give them what they want, they just might elect that opportunistic lout.
See, this I can’t get behind at all. In my view, if you’ve already had a reasonable and healthy period of discussions on a issue but can find no clear solution, the solution is to pick any possibly-reasonable solution and go with that (pick the least unpopular solution, for example). Then review regularly, see if it’s working or not, and choose a different solution if the currently-selected solution isn’t working. Trial-and-error.
Yes, this is horrible when you’re talking about using trial-and-error while millions of lives hang in the balance. But millions of lives hang in the balance regardless, so you’re not any better or worse off by picking the best-available-option. If you’re debated and debated and still haven’t come up with anything solid, you need to start seriously asking yourself if additional debate is likely to prove useful. And sometimes, the answer if that, no, additional debate would not likely be useful, you just have to dive in and experience, take what comes, and adapt accordingly.
Of course not. But I would also expect said representatives to poll the starving family as well, ask what their needs are, and take their needs into account. And if, at the end of the day, it turns out that 70% of the US voting public’s attitude is “fuck the poor”, well, then we’re a morally reprehensible people, but we are what we are.
Opportunistic lout: “Don’t listen to the naysayers, you can have what you want, and I’m going to give it to you!”
Realists: “Bullshit. You got no idea.”
Opportunistic lout: “Rah rah, don’t listen to the loser, rah rah, we can do it!”
Realist: 'See?! Full of shit, you’ve all now just seen it for yourselves first hand. He has no ideas. Okay, now that that B.S. is out of the way, like I said, can’t get you 100%, but I can get you 60%. So do you want 60%? Or do you want 0% from this loser of a lout?"
Right, that’s my #3 in the OP. If the US is genuinely a divided nation without consensus, then the current outcomes make total sense.
I honestly have no idea if we are or not; all I ever hear on the matter is rah-rah “If people would just really communicate and try to understand one another, we’d find we basically agree on many things.” I’ve never seen even cursory polling data that tries to support or refute the claim. Hence the reason why I wanted to pose the question here to see if anyone else had more insights than I do.
It doesn’t necessarily mean the nation is “genuinely divided.” If the tax rate is set just right, you’ll still end up with half the population wanting it to be lower, and the other half wanting more government services (at the cost of higher taxes).
I used to think there were basic issues upon which we could all agree. For instance, “We all want our kids to go to good schools.” seems like something everyone could get behind, even if we disagree on the definition of “good”.
Unfortunately, it seems now that the consensus is “I want my kids to go to good schools. I don’t give a shit what happens to your kids and I sure as hell don’t want to pay for it.” If we could just get people to understand that there is a connection between everyone getting good schools and the cashier at the grocery store being able to count back change.
But to continue your example, the two (tax rates and government services) are linked, and you can’t look at the tax rate as an issue in isolation. The positions are not truly “lower taxes” vs. “more government services”. It’s “lower taxes AND less government services” vs. “higher taxes and more government services”. When you frame the question that way, you may get a different response. Or you may get a clean split, which then I would argue is being " genuinely divided on the issue of size/role of government".
ETA: And if the balance is “just right” (however you want to define that), then doesn’t a third position then emerge “Yeah, it’s fine, I guess.”