How Politicians & Citizens Do Government (Part 2)

 

Part 3: Understanding the "Republican and Democratic Parties"

The Democratic and Republican Parties are each an organized group of people who present the voting public with their candidate(s) for an election.

 

In America, we almost always have only two major political parties. This is because America has three branches of government (executive, congressional, judicial) rather than just two (congressional and judicial) as in the more common parliamentary governments like Great Britain. Parliamentary governments usually have several main parties and after the election the parties negotiate to “form a government” and select a person to head up that government. 

 

Why have Parties? Anytime a group of organized people get together to do something, they want their group to work well. And then, some other, nearby group thinks they can do better, and/or they are afraid of the other group’s intentions. To make a long story short, competition naturally arises between groups. Political groups stake out so called “positions,” which could be very general (for example, “In Government Smaller Is Better”). Or a political group’s position might be a specific issue (for example, “No More War”).

Any big and modern society cannot be understood as one whole group of people. Instead it is broken down into useful categories, also called subgroups, based on criteria. Social and economic criteria include such factors as:  

• General level of health or disability
• Years of education
• Married or single
• Urban or rural

Economic criteria

• Working or unemployed
• Income level

In both political science and politics the most frequent and useful subgroups are: lower class, middle class, and upper class. Most American adults know what these terms mean. These subgroups are also called the lower socioeconomic class, middle socioeconomic class, and upper socioeconomic classes. These terms are more descriptive and remind us that a subgroup is defined by meaningful criteria.

So, why are the socioeconomic classes important? It’s because…

 

Politics is all about deciding who gets the most good stuff from the government. 

 

Does everybody get the same percentage of an income tax cut? Should rich citizens pay more for Obama Care to off-set what the indigent don’t pay? At one time in America many workers were protected by labor unions, and unions had power to strike as a means of getting higher hourly pay; but no more, because the government no longer protects some of the labor union’s bargaining methods. Citizens elect politicians to get stuff from the government. The citizens vote for those politicians who will do battle for them in government.

The needs, wants, and problems of the lower and upper social-economic classes are substantially different. 

 

So, guess what! The Republican and Democratic Parties each have their own, different policies, beliefs, and recommendations for solving social and economic problems. And this is a good thing. It has worked successfully for a long time.

 

The two Parties fight it out politically for control to do government their own way. Both Parties are very competitive, send out political messages in slogans, and use vague and confusing words like: conservative, left, right, center, liberal, radical, Tea Party, bleeding heart liberal, on and on. 

 

Both Parties have put tremendous effort into (1) selecting candidates who might win, govern well and (2), they try to fulfill the standard values and policies of their Party.

I’ve been on a journey to clear up my confusion about such political language. And here’s what I’ve come up with. 

 

A government for 330 million Americans (which by the way, includes 1.8 million federal government workers) is so complex that political talk has had to evolve. It’s slogan oriented because no one has time for anything more. It uses abstract words like “conservative” and other generalizations to pack a lot of information into a few vague words. I’ve read many definitions and the are ones I’ve settled on as most useful and given below:

From what I have learned, the standard public statements of each of the two Parties are summarized below:

 

Democratic general statements:

 

Tending to LIBERAL. The use of government resources and money to cure health and welfare problems to insure all citizens have at least a minimal but acceptable living situation. Examples would be unemployment benefits, food and shelter, and healthcare.

 

Tending to LEFT-WING. Supporting social equality among people instead of upper versus lower class status. More person-oriented. From what I have seen and studied about the Democratic Party, there’s little that seems racist.

Republican general statements:

 

Tending to CONSERVATIVE. Using a Wikipedia search phrase of “American political conservatism.” Wikipedia says, “Conservatism in the United States is a political and social philosophy which characteristically prioritizes American traditions, republicanism, and limited federal governmental power in relation to the states, referred to more simply as limited government and states' rights."

 

Tending to RIGHT-WING. Supporting free market, free enterprise, private ownership, traditional or conventional values. More business oriented than person oriented. From what I’ve seen and read about the Republican Party, racist themes and tainted legislation are common—particularly since 2016.

 

 

Both Parties, rightly so, care most about getting their candidate elected. A winning candidate makes everything the Party stands for much easier to implement in the future. But there’s no law saying the winning party must fulfill promises made during the election. Such a law doesn't even sound workable.

Here are some examples of campaign promises fulfilled, unfulfilled, along with some nasty surprises.

1. Trump campaigned against NATO, against environmental protection, and against politically correct speech.
    
2. Once elected he eliminated close to 200 regulations for reducing global warming and pollution. Republican politicians are general climate change deniers and are out of step with the rest of the world.
    
3. He frequently spoke out against our involvement with NATO and acted like he wanted to be personal friends with dictators in China, Russia, and North Korea. He implied we were too friendly and too supportive of South Korea (one of our long term allies).
    
4. He mismanaged the COIVD-19 response and undermined Dr. Fauci and other medical professionals. He used his presidential authority to recommend sham, not medically recommended, treatments. He gushed misinformation. Eventually, statisticians will calculate the estimated deaths from COVID-19 he likely contributed to. From the onset of COVID-19 he minimized its danger and contradicted and personally attacked nationally respected scientists and medical professionals.
    
5. Obama (2009 - 2017) saw the country through the an extremely serious financial crisis. His signature accomplishment was the passing of what’s commonly known as Obama Care, which made many fundamental health industry changes resulting in lowering of costs, coverage for pre-existing medical conditions, and dramatically improving the lives of millions (Krugman, 2021). When fully in effect by 2014, it was still under attack by the Republicans. But Obama Care has survived those attacks and it would now be unthinkable to end it.
    
6. George W. Bush (2001 – 2009) in his two campaigns and eight years as president made many, many promises. Some of those promises seemed to lack common-sense. He said it was necessary to “strengthen Social Security” by letting workers contribute their social security taxes to private investments. There was massive resistance to Bush’s plan -- even from his own Republican Party. Bush marketed the idea of significant changes to Social Security as “strengthening,” but what he intended to do was known to have worked poorly in Great Britain and other countries when tried. The Republican Party was weakened during his two terms of office. Bush’s presidency has been given the lowest ratings of any president in recent years. 
    
7. Bill Clinton (1993 – 2001) I have presented examples of his significant accomplishments in a previous blog and detailed the intensity of work by both Parties that turned Clinton’s proposals into law.

Part 4: On Money And Corruption in American Politics, There’s Good News

 

In the last election 14 billion was spent campaigning – that’s a record!

When I googled “corruption in American politics” and other similar phrases, I found nothing. What I did find were freedom from corruption ratings of modern democracies. American comes out in the top 20 corruption free governments.

 

 

Part 5: About Our Citizen Voters 

 

A lot of information is available about the actual casting of votes in America. Voter turnout as a percentage of eligible voters has ranged from 52% to 62% over the past ten years. As many as 10% to 15% of age-eligible voters cannot vote due to such reasons as being non-citizens or felons (which depends on particular state laws).

 

Rates of voting are higher among wealthier and those with more education.

A concern I have for American citizens is that years of data published in many political science books reveal that:

• A high percentage of voters have little or no knowledge of the policy positions of those they voted for.
   
• Yearly, there are many scientifically performed surveys of what voters know or don’t know about what’s going on in government. The average voter has very little knowledge and often wrong knowledge.
   
• The closeness in the popular vote of many presidential elections suggests to me that citizens are casting votes on the basis of global knowledge, vague impressions, and incidental information—not on specific issues.

The political scientist Dr. Eitan Hersh’s book suggests most American citizens know the importance of voting and politics and wish they were doing more. It’s been over six months since I read Dr. Eitan’s book and not a week goes by that I don’t think about his research and valuable recommendations for American citizens on how to give power to their votes.

 

 

         WORKS CITED

 

        For references, see the relevant page on the powertomyvotes.com website.

 

 

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How Politicians & Citizens Do Government (Part 1)

 

BREAKING POLITICS DOWN INTO POLITICAL PARTS OF THE WHOLE 

 

Truly, we can be proud of ourselves even if our only political activity is knowing our preferred political party and candidate--and then voting. That’s all I did for many years. Pretty average. But we can also become inspired to do better and add more power to our votes.

 

Concerning politics, average voters often have strong negative thoughts about politicians (such as, “They lie a lot.”) and some very strong feelings such as, “I can’t stand that candidate (such as Biden, or Trump, or Hillary Clinton).” 

 

But to get more power to our votes we must learn more about POLITICS because:

• It exists in our personal relationships
   
• Family and extended family relationships
   
• Social relationships at school, work, church
   
• Anywhere there are people

Politics is a serious reality in everyday life, just like money or food, goodwill, or crime. If this statement is hard for you to believe, go to Dr. Hersch’s book, Politics is For Power, and read a few of the stories about average citizens who realized …They had to get political to make useful changes in their circumstances.

 

 

In any group of people, young or old, some are getting more of something and some less. If they become aware of having less they will sooner or later try to get their fair share. If they are fortunate in having more than others, they may feel the need to protect their surplus from social welfare legislation. The unequal distribution of good or bad stuff gets noticed and becomes a problem that citizens react to. This leads to compassionate responses as well as aggressive self-protection. The resolving of such problems between the “Haves” and the “Have Nots” is what politics is all about.

In preparing this blog I looked for a workable definition of politics and found a good one:

• “Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies politics and government is referred to as political science.” (Wikipedia) 
   
• This definition is good because it’s short and summarizes decision-making, power, and distribution of resources.

From my research and attempts to more fully grasp how politics works, I break things down further into five Political Parts of the Whole. The five parts have different causes and function differently. The better we understand them as distinct parts of a whole, the more we can see how multiple parts jostle and impact each other—resulting in what is called politics.

 

Here are the Five Political Parts of the Whole:

 

1. The “machinery of government” refers to the local, state, and federal offices (for example, president or governor, or mayor, or representative or senator, etc.). The machinery also includes when and how these office holders meet, do their work, and how many years they serve.

• There are a total of 542 federal offices which include President, Vice President, 100 U.S. Senators, 435 Representatives, and a few officials from DC, U.S. territories, and Puerto Rico.
   
• There are about 750 state officials in the U.S.
   
• Not including the federal and state governments, there are about 87,500 local government political entities at the county, city, township, school district and special purpose level (judges, utility districts, fire, police, etc.). So, there are well over a hundred thousand local elected officials. We should aspire to vote in more state and local elections.
   
• The machinery of government itself produces side-effects which explain some of the weird outcomes. 

2. The office holders themselves with their values and specific beliefs and agendas.

 

3. The Republican and Democratic Parties and their political agendas.

 

4. The amount of campaign money provided to candidates by individuals, the Parties, and Corporations.

 

5. The citizen voters with their individual beliefs and values.

 

 

The above five, separate political parts are distinguishable; they should be studied one by one; and then studied in combinations. Beware, it’s mentally overwhelming to try to comprehend them all working together over time. 

 

With people inhabiting the machinery of government, it all comes alive. Some would say it’s noble and others might say it’s a can of worms or a bag of snakes. Whereas people in politics and government try to look noble and worthy, politics is about conflicts of who gets the most good stuff and the least bad stuff. 

 

To have and express political opinions is to have conflict, and when the votes are tallied there are always winners and losers.

 

I’m next going to share with you some actual events which illustrate the workings of first two political parts.

 

 

ACTUAL LEGISLATION SHOWS THE FIRST TWO PARTS OF THE POLITICAL WHOLE 

 

In 1992-1993 the Congress passed President Clinton’s Economic Recovery Plan (ERP). Clinton came to Congress after serving several terms as governor of Arkansas. He was an attractive, likable, smart (Rhodes Scholar), and he sincerely liked the challenges of political process. He actively marketed the ERP to Congress and the American people. Note: The sources of this information come from two books: The Agenda: Inside The Clinton Whitehouse (Woodward,1994) and Advice and Dissent by (Blinder, 2018).

 

Clinton’s Economic Recovery Plan (ERP) after many, many changes did the following:

• Became law.
   
• Increased taxes on incomes above about $200,000 but did not greatly increase tax on middle incomes.
   
• Paid off a significant portion of the federal deficit.
   
• Stimulated the economy through increased government spending in specific areas.
   
• Studies have shown that the ERP did result in a deficit reduction, holding down interest rates, and stimulating the economy.

Part 1: Illustrations About “The Machinery of Government”

 

Clinton submitted the ERP to Congress and it became what’s called a bill. Only after a long, torturous process of review by multiple committees, resulting in negotiations and amendments was the bill voted on. Because the ERP had to do with money, energy, income tax, clean air regulations, on and on, the ERP was evaluated by about ten different committees. In each committee, there were representatives and senators wanting changes in the bill to satisfy the wishes of their constituency (i.e., the body of voters who elected them) back home.

 

The ERP bill led to a political fight over an energy tax on environmentally damaging fuel use (called the “BTU energy tax”). It would affect the use of coal (the dirtiest fuel) the hardest. The coal industry, of course, was represented by congressmen to protect the coal lobby interests. These self-interest groups caused large reductions in the BTU energy tax to the point that it no longer could be used as the necessary income source for the ERP. Negotiations went round and round until the BTU tax was abandoned. Instead, a five cent tax on gasoline replaced it. This was a loss for the effort to rein in pollution from coal.

 

Next we look at important machinery of government side effects due to the two-year terms of office in the House of Representatives. 

 

Legislation takes a long time. So there is a mad rush to push bills forward as fast as possible to avoid interruption from the next election process. It is said about bill passage that “timing is everything.” Bill Clinton introduced the ERP in a presidential address, his staff provided information to the media, and at least a dozen of his staff met with, phoned, and heavily lobbied to get support for the ERP. Many congressmen and women were interested in the ERP because it usefully addressed serious problems; or, they were interested in undermining and killing the bill. And some of the politicians chose to vote either yea or nay as a favor to some other politician. It seems to be the case in Congress that votes can be bought and sold in a currency of what is referred to as “political capital.” For example, “I’ll vote for what you care about if you vote for what I care about.”

 

Some congressmen and women did one or more of the following with the ERP:

• Agree to support the bill early on for a favor, and later on after they got their favor, vote against it to suit some other agenda. Two ways to win with treachery and betrayal!
   
• Agree to support the bill only at the final vote and only if their vote would successfully pass the bill into law. This circumstance did occur. The ERP passed because Clinton’s staff and Clinton himself offered favors to Representative Margolies-Mezvinsky if, at the very end of voting her vote would pass the bill. She didn’t want to vote yes on the bill because it could be political suicide. In fact, during the first but not final votes on the bill she did vote no, and her opponent dropped out of the next race. But for the Clinton Administration she agreed, “I won’t let (the ERP) fail. I’ll vote last, but if you need me, you will have my vote.” And she was good as her word. It is worth noticing that Clinton used a strategy of having her vote last, just before voting was closed; this made it impossible for any other representative to halt the vote and allow votes to be changed (Woodward, 1994, page 300-302). In Congress, votes are electronically posted for all to see who voted yea or nay. Voting can be paused so congressmen and woman can change their votes based on whether the bill it going to pass or not.
   
• At many stages in a bill’s passage, success or failure comes down to an hour or even a few minutes or seconds. Down to mere seconds was the case for the ERP.

Part 2: Illustrations About “Office Holders Themselves”

 

Blinder (Blinder, 2018) was one of the three economists on President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. He is a brilliant advisor of numerous presidents, the author or coauthor of twenty books, and has served as vice chairman of the of the Federal Reserve Board.

 

Blinder’s book gives a very credible analysis of why simple-minded slogans dominate in political campaigning and the legislative process. 

 

Personally, I’ve never heard a politician explain any economic idea. Blinder provided the Clinton administration with valid economic theory to help them make a realistic plan to help the economy recover from a recession; Blinder also understood that the job of educating the public and passing a bill into law is a job, not for economists, but for the politicians. 

 

Politicians understand that slogans are all that the public will listen to due to their very limited attention spans. Even though slogans are gimmicky, often based on wrong information, ignorance and ideology, they are what works. He states, “And accuracy doesn’t matter. In a political marketplace like that, complexity sells poorly—if at all.” 

 

It was said of Tyson, the chair of the Clinton Administration Council of Economic Advisors, that “Unfortunately, she realized, it was difficult, if not impossible, for the public to understand the connections between Clinton’s program, lower deficits, lower interest rates, more investments, higher productivity, and a better standard of living. As Alan Blinder liked to say, it just didn’t fit on a bumper sticker” (Woodward,1994).

Clinton’s plan was multifaceted and consistent with the best economic theory available. But any politician might have reason to oppose Clinton’s plan because of self-interest. So, they would send out their own dismissive slogan’s to their constituents. The Republican slogans were designed to spook voters by suggesting the EDP would increase middle class taxes or that the EDP was only a deficit reduction bill, a topic voters did not understand and did not care about. So, in the same period when Clinton was making speeches all over the country telling people the details of the EDP bill, the Republican side was misinforming the voters. The Clinton campaign continuously measured the voter knowledge and whether they supported the bill; and the results weren’t good. He knew the public didn’t understand much of anything about the EDP. 

 

But Clinton was famous for never giving up during a political battle. The end result was that the Economic Development Plan (EDP) bill passed into law.

In our next blog we will discuss the remaining three Political Parts of the Whole:

• The Republican and Democratic Parties and their political agendas.
   
• The amount of campaign money provided to candidates by individuals, the Parties, and Corporations.
   
• The citizen voters with their individual beliefs, knowledge, and values.

        WORKS CITED

        For references, see the relevant page on the powertomyvotes.com website.

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