perldiver

I don't vote in federal elections.

Ah, I can hear the cries now: "But Dave, it's every citizen's duty to vote!" I've heard this enough that I figured I'd just put this up here so I could just point to it in the future.

Here's my take on federal politics...as far as I can tell, the government¹ is all of the following:

1. Highly inefficient, so little gets done and it costs a lot;
2. Highly corrupt, so its actions are not primarily oriented toward promoting the general weal;
   
3. Not significantly focused on any of the things that I personally consider important (nor am I aware of candidates in the wings who talk about those things as major planks in their platform); and,
4. Large enough, and far enough away, that it is essentially impossible for the common man to influence.

¹ (Note: By "the government", I'm really thinking of the federal level, and the executive and legislative branches...I actually still have some faith in our legal system, and in local officials, although no one would deny that those have their share of problems.)


I'd like to clarify some of the above points:

#1: Hopefully this one doesn't need discussion--anyone who thinks that our government is a model of speed and cost efficiency must be from Mars.

#2: I don't think that all government officials, or even the majority, are corrupt, but I do think that the system as whole is corrupt.

1. Getting elected to federal office nowadays is an extremely expensive, extremely specialized job. It's not about knowing the best way to run a country, it's about knowing the best shirt to go with that tie and not answering questions during the Hardball interview. Specialized jobs, by definition, are done by specialists. Specialists, by definition, are people who devote themselves to something, usually making a career out of it. Therein lies the problem: every decision that an elected official makes risks damaging his career. Therefore, he has a strong incentive to look out for his career first and do "the right thing" second. It's even somewhat justifiable, using phrases like "you fight the battles you can win" and "if I take a stand on this now, I won't be around next year to be a moderating voice on the next problem." See this comic for a chuckle about this [comic sent to me by Chris C, a fellow Obie].
   
2. If getting elected is expensive, and career officials have to keep getting re-elected, they constantly need money. Where do they get it? Well, either from fundraising among their constituents--which is a lot of time and energy that isn't spent doing their job--or from lobbyists, in a process that (if we were calling a spade a spade) might be called "selling your vote." Either way, it's a problem.
3. The party system has little value that I can see, and a lot of downsides. I've never actually understood the advantage of political parties to the citizenry, but I can sure see the downsides--kneejerk polarization on important issues, "us vs them" mentality, de facto lockout of minority viewpoints from the highest levels of government, and a lot of mudslinging. The parties provide yet another layer of career risk to politicians--voting your conscience is going to rebound on you if it's out of step with the party line.
4. I'm sure I could go on, but let's stop there.

#3: Personally, I look at modern America and I see a nation that rivals or surpasses any other in history, regardless of what yardstick you use--military, economic, cultural, scientific, rights of its citizens, anything--but that nation has recently become complacent and is sliding rapidly into irrelevancy. I see widespread clarion calls about our failure to invest in the future--in education, in basic research, in employee (re)training and skill development--and I see a nation that is making no real effort to answer those calls. I see the greatest space program in the world--that hit a dead end forty years ago and has done nothing particularly significant since. I see a nation that could put mankind on an express train into the solar system, where we could harvest enough resources (energy, living space, raw materials) to solve literally every economic problem on Earth...and I see a nation that lacks the will to step up and buy the ticket.


#4: There's several reason why the common man can't influence the government's actions:

1. What about direct appeals to sitting officials? Nope; there's too many citizens per Congressperson (much less citizens per President). The chance that an average citizen's representative would actually read an email / fax / letter from him (as opposed to the thousands of others that come in daily) is essentially zero. Even if it was read, what are the chances that it would be acted on, given the prior discussion of a career politician's motives? So close to zero you couldn't fit an epsilon in between.
2. What about voting in people who will represent you well? Nope; the system won't let you, unless you live in a very specific area (and even then it's chancy). There are only about six states that matter (the so-called "swing states" like Ohio) and the rest are predictable and therefore ignored. Personally, I live in Connecticut--my Presidential vote doesn't matter, because the state will go to the Democrat. My Congressional vote barely matters--I am one of about 13 million votes (assuming that it actually gets counted--once we start using electronic voting machines in my state I'll know that there's absolutely no point) and essentially all of those votes are going to be divided among the Democratic candidates. I support certain parts of the Democratic platform, but am strongly opposed to others...and I'm tired of choosing the lesser of two evils. In 2004, as I recall no candidate even bothered coming here, even for a whistle stop.
   
3. Ok, well, say you live in a swing state and you vote in someone who represents you well. Ok, let's say, for the sake of argument that there's a career politician out there who has strongly-held beliefs about what the important problems are, and those beliefs are closely aligned with yours, and he will act on them to fix the problems you're worried about, and you manage to get him into Congress. He's a junior Congressman with no allies, no seats on influential committees, and no established track record; in short, he's got nothing to bargain with when it's time to do cloakroom politicking in order to get bills passed. He's going to either be ineffective or he's going to be absorbed into one of the machines and vote in lockstep with their party line for a few years so that he can build up the political capital to make a difference. So he's not going to have any significant impact for, probably, at least a decade and probably more like two. By then the entire cultural and political landscape will have changed, and his opinions will quite likely no longer match yours. But, since this is for the sake of argument, let's say that he still votes the same way that you would--huzzah! You managed to vote someone in who will make a difference for your children, although the problems that you were worrying about when you voted this guy in have probably been festering for another generation by now.
   
4. Well, what if you voted him in as President, not as a Congressman? Then he gets to spend most of his time fending off the media and whatever political enemies he has (starting with "everyone in the other party") instead of being able to focus on governing. And, since we've agreed for this discussion that this guy has strongly-held beliefs that are aligned with yours and he will act on them to fix things, that means he's going to be disrupting the status quo--which is sure to win him more enemies. Maybe he can make a difference--the executive (being a single individual) has an easier time making certain kinds of changes than the legislature does--but I'm not holding my breath.
   

So yes, I think that the federal political system in this country is fundamentally broken from the point of view of the common citizen, and I believe that it is a waste of my time to follow the antics of the President and the Congress. They will do what they will do; there's nothing I can do to change it, so I just have to work around it. This belief frees up a lot of time in my day that would otherwise be spent following "news" (more on that in a future post). This lack of news-following is an excellent filter--if something is important, I'll hear about it because everyone is talking about it. If it's not important enough to get people excited, I probably didn't need to know.



Now, the above sounds like a justification for apathy, but it's actually not. Yes, like any good citizen, I would like to be able to influence our government and have an impact on the future course of our nation. I just intend to go about it realistically...I'm working to amass enough wealth and enough contacts that I will eventually be able to work the system effectively--from the inside, by hiring lobbyists and making "donations".