My Problem with American Politics

 

Over the last year, I have received several requests from MR readers asking, “What is Wrong with American Politics?”. Interestingly, some 40% of the queries came from people outside the U.S.

 

My usual answer has been that MR is not focused on politics, so I dodged the question. Lately, it keeps popping up fairly frequently so I will give my opinion that, while not unique, may be different than your current perception.

 

A knee jerk reaction that many give is that money is what is wrong with our system. The day after someone is elected to the US House of Representatives, they start making calls the next day to raise funds for their re-election which is now less than two years away. Okay, that is definitely part of the issue.

 

Here is how I see it. Let me start by raising a name that is all but forgotten in US politics except for some real political junkies. Les Aspin was an 11-term congressman from Wisconsin and long-time chairman of the House Armed Services committee.  A Democrat, he had a PHD in economics from MIT and long was a burr in the saddle of many Pentagon bigwigs. He once famously said in a committee hearing that he wanted to know what we got for the trillions that we have spent in defense over the years.

 

Aspen left the house to become Bill Clinton’s first Secretary of Defense. To run the Pentagon well, you need to be a superb administrator and that does not appear to have been Aspin’s strong suit. He was eased out of the cabinet and, sadly, passed away a few years later at only 56.

 

 

 

My favorite Les Aspin quote is as follows: “If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, they will always do it.” He was not talking about voting twice during a roll call. What he was saying was that as a member of Congress, you serve two masters to get re-elected. The first is appease your constituents who vote you in to office. The second, which does not always get enough play in the media, is your campaign donors. They may have different agendas, but the crafty and cynical lifetime politicians often serve both.

 

Here is a wonderful example of this but an obscure story. Ever hear of Senator Ted Kaufman from Delaware? I would doubt it. A friend of mine from my Boston College days could always name all 100 members of the US Senate. I am sure that he remembers Ted.

 

Kaufman was named to the US Senate after Joe Biden was elected Vice President in 2008. He only served through 2010 and never got the political “disease”. As was true of many of us, Kaufman was disgusted by the shenanigans of many in the financial sector leading up to the Great Recession of 2007-2009. So, he tried to do something about it. Kaufman co-sponsored a bill dubbed FERA which was the Financial Enforcement Recovery Act. This bill authorized $165 million to target white collar crime. It breezed through both houses of Congress. I saw him in a TV interview, and he was thrilled.

 

Well, I got some political education here. While Congress had authorized $165 to chase down white-collar crime, eventually they appropriated just $30 million in the final budget. He could not whip up more support as members did not want to lose Wall Street contributions. It was then that I learned that there is huge difference between an authorization and an appropriation in the US Congress.

 

So, this was a clear example that Aspin’s seemingly cynical comment about voting on both sides of an issue can come to life. I am certain that either on the stump in fall 2010 or in debates, creeps in both parties proudly mentioned how they voted for the Financial Enforcement Recovery Act. Yet the money from Wall Street continued to flow in their campaign coffers.

 

The problem, then, is that money runs things and members of congress seem laser-focused on re-election rather than improving things. An option to help this issue that I have embraced in recent years is term limits. If people know that their time in Washington is limited, they might be more apt to do the right thing.

 

To close, I may surprise some of you who know me well by quoting consumer advocate and political gadfly Ralph Nader. When running for president in 2000, I saw Mr. Nader state the following in an interview that I believe was on C-Span: "We do not have a Democratic party or a Republican party in the U.S. What we have is an incumbent party.”

 

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com