Politics, in the larger sense, is how people get along with other people. We talk, we trade, we compromise; we sell each other things and swap stories; we interact, and at the end of the day, we sleep and get ready to do it again. It is, definitionally, about government, true enough; but it is also about simple human interaction to accomplish given purposes and goals. With that latter sense in mind, politics can also be defined as "the art of the possible."
Frankly, there is nothing wrong with politics in the United States. The interactions are still functioning, people are still talking (often too much and on the wrong subjects), and we hold elections as regular as clockwork. Politics, we have.
What we don't have is a clear differentiation between elections and governing. Getting elected, to far too many people, is simply the prerequisite to getting re-elected, and that quest begins before new legislators take office and continues until they retire or are shown the door.
Here's the problem: getting elected is not the job. Getting elected is getting hired to DO the job.
We have always had legislators who understood the difference, ranging from the great antebellum Senators who kept the Union together until the lunatics blew it asunder to the brilliant 20th Century Congresses that gave us everything from Social Security to the Interstate Highway system, on through to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is safe to say that there were differences of opinion throughout that were in diametrical opposition, one to another. But they served in wars together and experienced life outside of Congress; this let them see the other guy as someone who honestly thought about things differently - not as the enemy, or as evil.
They knew that compromise was not a bad thing. It gives the best deal to the most people, and if you do not get everything you want, at least everyone gets something...and you can always try again next time when you have more votes or better arguments.
These days, compromise is seen as surrender. But without compromise, without a willingness to listen, actually LISTEN to the other opinion (which, against the odds, might be closer to the truth than yours is), the work simply doesn't get done very often or very well.
Obamacare is a case in point: it passed through a procedural trick on a virtual straight line party vote. There was no minority party buy in, even though there were and are items in the ACA that both sides agree needed to be enacted. The lack of buy in provoked a sustained response that is eager to rescind it, defund it, or use it to defeat Democrats in elections - the latter being the most effective. The thing the Democrats forgot is that having the votes simply meant that something could get enacted; the point was to get the best bill possible, bringing both parties on board. Many Republicans, particularly in the Senate, wanted to pass a health care bill, and bringing them in, even if it made the bill less comprehensive, would have lent the legislation legitimacy. Instead, the ADA ended up looking partisan, and it was.
The times are too fraught with peril to put up with ballot mice. We need legislators. We need our leaders to emulate men like Henry Clay, Thomas B. Reed, Sam Rayburn, Tip O'Neill and Everett Dirksen, not people like Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner. We need people who are willing to govern and make the damn deal.
In short, we need statesmen. We need men and women of character and honor. But mostly, we need them all to do the jobs we hired them to do.
Or we need to fire the lot of them and give some other people a shot.
