I agree whole-heartedly with Glenn Greenwald’s assessment, not only of our political leaders, but also of us, the American voters. (My emphasis in red.)
When politicians take bad positions, ones that are opposed by large numbers of their supporters, it is not only the politicians, but also huge numbers of their supporters, who step forward to offer excuses and justifications: well, they have to take that position because it’s too politically risky not to; they have no choice and it’s the smart thing to do. That’s the excuse one heard for years as Democrats meekly acquiesced to or actively supported virtually every extremist Bush policy from the attack on Iraq to torture and warrantless eavesdropping; it’s the excuse which even progressives offer for why their political leaders won’t advocate for marriage equality or defense spending cuts; and it’s the same excuse one hears now to justify virtually every Obama “disappointment.”
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Political leaders have the ability to change public opinion by engaging in leadership and persuasive advocacy. Any cowardly politician can take only those positions that reside safely within the majoritiarian consensus. Actual leaders, by definition, confront majoritarian views when they are misguided and seek to change them, and politicians have far more ability to affect and change public opinion than they want the public to believe they have.
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We’ve been trained how we talk about our political leaders primarily by a media that worships political cynicism and can only understand the world through political game-playing. Thus, so many Americans have been taught to believe not only that politicians shouldn’t have the obligation of leadership imposed on them — i.e., to persuade the public of what is right – but that it’s actually smart and wise of them to avoid positions they believe in when doing so is politically risky.
I often became frustrated during some campaigns for candidates of my former party, especially when I personally knew the candidate, to see the candidate either shy away from, or dance around, issues that they felt passionately about merely because they believed that that they would get hammered otherwise. Rather than honing their message and making their case, the person asking for my vote more often than not would duck the issue, or worse, adopt a position I knew was not in keeping with what they truly believed. And I would stand in the back of the room and die a little inside each time it happened. If was able to bring it up with my candidate or staff, I was told, in not so many words, well, we’d like to be able to do it differently, but we won’t stand a chance if we do.
Greenwald continues:
Due to the prism of gamesmanship through which political pundits understand and discuss politics, many citizens have learned to talk about their political leaders as though they’re political strategists advising their clients as to the politically shrewd steps that should be taken (“this law is awful and unjust and he was being craven by voting for it, but he was absolutely right to vote for it because the public wouldn’t understand if he opposed it”), rather than as citizens demanding that their public servants do the right thing (“this law is awful and unjust and, for that reason alone, he should oppose it and show leadership by making the case to the public as to why it’s awful and unjust”).
Our “leaders” also have the power to set the public agenda. If we have learned nothing else from the neo-con assault of the last thirty years, this should be it. Talk about something long enough, frame it properly, and you will At Least get people engaged and discussing it. In the movie, The American President, Michael J. Fox’s character, Lewis, says:
People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they’ll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They’re so thirsty for it they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.
To which President Shepherd (Michael Douglas) responds:
Lewis, we’ve had presidents who were beloved, who couldn’t find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don’t drink the sand because they’re thirsty. They drink the sand because they don’t know the difference.
They were both right.
The idiocy of the excuses is proven by the number of times Congress stalls on issues that polls consistently show the public favors, such as universal health care, or go ahead with actions the public disapproves, such as the war in Iraq and giveaways to bankers.
It makes sense when properly translated: This position would cost me my monetary support from the big donors and the backing of the bigwigs in my own party, and subject me to the scorn of the punditry. The public? *Ptui!*