Shadowboxing

Today Yglesias writes HERE:

Making it all the odder, the level of self-interest at stake isn’t all that high. Selling the public good down the river to bolster your re-election chances isn’t like stealing a loaf of bread to feed your starving children. The welfare rolls are hardly stocked with the names of former members of congress. Indeed, it’s not even clear that voting “the wrong way” poses particularly serious threats to one’s re-election. But even if it did, one might assume that people who bother to dedicating their lives to securing vast political power did so because they actually wanted to accomplish something and get in the history books, perhaps, as one of the big heroes of their era. Nobody ever writes a biography about the guy who did a good job of reconciling his party’s ideological base with the parochial interests of local businesses and his campaign contributors.

Meanwhile, political argument is actually dominated to an odd degree by fake-technical discussions about how “people think that x but really it’s y” or “a could achieve b if only he did c” with very little attention given to the crucial moral and ethical dimensions of political disputes and political action.

Which echoes what I wrote HERE a coupla months ago:

Sometimes I wonder if members of Congress spend too much time out-thinking themselves - political twists within themselves and blocs determined by political games within political games, thinking that come re-election time they will be rewarded for these efforts/games etc.

But the theory of Congressional Stagnation tells us that most voters aren't really paying attention anyways, and, short of getting caught dating a Cub Scout, the odds that you will be re-elected in your district are incredibly high. Which means you probably don't necessarily need to do political grandstanding and gamesmanship-filled filibustering to keep your job. You can probably support things you think are actually good policy and make sense, without having to stoop to make yourself look like a clueless idiot/complete jackass for the party line, and still get re-elected with little to no worry.... the public isn't keeping a tally of what you've opposed and how much money you think you've saved them - if for instance healthcare turns out to be successful, everyone will be like "hey, great, healthcare is cool." Hey, I'm sure back when they were deciding it, somebody voted against having the government keep an active army. Yet when we're attacked these days, we think "gee, it's sure handy to have an army ready to go."...you might as well have public policies and institutions that work and let those be the "scorecard," not political grandstanding and backs of phantom bubblegum cards.

Meanwhile, the public so readily accepting politicians' acting as if public policy is some game wherein we're all players on teams and a "political victory" is more important than actual policy that benefits ourselves is a dangerous thing.