In Defense of Politics
In Defence force of Politics
What exercise Tom Wolf, Kathleen Kane and Donald Trump have in common? None are practitioners of the art of politics. Plenty with on-the-job trainees
Feb. 04, 2016
There was a telling exchange during 1 of the debates in the 2022 congressional election for the seat previously held by Allyson Schwartz. On the stage, candidates Marjorie Margolies, Daylin Leach, Val Arkoosh, and eventual winner Brendan Boyle were going mano-a-mano when Leach, the most quick-witted of the bunch, zeroed in on Arkoosh, a doctor who was a political neophyte.
"You know, Val brags virtually not being a political leader," Country Senator Leach said. "I understand that. When you lot're sick, it'southward non like y'all'd desire to become to a professional person surgeon. You'd much rather go to someone who dabbles in medicine from fourth dimension to time."
I've lately been thinking of Leach's clever putdown—he chosen it "snarky" while chuckling almost information technology when I called him terminal week. Every time Donald Trump bloviates or Ben Carson snoozes or Kathleen Kane sneers or Tom Wolf monotones across my Television set screen, it reminds me that this trend of electing non-politicians to constituent part might not be working out too good. Governing actually requires a detached set of political skills, and information technology just may exist—as we're finding out—that success in one field doesn't necessarily correlate to success in the public sphere.
We've been loud and clear hither at The Citizen that we need to widen the internet of who participates in politics. And there is no uncertainty that we demand new candidates bringing fresh ideas to public life . But that doesn't mean that offices like Attorney Full general, Governor, President or, for that thing, Mayor ought to be entry-level positions.
That lesson would seem to exist omnipresent, from California, where the charisma of Ah-nold wasn't plenty to actually get things done and it fell to a longtime professional politician like Jerry Dark-brown to motion the country forward , to Minnesota, where onetime professional wrestler turned governor Jesse Ventura could entertain but couldn't build coalitions and forge compromise .
Every time Donald Trump bloviates or Ben Carson snoozes or Kathleen Kane sneers or Tom Wolf monotones beyond my TV screen, it reminds me that this trend of electing not-politicians to elective office might not be working out too good.
Leach, a loud progressive voice in the General Assembly since 2002, has learned this the difficult way, and he sees evidence of information technology all around.
"Take y'all seen Ben Carson in those debates? He looks utterly clueless," Leach says. "Not exactly the trait you want in someone making existential decisions for the country. In no other profession would the to the lowest degree experienced person exist taken so seriously. If I get into a rocket ship without any training equally an astronaut and attempt to pilot the thing, I won't know what levers to push button and it's going to be a catastrophe. Well, when I first got to Harrisburg, I didn't know what levers to push. And I fabricated some really stupid mistakes."
Similar the time in his first week, during a Judiciary Committee meeting, that Leach raised his manus and offered a critique of the chairman's proposed legislation. "I thought I was the smartest guy in the room," he recalls now, wincing. It took an older colleague to nudge him awake: "You do realize that, if yous ever want to run a beak out of committee, he'due south the guy who runs information technology for you, correct?"
Even and then, the lesson didn't set in. Information technology took years for Leach to larn the ins and outs of how to get stuff done. The working of relationships, the intricacies of vote-counting, the phrasing of things so that, as he puts it, you bring people with y'all, rather than turning them off. "It's about learning to know what to enquire for," Leach says. "Peradventure you know a colleague tin't support your legislation, owing to circumstances in his district or party. But mayhap you lot can ask him to help on a procedural vote. Or yous tin can ask him to refrain from attacking yous."
Making that ask, all the same, usually requires some level of transactional politics. Do this for me and I'll do that for you. Information technology'due south the sausage-making that and so turns off high-minded reformers like, frankly, me. But the ends justify the means when information technology'south for a good cause. That'due south what George Washington Plunkitt was talking about in the 1905 classic Plunkitt of Tammany Hall , a treatise on the dark art of politics that still resonates today. Plunkitt, a political apparatchik of an infamous automobile, introduced the concept of "honest graft," the notion that politicians ought to openly line their constituents' pockets instead of secretly lining their own. Information technology was called pork-barrel spending and later became known as "earmarks." Honest graft was, and remains, distastefully transactional—but it can really brand people's lives improve.
Today, in Pennsylvania, we might have a upkeep—and thus nonprofits that service at-risk children would no longer be wondering how to make payroll—if not-politician Wolf had practiced a footling honest graft. The legislature against whom he's engaged in an epic stare downwards, after all, is roughly comprised of 1-tertiary ideological true believers, one-third centrist pragmatists, and one-third whose votes are for sale if the toll is right.
The latter group, needless to say, can be swayed. In by years, astute Governors have used Walking Around Money—millions in discretionary funding for pet projects buried in the budgets of executive co-operative agencies, usually called WAMs—to get votes. But non-politician Tom Corbett, pointing out that WAMs totaled as much as $400 million annually, banned the practice. (I'm told that, privately, he has conceded that the motion doomed a good part of his legislative calendar from getting through.) Wolf supported the reform, then now WAMs aren't in his tool box.
Honest graft was, and remains, distastefully transactional—but information technology can actually make people'due south lives better. Today, in Pennsylvania, we might accept a budget—and thus nonprofits that service at-take a chance children would no longer be wondering how to make payroll—if non-politician Wolf had practiced a little honest graft.
But he could have used funds from the Redevelopment Help Capital Programme—a state grant program administered by the Function of the Upkeep to fund economic, cultural, recreational and historical improvement projects. Nosotros're non talking "bridges to nowhere," the $320 million Federal earmark for a tiny Alaskan town that became a symbol of wasteful pork-barrel spending. Many (though admittedly non all) of the projects funded by RCAP dollars contribute to real economical development. However Wolf to engagement is not known to have dangled the prospect of RCAP funding before whatever recalcitrant legislators in substitution for their support on his proposed budget.
Perchance information technology'south time for a fiddling less purity and a fiddling more practicality in our politics. Locally, it was distasteful to reformer Michael Nutter, when pushing for the $1.8 billion auction of PGW, to effort and sprinkle some of that windfall into the local coffers of City Council members in substitution for their support. (Or, at least, in exchange for fifty-fifty holding a hearing). At the Federal level, once earmarks—Federal WAMs, in upshot—were banned, in that location was no turning around the 2022 regime shutdown. Then-House Speaker John Boehner bemoaned the fact that, without earmarks, he couldn't go the 218 votes he needed to pass legislation. "I've got no grease," he said.
1 of Leach's signature achievements is getting a medical marijuana neb through the State Senate concluding year. He did it the old-fashioned way, by pushing political levers. "Lobbyists and advocates are paid to be purists," Leach says. "Being a legislator is very different. You larn that you lot have to go along the advocates at bay. I had to tell the marijuana people, 'You're not going to get everything you want.'"
It took him roughly a decade, simply Leach says he learned the importance of incremental progress, and he doubts that those who are new to the weirdly insular world of how laws get passed tin understand that. I'm every bit turned off by wasteful pork-barrel spending as the next guy, like the $211,000 in one case earmarked for olive fruit wing research or the $188,000 for a Lobster Constitute in Maine. But Mario Cuomo used to say, "You campaign in poetry, but yous govern in prose." Spending for pet projects like roads and bridges in home districts in exchange for support on monetary priorities that can advance the common good? That'southward the prose Cuomo was referring to. And maybe it requires having been there to know how to exercise it.
Leach is showroom A. When he was younger and purer, he was also not quite every bit successful. "Saying you got a half a loaf is thought of every bit a pejorative," he says. "But in a state like Pennsylvania, a one-half a loaf is actually a huge achievement."
Header Photo: Flickr/DonkeyHotey
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/in-defense-of-politics/
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