State of the citizenry

Home Opinion State of the citizenry

I did not watch President Obama’s State of the Union Address last week.  But I did read it, saving myself time and a good deal of frustration. Even so, the words themselves generated their own share of sighs — whether or not it was their “fair share” is to be determined by the Word Fairness Committee, decision pending.

Take this bit, for example, in which the president laments what has popularly become labeled as “gridlock” in Washington:

“No matter what party they belong to, I bet most Americans are thinking the same thing right now: Nothing will get done this year, or next year, or maybe even the year after that, because Washington is broken.”

This is not unfamiliar language.  Even before the 2010 congressional elections, which returned Republicans to a sizeable majority in the House of Representatives, the president lamented the “obstructionism” of Republicans in Congress when he and his congressional allies attempted to check several items off the great liberal wish-list. After the mid-term elections, Obama essentially gave up on the task of actual governance, choosing instead to turn the stubborn Congress — half of which Democrats still control — into his electoral boogeyman a la Harry Truman in 1948.

But Obama does actually have a point. The American public very nearly despises Congress. Various polls have shown its approval rating somewhere in the low double digits, just above used car salesmen and attorneys. Explanations for this bipartisan distaste abound, but perhaps the pithiest expression of it is that people are getting the sense that Congress is cut off — or, perhaps, has cut itself off — from constituents’ concerns.

Since Congress is the primary means by which citizens are represented in our federal government, this perception has contributed to a more general cynicism about the federal government itself — something is wrong and, somehow, Congress is at fault and must fix it.

In its more specific permutations, this sentiment is largely correct, yet it is too convenient.  Most obviously, it ignores two related facts: 1) We elect our members of Congress and 2) We have created the political culture that allows it to behave in the manner it does. Indeed, at the same time that Americans report record levels of cynicism about government, we have never demanded more from it. If Congress weren’t so busy administrating a state that both they — and we — have bloated so far beyond its proper functions, then it would have far less to argue about.

If the events of the past few years have demonstrated anything, it is this: America’s politicians, sadly of both parties, have contributed more to the creation of problems than to their solutions.  Thus, the solutions to these problems are more likely to come from below rather than above. Not through revolution, but rather through simultaneously local and national efforts to restore and strengthen weakened civic virtue and institutions.

When Congress and the rest of the federal government become less relevant to our lives, when an overextended government concentrates again on its core constitutional functions, and when we again convince ourselves that it is better to ask less of government rather than more, then perhaps the cynicism resulting from watching our politicians flounder will dissipate as their actions are rendered less consequential to our daily lives.