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OF COMPROMISE
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Politicians often do things
that resemble 'selling out'
By CHUCK McFADDEN
of TheColumnists.com
Through your ruthlessness, political savvy and a certain measure of good luck, you have risen almost to the top of the political world. You are Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Through its ruthlessness, political savvy and a lot of campaign contributions, U.S. agribusiness has also risen to the top of the political world. At least, it is where it wants to be--a position where it can force the Congress to send big farmers billions of dollars each year in subsidies. They do it even if there is a worldwide food shortage and farmers are planting every square inch they can and reaping terrific profits.
You, the Speaker, know very well that the big agribusiness concerns need the subsidies like Bill Gates needs another 50 cents. You come from a liberal district in a liberal area of the country, and in your heart of hearts, you know the subsidies are a taxpayer ripoff and bad for Third World farmers around the world as well.
But the Midwestern districts at the heart of agribusiness have--partly due to the serial misadventures of the Bush Administration--managed to send a bunch of your party members to Congress, thereby boosting your chances of A. remaining Speaker and B. getting what you regard as progressive legislation passed.
Those invaluable new members of Congress
from your party will support all kinds of things you think are
vital. But they will not, can not support any effort to bring
common sense into the nation’s farm subsidy program. To
do so, they point out, would mean their political doom. They’re
right. It would. Their farmer constituents don’t care about
the plight of Third World farmers who can’t sell their crops
because they are undercut by subsidized U.S. commodities and
the effects that has on taxpayers or U.S. foreign policy and
relations with allies. The only thing U.S. agribusiness cares
about is dollars in the pockets of farmers. If their congressman
or woman votes in a way that threatens that, no matter what the
reason, he or she is out of Congress as of the next election.
Absent those members, your chances of getting a number of bills
passed that you think are essential goes bye-bye.
So you weigh and consider. The farm subsidy program is bloated,
unneeded, wasteful of taxpayer dollars for sure, but you not
only support it, you do it publicly. You say it’s wonderful,
just what “America’s family farms” need. You do
everything you can to help re-elect those rural members whose
votes you need so much.
Your big-city, liberal, well-educated constituents scream. Your hometown newspapers editorial writers scream. They accuse you of selling out to agribusiness. They point out all the bad things about the farm subsidy program, and ask why you are supporting it.
They have the luxury, you see, of not having to weigh competing concerns. They don’t have to take some bad in order to achieve a greater degree of good. They don’t, in short, have to act like politicians. They can be pure of heart.
We all know, or say we know, that politicians have to make compromises and do things that are phony in order to win votes and achieve what the politician wants to achieve. But we don’t always connect it with day-to-day events.
A classic example is Hillary Clinton’s
actions after Barack Obama’s “bitterness” remarks
at a fundraiser in San Francisco. He said blue-collar workers
in small towns, faced with a world that seems to be depriving
them of economic chances, cling for reassurance to guns, religion
and suspicion of people not like them.
So what did Sen. Clinton do? Why, she leaped into action with
an immediate statement talking about how her father taught her
about guns and took her shooting when she was a young girl. And
she went to a bar and downed a shot of whisky with a beer chaser.
Mrs. Clinton is a graduate of Wellesley College and Yale Law
School, where she served on the Board of Editors of the Yale
Law Review. Such biographical circumstances would not lead one
to the conclusion that Mrs. Clinton is a member of the Muncie
bowling league. She is a member of the elitest of the elite.
So her talk about guns and her swigging whisky in a bar were
nonsense. But she and her advisors were counting on the idea
that voters are too dimwitted to understand that.
Sen. Clinton was pressing what she hoped were the right emotional
buttons. She did it because she believes, in her heart of hearts,
that she would make a very good President, and she realizes you
have to do some things to become President that fly into the
face of reality. She did a similar button-pressing with her call
for a summer moratorium of gasoline taxes. Economists say it’s
a terrible idea. Sen. Clinton knows that--but is calculating
that there will be a political benefit in calling for the moratorium,
and that outweighs everything else.
Speaking at her Wellesley graduation, the young Hillary Clinton
said: "The challenge now is to practice politics as the
art of making what appears to be impossible, possible."
Right. And to meet that challenge, whether you are a candidate
or a holder of high office, you have to make some hard choices
and do some ridiculous things.
©2008 by Charles M. McFadden. The
McFadden caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The cartoon
is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd.
E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted May
12, 2008.
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