Rule by the Insincere

Michael Kinsley wrote a marvelous essay for the Book Review section of Sunday's New York Times (registration required). Two paragraphs, somewhat repetitive, captured my own view of the problems of political dialogue today:

In my view, the worst form of cheating in American democracy today is intellectual dishonesty. The conversation in our democracy is dominated by disingenuousness. Candidates and partisan commentators strike poses of outrage that they don’t really feel, take positions that they would not take if the shoe was on the other foot (e.g., criticizing Bush when you gave Clinton a pass, or vice versa), feel no obligation toward logical consistency. Our democracy occasionally punishes outright lies but not brazen insincerity. When we vote after a modern political campaign run by expensive professionals, we have almost no idea what the victor really believes or what he or she might do in office.

The biggest flaw in our democracy is, as I say, the enormous tolerance for intellectual dishonesty. Politicians are held to account for outright lies, but there seems to be no sanction against saying things you obviously don’t believe. There is no reward for logical consistency, and no punishment for changing your story depending on the circumstances. Yet one minor exercise in disingenuousness can easily have a greater impact on an election than any number of crooked voting machines. And it seems to me, though I can’t prove it, that this problem is getting worse and worse.

It would be naive to the extreme to expect reasoned statements from all politicians all the time when they are on the campaign trail. But surely we can do bettter than we do. One of the most frequent comments about the Bush administration's attack on John Kerry after his botched joke about serving in Iraq was that no one believed that Kerry really believed that those fighting the war were stupid. (By the way, who will remember what he said six months from now?)

You can applaud the Bush attack as brilliant politics. Perhaps it was. But the disingenuousness of the charges was, to my mind, disgusting. That word is strong and used too often, but it describes accurately my visceral, perhaps overblown, reaction to the episode.

Not that the Democrats are better. Every announcement by the Bush adminstration, every story about a Republican is followed by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and a score of other senior Democrats parading to the microphones to relay some predictably contrary message. Some Republican is corrupt in some way. Some interest of the American people is being harmed somehow. Someone should resign, and now. How much of this do they believe; how much of the angst and anger they show is merely tactical, stemming from the desire to have their side win? From all indications, most of it.

It may be that in this day of ubiquitous news coverage and sound bytes little else is possible. Putting on a good show for the cameras is indeed necessary for political success. But there is little sign that the real work necessary for governing is being done. With too few exceptions, policies that might solve the severe problems that we will soon face are neither being formulated nor advanced by those we have elected. The disingenuous rule.