Gallup Poll: Flower or Coffin?

H.L Mencken said, “A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.” I choose to look at the Gallup poll of the low and falling public repute of most of our public institutions as a “flower,” from which a better state of governance may grow.

Frank Newport of Gallup says, “It’s not an optimal situation, it seems to me, when such a low percentage of average Americans have confidence in this system.”

The Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, adds,

How long can we have a free and successful nation with such an unpopular -- and deservedly so -- political class….You need a certain amount of confidence for a nation to operate as a nation. Worse yet, I think this low approval number is justified, which illustrates that we're being pretty badly governed. That's a problem, too.

My fellow flower-smeller, Mark Tapscott, reflects:

The root problem is a bipartisan inability - or refusal - to adopt policies supported by clear majorities of the American people.

Those policies for the most part involve a significantly lower level of government activism, whereas the political class for the most part seeks only a higher level because it benefits, financially and otherwise, from the higher taxes, greater federal spending and heightened importance of public institutions….

Until the advent of the Internet and tools like blogs for making it a convenient tool for mass communication, however, that public frustration had no positive outlet, other than Talk Radio. Now that blogs and other online news and commentary tools such as the Porkbusters and Sunlight Foundation approaches to public policy advocacy are developing at a rapid pace, the decline of the mainstream media as the crucial bridge between the public and policy-makers is evaporating.

When people have an affordable, effective alternative to a failed product or service, they will go to it. As things currently stand, however, there is no viable alternative to the two major parties that make up the heart of the American political class.

There is no guarantee for incumbents and beneficiaries of the two major parties that this state of affairs will last much longer.

However, as campaign law expert and critic, Bob Bauer, says, the electoral and third-party organizing deck’s been stacked by politicians who disregard the public’s views:

But self-interestedness is no help to the voters where, in the design of laws to shape political competition, the politicians serve themselves, making it harder for voters to participate and easier for themselves to win. For the good self-interest to work, the bad-self interest must be contained. An electoral process rigged to suit the politician is a triumph of self-interest, won at the expense of the voter whose judgment has been devalued. Accountability is sacrificed to security; and the security is achieved by using political power to perpetuate it.

Bauer, also, reflects on the difficulty of piercing this electoral veil Congress enacted in McCain-Feingold:

Election law is now so specialized and so complicated that voters are barely included in the dialogue, though much is typically said on their behalf, as the supposed beneficiaries of various positions. And voters don’t clamor for inclusion because some of what is contested is abstract in the extreme: how much “confidence” might be restored, or “cynicism” diminished, by campaign finance controls, or the shape of their Congressional districts.

All of former Federal Election Commission member Brad Smith’s comments should be read, but suffice it for him to say:

Why is it that politicians cannot give bills honest, logical names. They used to - they had things like the "Labor-Management Relations Act," which set rules for labor and management relations; or the "Voting Rights Act," a bill that took steps to guarantee the right to vote. Now every bill title is some Orwellian propaganda ploy. The the "Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act" was neither equitable nor fiscally responsible; the "Immigration Reform and Control Act" neither made basic reforms to immigration policy nor controlled immigration; the "Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act" was passed almost entirely on the backs of one political party, in the face of almost uniform opposition in the other.

With taxpayer financing of campaigns, the "reform" movement (there's another one) seems deathly afraid to call their proposals what they are - tax or government financing of campaigns. Instead they come up with slogan titles, such as "Clean Elections" or now "Fair Elections." So unpopular is the actual concept - using tax dollars to pay for campaigns - that tax financing truly is "the reform that dare not speak its name."

Congress, the presidency, the media, and others who’ve too long insulated themselves from the will of the people, or treated us as tractable and inconvenient outsiders to their machinations, have two choices: change their names in order to confuse a while longer, but as Gallup demonstrates the public sees through evasive scams, or change their way of doing the people’s business to put integrity, competence, and transparency above above their selfish self-interest in perpetuating their power for personal pelf.