Running to Run Government on Anti-Government Anger

David Ignatius at the Washington Post recently wrote that Trump is tapping into anger and frustration associated with the very real decay of American political institutions. 

‘The danger is that Trump’s responses would probably make the underlying governance problems worse — and increase polarization and dysfunction even more.’

Agreed.  But directing this anger and frustration at government  misses the point, after decades of ongoing efforts by the far-right to paralyze government decision making, demonize government as always the problem, and defund government—firing cops and teachers and failing to invest in infrastructure and more. 

‘Here’s the puzzle: A country that is angry at “government” or “Washington” will have difficulty fixing problems that result from the breakdown of public services caused by underfunding, incompetence and the predominance of private “special” interests over the public interest. What’s needed isn’t less government, but better government — which costs money and requires good leadership.’

Agreed.  But the dominance of special interests ought to redirect our anger and frustration at those private sector elites who both insist on corporate welfare AND freedom from the type of government regulation that would have prevented the recent Great Recession. 

Instead, Trump (and Cruz) redirect that citizen anger toward each other and civil servants and encourage us to conclude ‘both sides’ are equally responsible for the paralysis making democratic decision making even more difficult that it is at the best of times.

Ignatius argues (citing Fukuyama) that our gridlock is not unique in history, but if our situation is to be repaired through the ‘self-correcting’ mechanisms we expect to be a strength of democratic institutions we need to recognize that the voters Trump and Cruz are mobilizing “are poorly organized” to respond.

This is always a possibility for a semi-sovereign people, but with failed leadership today this problem is also amplified by design.

Voters today are more vulnerable that usual to overly simplistic promises of a return to greatness in a context where elites have been exploiting the mass media for decades to misinform us and redirect our anger away from leadership failure—public and private sector—and toward blaming each other, from immigrants to minorities, women to workers or Muslims.

Ignatius also draws our attention to the role of elite failure in institutional decay.

‘Decay happens when agencies that are supposed to serve the public are captured by elites, or overmanaged by elected officials, or buffeted by what Robert Kagan calls “adversarial legalism.”’

 ‘The deep anti-government hostility of the modern Republican Party is part of the problem. Tax cuts have starved many government agencies of money and good people. Fukuyama notes that Medicare and Medicaid, which account for 22 percent of the federal budget, are managed by 0.2 percent of federal workers. As the federal workforce has dwindled, the number of contractors has exploded. Taxpayers suspect that it’s a con, and they’re right.’

‘Congress meddles with the federal agencies rather than passing legislation to solve problems…mandate[ing] complex rules that reduce the government’s autonomy and make decisions slow and expensive. The government then doesn’t perform well, which confirms people’s original distrust.’

‘An angry public watches as the rich get richer, the middle class stagnates and government does nothing. Middle-class prosperity and self-confidence have been the foundation of U.S. democracy. Yet the Pew Research Center estimates that the share of household income going to middle-class families fell from 62 percent in 1970 to 43 percent in 2014, while the share for upper-income families rose from 29 percent to 49 percent.’

Agreed.  This is the argument we should be arguing about, but instead…

‘Trump gives an angry America someone to blame: Muslims, Mexicans, government bureaucrats, free-trade negotiators, politicians, journalists. But he doesn’t begin to address the real problem of how to fix the United States’ political decay.’

A failed business man whose only claim to fame is being born rich and then taking that opportunity to become an uniformed bigot is not even close to the type of person who can help us reverse this decay.

So he wants to reframe the conversation and encourage us to redirect our anger and frustration toward other average Americans, who have also been and remain victimized by the failure of public and private sector elites like Trump for decades.