Political Business
With the caveat of if allowed, when the future looks back on our era, political failure will be its defining characteristic. Historians will cite numerous reasons for this deficiency, none unprecedented in scope or degree. As always, there will be intriguing specific differences, along with the not so interesting inevitable repeating generalities, whose recurrences plague human history like an untreatable chronic malady, war being the most virulent.
In 1913, a year before the hostilities of World War I broke, Roman historian Guglielmo Ferrero wrote an excellent piece on the coming war titled, “The Dangers of War in Europe.” Published in The Atlantic Monthly, the piece encapsulates the political environment and resulting failures that brought about history's greatest needless war – that's saying something. Ferrero astutely analyzes the political situation of a deteriorating monarchical Europe, evolving into a not quite democratic, though more representative politics composed of new business elites, professionals, and the great mass of people.
Ferrero describes the evolving political environment as such,
“In all the countries of Europe it is the upper classes, or a portion of the upper classes (and in this portion I include the moneyed classes, the aristocracy, and that part of the professional class which comes most in contact with the nobility) who strive in every way to excite the belligerent spirit of the artisans, and of the populace, even at the cost of bringing about a terrible war, and of forcing the people into a hostile attitude toward the government and its ruler.”
Then, Ferrero points to the toxic role of media, newspapers at this point, which would be displaced by radio in the run up to World War II, afterwards television, and now the internet,
“Observing at close quarters the policy of European governments, it is easy to see that this warlike spirit would not be so strong and deep in the masses were it not pertinaciously fostered by the newspapers, and by the political parties they represent, by the wealthy classes, and by the nobility, who have so much influence in Europe.”
Certainly, some of the players are different today. The old agrarian aristocracies, the “nobility,” have now all been displaced. However, in ways very much in place of, modern government created powerful unaccountable bureaucracies of very defined interests. In the United States, in matters of war and peace, none are more powerful and unaccountable than the National Security State. While today's established American political parties represent not the mass of people, but various entrenched interests, especially those of leviathan corporations and various government bureaucracies.
Ferrero ends his piece with a tragic bit of acute prescience about the political failure bringing on the war. He writes,
“Standing between the alternatives of war on the one hand, and of lawlessness on the other, the European nations are all equally bewildered, in doubt which way to turn, while the approaching crisis is all the more serious because thinking men are giving up politics for business. This neglect of public duties by the class which once bore the entire responsibility is one of the most regrettable results of industrial development and universal wealth. I trust the day may never come when Europe will be forced to realize that it would have been better for her if she were less rich but more wise, if she were endowed with less machinery and capital, but with more powerful, more stable, and more enlightened governments.”
One of the things I first found attractive about politics was you could find many broadly educated and intellectually curious people. Over time, I watched this erode to be almost nonexistent. While it didn't start in the 1980s, there was certainly a mass exodus of intellect out of politics with the Reagan Revolution. It was clear the path for any thinking person was business.
There was a great problem with this. Most importantly, while plenty of business requires thinking, it is a narrow thinking, a division of intellect to paraphrase Mr. Smith. Good politics require a more catholic understanding of the world, most imperatively it needs an understanding of not simply the components of any given system, but how they are organized, how they connect and interact. This is lost to contemporary politics.
The brain drain from politics to business was accompanied by the complete dominance of business over politics. The process of “more machinery and capital” overwhelmingly became the business of politics. Wisdom was out the door at every turn.
Ferrero reveals the decline of the old and rise of the new organizational components and their interactions in the politics of his era. American politics has completely lost the understanding that at its foundation, all politics is about organization, political change begins and ends with reorganization.
Funnily enough, a now forgotten political actor, who more than any other individual helped usher in the politics of the last three decades, understood organization's foundational political role to an extent no one has since. Ironically, an incredibly successful businessman, 1992 presidential candidate Ross Perot pointed directly to the greatest problem plaguing American politics, a problem greatly responsible for the mess we currently find ourselves. In pure Perot, he states,
"Now, as one of my children used to say, give me your whole mind for a minute, as you do that you've got to really look at how our government is organized, and I am not sure you hear much talk about this. Do you realize our government is still totally organized to fight the Cold War? Go back to 1947 when we reorganized our government with primary emphasis on the Cold War. I think we could take a minute and say wait a minute, we need to reorganize to rebuild, reindustrialize America, clean up our cities, build new roads and bridges, have the finest schools in the world, clean up the drug problems, clean up the crime problem and get our house back in order."
“Hear much talk about this,” how about none. In my life, the number of political actors who accurately fingered the lethal problem of the entrenched National Security State have been few. The number understanding reorganization as the solution, almost none.