The Means Beat the Ends

"...Boehner and others have claimed Democrats are so worried about losing control of the House that they will use the lame duck in a desperate way to push through major, contentious items…."The American people have a right to know what is being planned post-election," says Boehner. And at least one group -- Freedom Works -- wants members of Congress to pledge not to take up any substantive items in a lame-duck session."

- CongressDailyAM 7/19/10

Most voters mostly don’t vote based on issues. A handful of folks may have one or two make-or-break litmus tests (choice for example) and an even smaller number may have a matrix of issues about which they care and against which they compare a matrix of how candidates stand on the issues, but most of us, most of the time, vote for the candidate we trust in our gut. Issues become proxies for how we feel in general, they are evidence of deeper approaches to government or people.

Most voters mostly want candidates who don’t cheat. We want our elected officials to be honorable, to “tell it like it is” and “say what they mean and mean what they say.” Most of us also believe that even candidates with the best of intentions (and wanting to be a Congressman means you probably don’t have the best of intentions to begin with) get corrupted once they get inside the beltway and catch Potomac fever from the insiders and fat cat lobbyists.

As such, some of the most effective political attacks are not criticisms of policy, but rather of process. Health care reform was negotiated behind closed doors and the President’s fiscal commission must be a smoke-screen for higher taxes (if you’re on the right) or for gutting Social Security (if you’re on the left). Most people, of course, support most of the elements of the new health care law and if the recent experience of AmericaSpeaks is any indication most people also support some tax increases and some modifications to Social Security to help secure our nation’s fiscal future. The criticism isn’t on the policy outcome, but rather on the process that birthed it. (See The Washington Post’s Ezra Kline for more on process and the health care debate).

Results from a recent national budget town hall organized by AmericaSpeaks help drive this point home. Roughly 3,500 people in 19 cities across the country sat at tables of 10 to discuss the budget. Participants were roughly representative of the communities in which the meetings were held – Tea Party members and MoveOn members sat across from each other, as did the young and old, black and white, rich and poor. Some common policy ground was forged, and some general points of national consensus emerged (all the data is on AmericaSpeaks’ website). But most of the agreement was on the policy process itself - there was disagreement on outcomes, but agreement on process. Most people agreed that the process is broken, that there is too much self-interested self-dealing, too many closed door deals, and too much silliness.

Setting aside the difficulty of governing entirely on process for the moment, the strategic lesson is clear: advocates who focus on outcomes or policy specifics don’t do as well as those who focus on the integrity of the process. Winning isn’t a matter of accumulating more data, winning is a matter of engendering more trust.

As always when writing about this subject I have to acknowledge the important work of Prof. John Hibbing at the University of Nebraska. Those interested in reading more on this subject should especially see his book (co-authored with Elizabeth Theiss-Morse), Stealth Democracy.