No Man Can Serve Two Masters

I haven't been to one of these raucous town halls, so I can only speculate from news reports about what is going on in these things.

But it wouldn't surprise me if Members, their staffs, and their allies are often trying to manage the message and tone of these things. We've seen stories of sections reserved for union attendees, who enter after arriving later than long lines of people who are held at the door. And I've read at least one report of a Member taking questions as selected for him by his staff, without opening a floor mike. Talk of "balance" and "participation" comes easily to any politician seeking to find space for his allies, and it isn't hard to imagine discussions set up to emphasize apparent support for health care reform out of all proportion to the views of the attendees.

And in such staged and stilted environments, it isn't hard to imagine attendees getting angry, and finding a way to express the real proportions of sentiment in the room.

It's also easy to imagine the dilemma of many of these Members. Computerized gerrymandering has created many safe seats in Congress and state Legislatures -- obtaining office in such a district is as much a matter of building support within the party as it is winning the general election. I suspect many of our Congressmen are more adept at intraparty politics than general elections, because the latter is far less important in their jurisdiction.

The general electorate tolerates such stuff when the stakes are low, because they are less invested in particular issues than the various constituents making up the governing coalition. But when the coalition's agenda becomes so ambitious that it clearly conflicts with the general interest, and/or the particular interests outside the coalition, the general voices become a lot stronger.

I imagine that many Congressmen now find their districts generally opposed to the policies so avidly supported by their intraparty coalitions. These face a tough problem, as they need both to stay in office, and to advance their careers, but can't please both. It would be only natural for them to try to minimize the problem by managing the discussions of the issues so as to minimize the voice of the opposition, in the hope that the issue will go away by the next general election.

At this point, I'm very worried that the liberals in Congress will ram through as many benefits for their constituents as they can, calculating that even if they lose their majorities, it will be very hard to unwind those concessions. Under a Democratic President, they might well be right.

At that point, we don't have any good outcomes. The concessions couldn't be unwound without bitter fights, and the disappointment of a lot of people who have been educated to believe they deserve all this stuff. And it would be quite hard to unwind them under a Democratic President. I'm afraid that Congress is now poised to do a great deal of damage to our economy, our governance, and our politics.