Politics and agency dissonance

By Dave Anderson:

In almost any field, the people at the top of the field are good to very good at what they do.  Surgeons like to operate, psychiatrists like to medicate and political operatives like to politic.  These tendencies are usually okay, but they often force people who should know better to choose sub-optimal paths because that is what they are familiar with. 

Several months ago, I had an off the record talk with a political operative who is working with an endangered Blue Dog Democrat.  That individual saw everything as merely a political and messaging problem and not a problem in and of itself.  The world around them was malleable. 

This viewpoint was why this individual was not concerned that their boss was pissing off the entire Democratic coalition with a string of 'bad' votes --- it was all a messaging and political strategy aimed for the teabaggers.  The operative was optimistic that if they hit their contact goals, if they hit their fundraising goals, and if they hit their opponent with enough negative oppo, they would win.  The operative lives a world of almost unlimited local agency.

Brad Delong is puzzled at the political choices of Democrats and President Obama as they are bad in the long run, bad in the short run, and pissing voters off.  Usually the political goal is to achieve policies that don't piss voters off, and are good in at least the short run if not also the long run. 

�It looks like President Obama�s political advisers are getting the
upper hand in the debate about the need for a second stimulus,� says
Brad DeLong, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. �If
they talked to political scientists, they would know that in an
election year the health of the economy determines the voters� mood and
right now that mood is looking ominous.�

The current policy set that is either in place, or looks likely to be in place within the next month are bad policies that won't improve the economy.  The economy is not a messaging problem.  It is the primary political problem for Democrats.  The economy sucks, and the Democrats are in power, therefore, they will get whacked hard by voters who want a good economy.

Recognizing the economy as the political problem removes agency from the vast majority of political actors.  It is too big and too dominant of an issue when one's entire successful career has been on manipulating much smaller issues such as a 'great' attack ad, or an 'innovative' field strategy.

Most candidates successes or failures this fall (and pretty much every election where there is a reasonable amount of information available) are due to things that are out of their control.  A candidate will win or lose based on how their district generically leans, whether or not their opponent has met basic fundraising thresholds, and how pissed off people are about the economy.  There will be outliers in a national election, as there is almost always a "mistress-choking" incident or an incumbent found with $90,000 in cold, hard cash in their freezer.  In this cycle, it is plausible Kentucky and Nevada Senate elections will be pro-Democratic outliers because of Republican candidate selection.  Most elections are decided on fundamentals of district lean, national mood and the economy. 

However, relying on the fundamentals removes significant amount of agency, and reduces campaigns to  mechanics.  The candidate and his campaign staff are mere automatons who are supposed to be competent at running the mechanics of the campaign so as to avoid mistress choking and macaca moments instead of swashbuckling rat-fucking idealists who control their own destiny.  This agency dissonance leads to incumbents voting certain ways in the hopes that s/he can exert their own agency, which has so far been a successful part of their lives and careers, despite the fact that those votes and policy outcomes lead to a worse economy and thus worse fundamentals.