It’s easy to get exhilarated when abuse of power is revealed. But right now it’s a bit like celebrating the capture of a few visible frogs when the whole pond is infested. What’s going on below the surface is what’s troubling me, and I’m not sure we have enough trained divers who know where to look or what to do when they get there.
When I wrote about political courage in the blog and in It’s All Politics, it was along these lines. There’s so much behind-the-scenes stuff going on, so much evasion, quid pro quos and gamesmanship that any semblance of telling the truth appears naïve. If there ever were any political purists in Washington D.C., they’re now rare as hen’s teeth. There just aren’t enough “leaders” willing to look into the eyes of the people they represent and follow with an honest “And here’s how it really is.”
What we’re seeing daily is power and politics so embedded in the system that few politicians know how to back away even if so inclined. Surface types of power are the ones easily seen – the title, the plant in the office, access to people higher up the chain, the right invitations. Embedded power and politics are ways of doing things understood by those who “know the ropes.” This is the scary stuff of politics. Things start to get problematic when what’s going on behind the scenes is inaccessible to anyone not in the inner circle. That’s what we have now. It makes people desperate. They don’t want to be outsiders. The trouble is, that kind of inaccessibility provides a perfect breeding ground for pathological politics. When nearly everyone is an insider or an aspiring one, nobody is willing or able to say what he’s really thinking. Everybody becomes a political operative whether by choice or by duress.
The Judith Miller situation is another case of what’s said on the surface not jiving with what appears just below. We had what appeared on the surface as a First Amendment heroine. Now we wonder who she’s protecting, whether she’s after a book contract, or diverting attention form her position on the WMD fiasco, if someone threatened her, or whether she was she just tired of jail. And why wouldn’t someone with the conviction to protect sources want to tell the rest of us the truth? The forced smiles, absence of eye contact with the media, and seeming contradictions – what’s all that?
With today’s extensive media coverage it’s ironic that we’re living in an era when “telling it like it isn’t” is the modus operandi of government politics. You would think the more people observing, the harder it would be to get away with a lie. Instead, a plethora of political machinations have been developed to hide what’s really going on. If that’s going to change, we all need to become more politically astute. We need to be vigilant about noticing contradictions between what is said and what is done by “leaders.” It’s time to expect the truth, to see it in their eyes, in their body language, in their conviction and actions and, if it isn’t there, to vote for someone else. If they’re lying, you can tell. The body hardly ever lies. You just need to know where to look. And then it’s time to expect the media to be more sophisticated. Which genius, by the way, came up with the ridiculous idea of journalists constantly interviewing journalists to get at what’s really going on? What kind of probing journalism is that?
We need to not be satisfied with catching a few frogs, but instead insist upon knowing what’s going on at the bottom of the pond so we can find out to what extent we’re actually living in a swamp.