They are just Humans
May 2022 Imperfect Union
Wow has it been a month. No shortage of news to discuss, no shortage of events to put in historical context. From where I sit, one thread running through all of these stories, is our expectation that public officials are somehow other and will make decisions using different considerations than average Americans.
Armando Iannucci, the creator of the tv show Veep, gave an interview comparing British and American politics. His main point is that in Great Britain, the public treats politicians as humans and voters have much more access to their elected officials. In the US, we tend to treat politicians with so much reverence that we sometimes forget they are still regular people. I’d argue we do the same for appointed officials, like judges, ambassadors, etc.
This calculation is all backwards. In a republic, citizens elect officials to represent them. Public officials are supposed to serve the American people, they are not supposed to benefit from office or be glorified for this service.
Image courtesy of Open Gov Guide
That’s definitely easier said than done, however. In November, I wrote about how the founding generation viewed the relationship between service and financial benefit in a piece for The Hill. Short story, they took a very hard line against financial benefit in office and Alexander Hamilton even went so far as to expose an extramarital affair to avoid accusations of financial impropriety.
And yet, they also worshipped Washington, especially after he gave up power— twice. I have tremendous respect for his legacy, but even I get a little cringy when I read some of the eulogies.
So this back and forth was a part of our political culture from the very beginning. Thomas Jefferson gloated when protestors burned John Jay in effigy to protest to the Jay Treaty, but he did NOT like it when newspapers criticized his presidency. Alexander Hamilton happily helped tear down statues of British figures during the Revolution, but was outraged when he was pelted with stones after giving a speech, and was quick to advocate military suppression of protests over the whiskey excise tax in 1792. (Note the administration did eventually use military force to crush the rebellion in 1794 after the protests turned violent, but in 1792, the protests were simply non-compliance, meetings, and statements. Hamilton still wanted to bring down the hammer).
You might say, then, that early public officials thought that they deserved the respect and deference of American citizens when they were in office or the target of protests. But when their side was protesting, they were fine with it.
Which brings me to my larger, and more contemporary, point. We need to rethink how we conceptualize public service.
We should be grateful for public service and we should expect officials to be compensated accordingly. They deserve respect and safety. But no more respect or different legal treatment than every other citizen. They must follow the same laws and be held accountable just like everyone else. That’s what a democracy means. No one is more valuable than someone else and no one is above the law.
Additionally, we should stop expecting politicians and public officials to act apolitical. And yes, here I’m thinking about the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has always been political. For more on this subject, I’d recommend following Rachel Sheldon online and reading her scholarship.
Justices are selected by political actors and are one of the greatest prizes of winning presidential elections. They shape policy, culture, and society. They aren’t raised in bubbles. They attend school with other political actors, they read books, and they consume news. OF COURSE they are political and they have always been political.
The only difference is that we’ve been operating under a false illusion for the last several decades that the court was somehow above politics. This concept is a creation of the 20th century.
Trust me, no one in the 19th century thought the court was apolitical. John Marshall crafted his landmark case Marbury v. Madison to assert judicial power while evading the political restrictions at the time. And it was an intentional slap in the face to President Thomas Jefferson, who happened to be Marshall’s cousin. They despised each other and I have zero doubt that factored into the decision. No one did petty like 18th-century Virginia cousins.
This decision was not a fluke; the Dred Scott decision was one of the major sparks that ignited the Civil War and is considered to be “the most egregious example in the court’s history of wrongly imposing a judicial solution on a political problem.”
But this question of the role of politics is not just limited to justices. I think we expect senators and representatives, state officials, etc. to act under a different set of considerations than the rest of us. To be sure, there are examples of behavior when people act for the higher good and not their own self-interest. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger’s service on the January 6 committee is not in their best political interest. They are acting to preserve the country and I’m blown away by the bravery.
Similarly, if you haven’t seen this video of Rep. Tim Rice at the 7th Congressional District primary debate, you should watch it:
I’m not saying we shouldn’t encourage this virtue. We absolutely should. But we shouldn’t be surprised when most people don’t make these decisions. Instead, we should acknowledge that politics most often prioritizes crude calculations. So let’s make those calculations the center of our decision making process.
If politicians make a decision that’s unpopular, they need to feel it. They shouldn’t be able to ignore the wishes of voters because they are so well-funded by wealthy donors. They need to be voted out of office. They shouldn’t be able to find a cushy landing spot at a lobbying firm. They shouldn’t receive well-paid speaking gigs. As a society, we need to make it valuable to do the right thing so that self-interest aligns with doing the right thing.
It’s pretty gross to think about politics in this way, I get it. It makes me squeamish too. But I think if we think about the system as a math calculation instead of a moral one, we’d be more effective. And we’d certainly be less surprised when politicians don’t act the way we expect.
We’d also be much less surprised when politics embroil the Court. If we treat the Court as part of politics, we can be honest about what that means. We can be honest about the role of appointments in electoral outcomes. We can be honest about when legislation is required, rather than just trusting the Court to deal with it. And we can be honest about what behavior is expected and what behavior is out of bounds for justices. And we can actually talk about what to do about it if their behavior is so far outside the limits of propriety, rather than treating them as untouchable entities.
Ok, that got a bit darker than I intended. Sorry guys! I guess I’m siding with Thomas Hobbes for the moment. He wrote that without government, life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Life has gotten longer and certainly less solitary, but I think humans are pretty prone to be nasty and brutish with or without government.
Do you agree? Or am I just a negative Nancy today? Tell me your thoughts!
A few suggestions for additional reading on the history of the court:
Jack Shafer, “Let’s Be Real: The Supreme Court Is Political and Always Has Been.”
Rachel Sheldon, “The Supreme Court used to be openly political. It traded partisanship for power.”
