Why are we surprised that Obama’s fudging the issues? 

There’s widespread dismay at Barack Obama’s softening his stance on a number of issues, even among those of us who would never vote for him. He’s backtracking, sidestepping, and being frustratingly evasive. This should not surprise any member of the Green movement, let alone dismay us. Electoral politics in a representative system the size of the entire US demands this sort of behavior.

Representative government has had its detractors at least since Rousseau, who pointed out that under such a system the people are only sovereign on the day they vote. Let’s face it – representative government is a concession to scale.  It is used when the system has grown too big for meetings at which collective decisions can be easily made.

Unfortunately, even Greens, who are committed to small-scale politics, have become used to organizations, cities, and political systems that have grown too large for their own good. Everyone shrinks from attributing their unwieldiness to their scale. When things start going wrong we tinker with organizational structures or attempt other temporary adjustments.

Representative government was one of those structural tinkerings. It wasn’t so bad in the 1780s when the population of the United States was 3 million and when the political elite knew each other – or were related (hmm, not much has changed on that score!) As Gore Vidal depicts in his novel about Aaron Burr, everyone knew that George Washington was overweight and that Chief Justice John Marshall was the cousin of Thomas Jefferson. When Jefferson put Burr on trial for treason in Richmond, Virginia, that meant Marshall would be the presiding judge. During the trial, Burr and Marshall shared a pint at the local tavern, where most of the lawyers in the case were also tippling. (Footnote: Marshall ruled against his cousin’s interests.)

As the population of the United States grew, the electoral college became more and more of a rubber stamp, more and more of us were allowed to vote, and political parties became institutionalized. Parties, of course, played an important role in providing reference points for voters who hadn’t a clue who their local candidates were because the system had grown too large.

However, this cluelessness extended to knowledge about the workings of government. The larger the system, the less information voters had about what was being done on their behalf between elections. For a while, newspapers and radio station competed with each other on digging up sensational dirt on politicians’ shenanigans.

With corporate media monopoly nearly complete, and with the US population soaring past 300 million, it is hardly surprising that electoral campaigns have become exercises in public relations and can never be intelligent debates over the direction of public policy – even if every voter had a degree in political science. And once the winners take office, as Rousseau foresaw, they seldom if ever set about fulfilling their electoral promises because they know that elections in a system this size never confer a policy mandate. Besides, they have work to do, behind closed doors: using their power to follow their real agenda, and laying the groundwork for getting re-elected.

Why on earth, in such a system, would we be dismayed at Barack Obama’s fancy rhetorical footwork as he seeks to appeal to as many voters as possible? If he said what he really thought and remained consistent to his ideals – whatever they may be – the system would chew him up and spit him out in little pieces. His ideals and his team may perhaps be slightly less toxic than the program and personnel of the scary incumbents, but they both have to follow the same rules.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with noting Obama’s shape shifting, but let’s do it in the spirit of showing the need to dismantle the system into workable political communities. These would be small enough for their members to feel competent to define their locality’s problems and to figure out what steps the members themselves need to take to solve them.

Terry Fowler

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