Pearls: Staggering gridlock for two more years

EDITORIAL MUG: Matt Pearl

No need to panic, folks – it looks like Washington will remain in its normal state of staggering gridlock for two more years.

While I don’t love having so much political division in our nation, I also think that the only way to keep Congress in check at all is to make it difficult for them to over-legislate.

I can appreciate the rule of law. I can appreciate having our bicameral legislative bodies at the national level, and I can appreciate that we have empowered our representatives and senators to legislate as we have elected their members to do.

But, like anything else in life that is good, legislation can be overdone. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Locally, our elections reflected a conservative attitude. Northwest Missouri is conservative. That doesn’t mean that every liberal idea is fundamentally wrong or bad, but we are who we are. Progressivism is a city-driven phenomenon, and we don’t have any large cities in the little corner of the state.

A friend of mine and I were discussing the November election results in the days following the vote counts. He, like me, leans conservatively on many issues – but we try to be realists. Neither of us has tremendous love for many aspects of the political establishment, and we each appreciate interesting ideas that come from either side of the aisle.

Anyway, in our discussions, he expressed a distaste for a phrase that gets flung around too frequently these days: “They don’t vote in their self-interests.” The words generally apply to any citizen who is likely to vote against candidates whose policies would improve the citizen’s personal economic situation, marking the ballot instead for the candidate whose personal views (often moral or religious) more closely match his/her own.

I agreed with his point, but more so would enjoy it if the powers that be would take a note on the subject of voter dynamics. Voters choose individuals who reflect their values. I have long wondered what would happen if a pro-life, pro-gun evangelical ran with a starkly liberal economic agenda. It would be the ultimate test of voter priorities. And if such a candidate were to win, then what would the left say about this group of voters, who have so often been accused of voting against their self-interests?

But that won’t happen – not anytime soon, at least. Those values just don’t go together in the current political climate: the headline conservative values include low taxes and low spending. I’ll qualify that remark: conservatives claim to hold these economic values–in practice, they keep taxes low but do little to curb spending. As it turns out, people love tax cuts, but don’t appreciate government cutting spending toward programs they personally value.

Change can come. Attitudes and viewpoints can change. In rural Missouri, things just don’t change too quickly in terms of progressivism. You can call people stupid, or ignorant, or stubborn if you want; but folks feel how they feel, think how they thing. I have never felt that it was particularly expedient politically for a candidate to show disdain for his or her electorate. After all, our elected officials should be a reflection of our values, not vice-versa. That’s not how our republic works.

I don’t get upset with folks for disagreeing with me. Very few folks that I have met get upset with me for disagreeing with them. For this world to function, we need the varying perspectives. We need for the folks who care to stand up for their ideals. There were winning and losing candidates in the election, and that’s the way it goes. Our society only gets stronger when candidates stand up for their values, if they do so with genuine regard for their constituency, and the needs of the people.

Matt Pearl owns and operates newspapers in King City and Albany.