Despairing of democracy

Markets are a device for making stupid people do clever things. Political institutions are a device for making clever people do stupid things.
Two of this week’s events remind me of this saying: John Reid’s proposals to limit the inflow of Bulgarian and Romanian workers – Philippe Legrain does the necessary here -  and David Cameron’s “big hug nana” speech.
The thing is, both men must realize that their interventions are idiotically fatuous. So why make them?
The glib answer is that they are playing to the gallery. Cameron wants to remove the image of the Conservatives as the nasty party, and Reid is throwing the mob a bone of a “tough” immigration policy.
This raises a nasty question. Is this really what the public wants? If so, we should despair about democracy.
Or are politicians under-estimating the public’s intelligence, and over-estimating the importance of the dead trees? If so, there’s a glimmer of hope for an improvement in political discourse, if only a politician can be brave enough to ignore the dead trees.
The fact that more people abstained at the last general election than voted for either party gives me hope that it’s the latter. But am I too optimistic?

Comments

[The Pedant-General]

The UK blog explosion has only really kicked off properly in the last few years and was not even remotely influential in the 2005 election.

Now cast your mind forward to 2009/10....

Whilst I don't think we will unravel the MSM grip on everything entirely by then, it may well be the last election in which it is really in control.

[Andrew Zalotocky]

It is the media that's the problem, but it's as much television as the newspapers. Politicians want headlines and airtime but they know that (a) only a tiny fraction of what they say will actually be quoted, and (b) both the media and their opponents will be looking for something "controversial" to use against them.

Therefore most political speeches now consist entirely of sound bites, so that the candidate will appear to be saying something profound no matter which five seconds gets played on the evening news. If you actually read the whole speech it seems like gibberish, but it's written for the effect it will have when reduced to tiny out-of-context quotes.

This makes it extremely difficult for any politician to discuss mechanisms or trade-offs, or to admit that anything might be uncertain or imperfect. When anything you say will be used as evidence against you, you say as little as possible.

That in turn promotes managerialism, because if it is impossible to discuss policy in any detail the only thing that a candidate can use to differentiate himself is his personal qualities, such as "leadership" and "judgement".

Finally, that is another reason to oppose the state funding of political parties. If they all end up too broke to afford glossy media campaigns they will be forced to talk directly to the public, whether through new technology like blogs or by revitalising the local party branches.

[Shuggy]

"Is this really what the public wants?"

Yes

"If so, we should despair about democracy."

For our liberal habits to survive, democracy has to be limited. I know you don't like that but it's the reality, in my view.