Chicken or the Egg?

Colin McEnroe writes an interesting piece that touches on a few issues about which I have a deep interest, namely living wills, separation of church and state, political hypocrisy, and, of course, the Joe Lieberman-Ned Lamont Senate race. Here's a telling passage:

In 1979 … the Connecticut state Senate took up, as it did every year, a bill that would have allowed people to create living wills so that their families would know their wishes as they lay dying.

The lobbying arm of the Catholic Church fought and beat the bill every year. During the long-winded 1979 debate, as Joe Lieberman sat listening to a Catholic colleague denounce the bill as "man playing God," a 25-year-old newspaper reporter plopped down in a chair next to him.

"Why does it always break down that way?" the reporter whispered. "The more conservative argument always invokes God. The liberals always insist that God has no place in a debate in an American state legislature …Why doesn't somebody make the argument that medical science has exceeded the will of God by keeping people alive when they're supposed to be dead? Why not suggest that living wills represent a kind of restoration, allowing people to live in communion with the will of their Maker?"

At that, Lieberman fixed the reporter with a serious look and said, "That's the most interesting thing anybody has said to me all session."

The reporter brightened at such praise, only to watch in disappointment as Lieberman voted against the bill, which failed again.

I was that young reporter. Call it the beginning of my education about Joe Lieberman. Sometimes what he says has nothing to do with how he'll vote.

I don't know how many PatRoW readers actually care about the Connecticut race, especially since the Nutmeg State is unlikely to elect a Republican or Independent (Lieberman?) candidate. Also, Stat Counter tells me that I have 6 times as many readers in Norway as I do in Connecticut (maybe I should do some Scandinavian homework and come up with a witty quip about King Harald V or call Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg a douchebag. Special thanks to the CIA for the intel).

But here's the thing (and please read McEnroe's piece to get the full picture), why do politicians – not just Lieberman, mind you – feel the need to say one thing and do another? Why is it considered par for the political course to compromise one's ideals or sacrifice the consensus of the electorate when it is convenient to do so?

Joe Lieberman actively and loudly supported Clarence Thomas' Supreme Court nomination, then voted against it when it became clear his vote would not matter; he " collaborated with Sen. Jesse Helms on a measure that would have stripped federal funding from public schools that counseled suicidal gay teens that their lifestyle was OK"; he has played footsie with Pat Robertson and Sean Hannity, and famously had a public love affair with our dimwitted president.

In an article criticizing liberals who attack Lieberman for not, as FDR would have endorsed, "putting first things first" and focusing efforts on vulnerable Republican seats before cannibalizing ineffective Democrats, Jonathan Alter nonetheless has this to say:

…The fury directed at [Lieberman] by many Democrats is rooted… in his annoying habit of hedging his bets, as reflected in his risk-averse insistence that if he loses the primary, he'll run as an independent. His campaign poster when he ran for high-school class president featured him crouched on his parents' roof under the line: VOTE OR I'LL JUMP. The charm of that has worn off.

I agree; Lieberman's steadfast support for Dubya's Folly (©2006 Patience and the Reign of Witches) may be the issue that actually gets him run out of office, but it only the latest in a series of capitulations he has made to both the war-mongering and Christian conservative wings of the Republican Party. And yet, by nearly any measuring stick, he has had an incredibly successful political career (as a Democrat, no less) and fairly won an election that should have awarded him the second-highest American political office. And yet, what is it about politics that brings out the best in idealists and moralists alike, yet rewards politicians who sell us all down the river?

A colleague of mine, when asked that very question, thought I missed the point:

The thing that's missing is money. MONEY. I don't know where Joe's money comes from, but if you're going to bring up the chicken and the egg and rewarding liars and deceivers, I put it squarely on money buying election victories, lazy media enabling the corruption by allowing it to continue (and focus on the "horserace" instead of issues which could bring the hypocrisy to light) and ending (beginning?) with the hypocritical votes that are required to earn the money.

Maybe that's part of the truth, although I presume that the full answer is closely related to the fact that as splintered as our country's political landscape may be, the one thing that unites all of us – blue and red staters, evangelical and atheist, hawk and dove, Mayflower material or first-generation – is the near universal distrust and growing distain for the officials that are supposed to represent our interests in public office. I suppose a better question is whether the loathsome nature of the political landscape corrupts our best and brightest elected officials, or whether our loathsome politicians are responsible for the decay in the fabric of American Democracy.