What’s The Issue?

Once during my days in Washington, talking to a senior Congressional aide—we were walking together down a corridor in the Senate—I was explaining a problem relating to the environment to him. He said: “Okay, okay. But what’s the issue?” I said: “I’m talking about a situation here. Why does it have to be an issue?” The aide now stopped in his stride and earnestly touched my arm. “Listen,” he said. “Around here nobody is interested in what you call a ‘situation.’ It has to be an issue. That’s the currency here. Issues. Whose ox is being gored. Situations…” He let that trail out by way of saying “way, way, way beneath all notice.”

Issue means a clash, and a clash is always between groups, organized groups. And for groups to come to the notice of the political sphere, they have to have power—clout and visibility. Furthermore they have to be aligned in some way with one of the parties. Politics is ultimately a contest between groups for power and resources. Political parties come about fluidly as aggregations of groups. Principles—and ideologies based on them—are supplied, are labels pinned on them later. Parties are bottom up social structures built of issues, of conflicts. Their interests are not in justice, say; their interests are in interests. Not surprisingly a party can remain an institutional entity even as its labels gradually change. The history of our parties illustrates this.

The people we call Democrats now were originally Anti-Federalists who represented small people, indeed they claimed all the people—a tired, over-worked little donkey ridden by a big fat banker. They were agglomerated groups threatened by Hamilton’s nationalist banking policies, originally very much opposed to Big Government and committed to states rights. Later they were known as the Democratic-Republican Party (1832); yes both names in the same party a good half of which was later pro-slavery. Little People-hood did not include the slaves. The Republicans formed around 1854 to oppose the extension of slavery to the new territories of the west. They were northern in origin and motivated by a desire to modernize the U.S. economy, which expanding slavery threatened. This, of course, put them in opposition to the slave-owning south. Their opposition to slavery was only partially pure—but, of course, that stance attracted the more advanced and religiously motivated segments of society, not least many Democratic-Republicans. Democrats have morphed into the party of activist government—although once opposing it. The Republicans are still trying to modernize the economy by a having become the party of capitalist ownership and those who fancy themselves aligned with it.

My point here is that seeking for a principled approach to governance is to misunderstand the nature of politics. It is entirely about interest and only ever incidentally principled. The principles can change, indeed morph into their very opposites. Thus liberals once were laissez faire in economics and intent on curbing government interference in the market, never mind individual freedom. That label, meanwhile, has become attached to the Democrats while those actually supporting such views are called conservatives—the very same people who, looking back a long ways, once advocated the divine right of kings.

The bald truth of the matter is that politics—and the higher it reaches the more true this is—is strictly about power and really nothing else. Or to put it more mildly, if principles come in conflict with a party’s interests, principles will be left behind. To view parties—or government for that matter—as structures of principles is to mistake a collective for an individual. We can demand principled behavior from individuals—especially if we can enforce our demands. Large collectives are not actually reachable that way. That is why the message is never in agreement with the facts on the ground, except by exception. Very rarely towering personalities emerge who, for a time, manage to give governance the semblance of principled behavior. Names that arise to me at random are anciently Charles the Great (the only reason why we remember one French king of yore) and more recently here figures like Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and FDR.

Another Divide

Rest, rest, perturbed spirit! So, gentlemen,
With all my love I do commend me to you:
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do, to express his love and friending to you,
God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together;
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let’s go together.
[Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5]

The sense that times are out of joint is present at all times and in every clime, so much so that it seems to be a defining marker of existence. The root of the feeling is that the social landscape is disorganized; we can always trace it to groups, to institutional constraints—or lack thereof. Along with this feeling comes a totally unjustified nostalgia for another kind of order. In democratic times we yearn for royalty, in royal times for liberty, in isolated times for great families, for coherent clans; in times when families dominate, we long for privacy.

Disorder leads to polarization. Here is how: somebody must be responsible for it, and that somebody ain’t me. So it must be those people. And looking at those people, we soon recognize their common traits, ignore the traits we share with them, and now we have someone to blame. But our own desperate coping just adds to the disorder. And those people are doing the same thing. So it goes.

There is a kind of comfort in being, say, a Guelf or Ghibelline. We’re born into one or the other, we learn the ways of our party and find them, therefore, natural. There is a significant sense of exposure and solitude associated with rising above these natural polarizations, like being on a mountaintop without adequate clothing, the wind tearing through the sky. Not only can it be seen by others as indifference, but, to remain detached, one has to practice indifference voluntarily. You can see from the mountaintop but you can’t join in the melee, and it is precisely in the joy of battle that we experience solidarity with our fellow man.

These are real problems. The only way to see reality sharply is by reason, but the polarization that takes place is guided by feeling, by selective viewing, and by shallow penetration. To see things clearly produces the state of indulgence suggested by Madame de Staël: Tout comprendre rend très indulgent*. When people are irritated, they don’t want to be rendered indulgent; they want to be confirmed and want to be fed red meat. This, of course, applies to me as well as anybody else. That’s why I describe this situation as a problem.

As Hamlet says, “O cursed spite!” He expresses precisely the feeling I often have when, stopping in the middle of a passionate rant I realize what I am doing. Damn! The very state to which I aspire demands quite often that I stop indulging in passion and render myself indulgent of bottomless stupidy which, not surprisingly, does take on the semblance of unmitigated evil.

This much by way of trying to transcend the feelings of upwelling ire aroused in me by reading today’s morning paper.

* * *

These days a phrase like Guelfs and Ghibellines may appear like ostentatious display of learning. In the modern manner, I apologize for that. The words refer to what today we would call political parties. Guelfs, to be sure, have a somewhat more intimate relationship to Ghulf Genes because, long ago, I deliberately named a fictional, futuristic family—which was also much more than a family—for the Guelfs. Indeed, my own Ghulfs also had color-based branches, just like, in Italy, the Guelfs came in white and black varieties. But back to the background.

During the so-called Dark Ages, the Western Roman Empire was overrun by Germanic tribes; and the descendants of these became one branching of the upper layers, the aristocracies, of Italy. Both of these names were originally of Germanic origin, the Guelfs were from the Bavarian house of Welf, the Ghibellines came from the Hohenstaufen line, the name itself derived from their castle of Waiblingen. Two important parties or factions rose from these roots, divided politics, and produce endless civil wars in the Middle Ages, especially in Italy, dominated, as it was, by small city states. The Ghibellines were the party of empire, thus associated with the Holy Roman Emperor from the time of Charlemagne (the first of these) down through time. The Guelfs, by contrast, were aligned with the Papacy, which was the counter-weight to the imperial power. The world tends always to divide into parties, hence my choice here of these two—especially because we are in Ghulf territory here, and, despite aspirations to transcendence, I remain a Ghulf.

* * *

Last, one sentence in that speech of Hamlet's bothered me enough so that I rendered it in modified English for easier grasp. It is:

.... So, gentlemen,
I recommend myself to you, I do.
And what a poor man, like Hamlet, can show
You in the way of love and friendship,
In that, God willing, there shall be no lack.”

Presumptuous? Come on... All poets belong to the same union.
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*That phrase is often misquoted. The correction necessary is indicated here.