I’ll be the first to admit the attitude I developed toward state politics as child was certifiably starry-eyed. I grew up near Sacramento, and it was hard not to be awed by the big white dome downtown.
Of course we all grow up, and in politics we grow up fast. By the time I finished my first year at Cal, I knew finding work as an intern in a state senator’s office for the summer was an opportunity to experience both the best and the worst of California politics right in my backyard.
And that’s precisely what happened.
I saw the Legislature pass a balanced, on-time state budget for the third year in a row — but I also watched the political corruption investigation of Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, unfold first in an FBI raid on his office and then in news that Calderon had created a legal defense fund to solicit money from family, friends and interest groups that might appreciate his political stances.
I saw incredible integrity in the way legislators and their staff carried themselves through the lawmaking process — but I also watched as real conflicts of interest were sometimes laughed out of the room.
One thing I didn’t see anywhere, however, were the slimy political scumbags we all too often love to caricature, criticize and despise. Calderon notwithstanding, the state Capitol was filled with intelligent, kind and dedicated public servants nearly everywhere I looked. The California statehouse not only didn’t feel more crooked than any other bureaucracy I’d interacted with — it often felt refreshingly scrupulous.
A bit uncomfortably, I realized the legislators, staff, interns and bureaucrats who populate Sacramento, like those who work in Washington or any capital city, are us. Sure, people who choose politics as a career might be more ambitious than most of us — but they’re usually more altruistic. They may not be “jus’ regular folks,” but they’re not cultural anomalies, either — they’re products of the common place and time that defines us all.
So why the dysfunction? How could so many good people come together and yet so often get nothing done? Why does it feel like our government is merely twiddling its thumbs and hoping no one is watching?
The hard-to-swallow answer is this: because the republic the Founding Fathers envisioned is working precisely as it should. Our government is a reflection of society, the very definition of self-government.
As the philosopher Joseph de Maistre once said, “Every nation gets the government it deserves.”
If the big corporate interests Californians so often decry for corrupting the political process weren’t so wildly successful in selling us their products, they’d lose their legitimacy in the Legislature overnight. Just look to Big Oil, Big Tobacco and Big Agriculture for examples of excessive and unnecessary corporate power run very much amok — a result of nothing more than Americans’ infamous inability to resist the temptation to consume.
And what’s true in Sacramento, of course, is equally true in Washington. If American voters’ discordant voices weren’t so harshly cacophonous — and if Americans learned to cooperate across ideological divisions before demanding their elected representatives do something they can’t do themselves — then D.C. lawmakers’ hyper-partisan deadlock might not look so entrenched.
The concept holds in Berkeley. As UC Berkeley students, we have the right to complain about the melodramatic and theatrical ASUC Senate. But if we’re honest with ourselves, we know we relish the spectacle that is our elected student government. When it comes to the minimally powerful ASUC, where’s the fun in modesty, efficiency and decorum?
I’m reminded of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, when Cassius explains to Brutus: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
The harsh reality is that governments at every level — local, state and national — are disturbingly divided because we as a nation are divided. There are simply too many disparate voices in American politics for lawmakers to achieve any lasting change. The nation is disunited — and so is government.
We won’t make any progress with just a few structural reforms to the political process. No, emerging from this slump requires a complete transformation of the American cultural landscape — something to restore the national sense of unity, empathy and mutual understanding that we’ve only experienced in fits and spurts since the end of World War II.
When Cassius later confides in Casca, he knows his beloved republic is on the verge of a just and befitting collapse: “What trash is Rome, / What rubbish and what offal, when it serves / For the base matter to illuminate / So vile a thing as Caesar?” he asks.
To stop and look within ourselves is often harrowing.
But it sure beats an American Caesar.
“Off the Beat” guest columns will be written by Daily Cal staff members until the fall semester’s regular opinion writers are selected.