Another election season is upon us. Oh, what a joy. One party is hoisting monuments to a fading 80-year-old president who hasn’t done much except get America stuck in another Middle East war while attacking the nice Canadians to our north with irrational tariffs and weird hockey memes. The other is making sweeping promises to do something about the “cost-of-living crisis” through massive government spending and price caps with scant reflection on why they didn’t address the high cost of living just a few short years ago when they had control of government.
Contemporary politics is essentially empty. It’s a multi-billion-dollar, smoke-and-mirrors machine where the two parties take turns whipping up American economic fears and anxieties about the future into short-term election gains built on the failures of the current guys in office. Worried about China, out-of-control AI, the decline of American manufacturing, the absurd cost of health care, and the inability of your kid to get a decent job and afford a house? Fear not, here come the Democrats and Republicans with emotional activist campaigns, fantastical policy proposals, social media videos about “affordability,” and platforms that “meet the moment” of Americans’ desire for change. They’ll “name villains” and “tell narratives” about who or what is responsible for the sorry state of your life.
“Vote for our party and life will immediately improve for you and America’s proud working class.”
One thing you can be certain about: Democrats and Republicans won’t actually solve any of these issues in a sustained manner. They know it, too. Politics has become a cynical exercise in manipulating people’s genuine emotions for partisan advantage, not a set of serious solutions offered by mature leaders focused on the country’s real challenges.
It’s not that nothing substantive happens in politics. The two parties rotate in and out of government. They pass laws, issue executive orders, create new regulations, spend money they don’t have, and give speeches detailing how they’re on the case of economic improvement.
This is mostly political entertainment: the appearance of action on the biggest economic challenges, accompanied by partisan cheerleading rather than actual governing. If either party truly cared about the cost of living or affordable housing and health care, they’d take cooperative steps to dramatically increase American private-sector growth, help American businesses and workers succeed, provide cheap and abundant energy, eliminate loads of growth-sapping regulations, end unreasonable tariffs, reinforce the legal immigration system, and rein in government spending and deficits that drive inflation and higher interest rates. They’d make it much easier to start businesses, build houses, develop effective means of transportation, update national infrastructure, and receive basic health care.
But Democrats and Republicans aren’t really interested in solving the high cost of living for many middle-class Americans. They’re just biding their time until the new election season approaches when they can blame the other side for letting down Americans or lambast some nefarious force (the elites, the establishment, the oligarchs) that is preventing them from achieving true partisan utopia.
It’s the same cycle year after year. Economic and social reality generates legitimate anxieties among voters—from deindustrialization, new technologies, immigration, high housing or health costs, crime, and cultural changes. The parties spend gobs of money to translate these anxieties into daily media bits, create stories about who did this to them and how the people in power failed, and elevate new partisan “heroes” who promise to fix it all if elected. Democrats and Republicans each win some elections and maybe get a shot at real power. They quickly realize they can’t deliver on the sweeping promises they made to confront China, control AI, shore up global supply chains, straighten out the federal bureaucracy, lower the deficit, remake American health care, rebuild American manufacturing, and create good working-class jobs. So, they make excuses for failing while the other party waits in the wing with new pitches to voters about the incumbent party’s perfidy and why they should be removed from office.
Package fears into a narrative > blame the other side > win elections > confront the limitations of economic policymaking and government > let down the voters > make excuses for failing > lose power > start all over again.
Contemporary political parties are institutionally incapable of being honest with voters about the scale of the problems they confront and the limited tools the government possesses to address many of them.
Realistically, how exactly would the federal government, with its multiple layers of democratic decision-making and entrenched bureaucracy, shape the actions of millions of people and businesses in America and around the world who determine how markets function, secure key resources for production, set up manufacturing supply chains, engage in global trade, address consumer needs, and create new technologies, products, and services?
Short answer: The U.S. government cannot directly control the complex interactions that constitute the global economy. It can shape them, but it can’t direct them. We’re no longer in the postwar 1950s and 1960s, when America’s economic, political, and military power basically ruled the world. There are tangible limits to what politics today can achieve in terms of economic reorganization, a reality that political and policy operators consistently fail to notice as they cook up punchy “issue frameworks” full of state-driven efforts to recreate the golden age U.S. economy.
Political parties excel at articulating people’s fears and worries with emotional rhetoric and intriguing promises. Political parties struggle mightily to devise and implement sound public policies to actually fulfill these promises. In the end, it’s easier to just blame the other side—or rich elites—for all the country’s problems rather than design governmental institutions that effectively carry out the people’s wishes.
The elections go on and on, while the underlying issues remain, and Americans’ disappointment, distrust, and disillusionment deepen.
This is an essentially accurate article about the federal government. Actual problem-solving seems to occur at the state and local level. One reason is that states cannot print endless amounts of money. This tethers them, somewhat, to reality. The federal government has been tasked to do way too much. Disappointment is the inevitable result.
This was an excellent article. We need a third strong party that is truly a “we the people party”.