Tales Of Our Times
By JOHN BARTLIT
Los Alamos

“Once upon a time” teaches pragmatism. A farmer and his highly able wife were once in the market for an accordion, a bunk bed, a plow, and a pet. The farm couple soon had ample choices to weigh, complete with details telling advantages and drawbacks of every choice. Time was, advantages and drawbacks held sway.

Folktales have a knack for highlighting facts that we overlook every day. Each political party now offers voters only one set of policies in a single package. Each party advertises that its bundle has nothing but benefits vs. an opposing bundle that has nothing but drawbacks. Parties work hard to force and enforce package-think in Congress. Variations are taboo. Voters can choose the red package or the blue package.

Recall the storybook story. Choices available are notorious for having advantages and drawbacks. These truths about individual choice inform the values of both capitalism and democracy.

March 7, 2024, package-politics ran the show. That evening the presidential State of the Union address made a grim display of political norms in the Capitol. One party filled half the house chamber and the other party filled the other half. Differences in numbers were razor thin.

For roughly 68 minutes, the incumbent blue president roughed out strings of policy goals, large and small, that he likes. As each clue was spoken, the blue side burst into uniformly wild applause. The red side stayed silent, but for scattered shouts. Media opinions after the speech were as split as those seen in the chamber.

The parties’ preference for selling packaged ideologies, instead of well-worked issues, plagues politics itself. A party’s fixed package of ideology has to be sold to a wide cross-section of voters as the full answer to every question. Since few people conform exactly to any one standardized box, we see that the portions of voters registered in each party are trending downward and closer to equal. The ever slimmer margins add greater pressure to prevail in super close elections.
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We now have 27 percent of every million voters registered Democrat. We have now 27 percent of every million voters registered Republican. By far the largest share of voters is registered Independent. The number signed up as Independent is near 45 percent of every million, matching all-time highs and trending up.

Either party is crystal clear about how that other party is the one wrecking democracy. But both of the 27-percent subsets of proxyholders (today’s two major parties) covet control of Congress. That murky goal highlights the authoritarian powers the majority party enjoys. Over years, the parties jointly added extreme powers for a majority as slim as one.

Sample powers for Speaker of the House are:

• Appoints chairpersons and members of all House committees, standing or special;
• Appoints a majority of members to the important House Rules Committee;
• Sets the House legislative calendar for when bills will be debated and voted on.
  The urge for autocracy inspires the election theme, “Flip the House”.

To our nation’s enduring benefit, the purposeful founders of American democracy had a wider scope of leadership. Thomas Jefferson famously said: I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

Back in the 1970s to the ‘90s, New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air & Water probed the air and water in the region and nation. We made strides with help from people of all walks. Weighty help came from legislators in both parties.