MaxedOutMama
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Joking Aside, For The Moment
Back to slightly more serious subjects: Greater Democracy (an interesting blog) has a post up about political parties that really caught my eye: Are Political Parties Obsolete?
His answer is a wary no:
"Being fan of emerging self-organizing systems (for example, check out Steven Johnson’s book Emergence), my inclination might be towards moving away from political parties. The structure of parties can inhibit emergent self-organizing systems."
The whole post is interesting, and there's a lot more, so go read it. Unfortunately comments are disabled for the time being, so I'm forced to comment here. My reaction to the excerpt above was that the structure of both parties might act to preclude the development of solutions. It may be in the interest of the top echelon of party organizers to strongly separate their party from another, i.e. to develop a party "brand" by either stereotyping or even portraying the proponents of another party in a very poor light - but such strategies end up working against you as well as with you. In the end, most people who voted either way are going to come to view the most active people in such a party's leadership as slightly suspect.
The bulk of people voting Democratic aren't Satan-worshippers who want to sell out the country to its enemies and sacrifice people to save trees, and most of those voting Republican aren't religious maniacs who want to favor the interests of large companies over individuals, conquer the world and melt the icecaps either. When such babble becomes the "dogma" of a visible minority of either party, the party's own dogma ends up making itself look ridiculous. Neither party wants to destroy the environment or the economy - the debate is really about ways of protecting and supporting the health of these two systems.
The American public really admires politicians like McCain who are viewed as standing for something aside from partisanship and having independent, thoughtful voices of their own. My theory is that something like Robert's Rules Of Order, adapted to less formal political debate, might be a fruitful development. The first principle of such a formal rules system would have to be to define what you support rather than what you reject. After all, it isn't really necessary to characterize your opponent's ideas when you are speaking clearly about your own. In the end the party that develops or adopts problem-solving ideas and learns to speak clearly about them will slowly gain ground. Most of the US isn't ideological at all, as Aldon pointed out:
"I think there is something very important here. If you ask many people if they are a Democrat, they may reply yes. They vote for Democrats. They are registered as Democrats, so they will reply, yes they are Democrats. However, if you ask them if they are a member of the Democratic Party, many of the same people will reply that no, they are not."
Aldon thinks that the Democratic Party has done a poor job of fostering organization loyalty and a sense of community. Please go read his whole post. I agree about the way the party is viewed, but I believe the reason why is that the Democratic party since Clinton has suffered from the lack of a strong, positive leader with a strong positive message, and so its message has tended toward the purely ideological. I also think just tossing Terry McAuliffe is a good start. The man has done a lot of harm to the party in the last five years.
His answer is a wary no:
"Being fan of emerging self-organizing systems (for example, check out Steven Johnson’s book Emergence), my inclination might be towards moving away from political parties. The structure of parties can inhibit emergent self-organizing systems."
The whole post is interesting, and there's a lot more, so go read it. Unfortunately comments are disabled for the time being, so I'm forced to comment here. My reaction to the excerpt above was that the structure of both parties might act to preclude the development of solutions. It may be in the interest of the top echelon of party organizers to strongly separate their party from another, i.e. to develop a party "brand" by either stereotyping or even portraying the proponents of another party in a very poor light - but such strategies end up working against you as well as with you. In the end, most people who voted either way are going to come to view the most active people in such a party's leadership as slightly suspect.
The bulk of people voting Democratic aren't Satan-worshippers who want to sell out the country to its enemies and sacrifice people to save trees, and most of those voting Republican aren't religious maniacs who want to favor the interests of large companies over individuals, conquer the world and melt the icecaps either. When such babble becomes the "dogma" of a visible minority of either party, the party's own dogma ends up making itself look ridiculous. Neither party wants to destroy the environment or the economy - the debate is really about ways of protecting and supporting the health of these two systems.
The American public really admires politicians like McCain who are viewed as standing for something aside from partisanship and having independent, thoughtful voices of their own. My theory is that something like Robert's Rules Of Order, adapted to less formal political debate, might be a fruitful development. The first principle of such a formal rules system would have to be to define what you support rather than what you reject. After all, it isn't really necessary to characterize your opponent's ideas when you are speaking clearly about your own. In the end the party that develops or adopts problem-solving ideas and learns to speak clearly about them will slowly gain ground. Most of the US isn't ideological at all, as Aldon pointed out:
"I think there is something very important here. If you ask many people if they are a Democrat, they may reply yes. They vote for Democrats. They are registered as Democrats, so they will reply, yes they are Democrats. However, if you ask them if they are a member of the Democratic Party, many of the same people will reply that no, they are not."
Aldon thinks that the Democratic Party has done a poor job of fostering organization loyalty and a sense of community. Please go read his whole post. I agree about the way the party is viewed, but I believe the reason why is that the Democratic party since Clinton has suffered from the lack of a strong, positive leader with a strong positive message, and so its message has tended toward the purely ideological. I also think just tossing Terry McAuliffe is a good start. The man has done a lot of harm to the party in the last five years.
Comments:
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I am glad you liked my post. It was inspired, in part, by a post you had here. For those of you who read both my, and MaxedOutMama's posts, I expect you will find that when it comes to how to address issues like the economy or the environment, we are likely to find different solutions. We are likely to be working for these solutions through different organizations.
However, MaxedOutMama is correct in observing a commonality in the desire to solve the problems of our country, and not get stuck in partisan name calling.
As an aside, comments had been disabled over at Greater Democracy due to a bug in MovableType. The bug has been fixed, and you can comment there again.
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However, MaxedOutMama is correct in observing a commonality in the desire to solve the problems of our country, and not get stuck in partisan name calling.
As an aside, comments had been disabled over at Greater Democracy due to a bug in MovableType. The bug has been fixed, and you can comment there again.
<< Home
