This campaign year has been full of twists and turns. We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, let alone on November 8. So talking about what comes afterward seems premature. But it’s been on my mind a lot, because I’m worried.
This is not about who wins the presidency. I’m concerned about the aftermath of this campaign season and how hard it’s going to be for our next set of elected officials, from the President on down, to govern.
Let’s start with the belief expressed by a lot of people — including
some candidates — that the system is “rigged.” This is a perilous way
to treat the country’s political system; it sows distrust in future
election results, de-legitimizes winers, and undermines the government’s
credibility. If the charge takes hold, it will put political stability at
risk.
We all have criticisms to make of the system. We know it doesn’t work
perfectly and that there’s no shortage of challenges the nation needs to
address. But to convey the impression that the whole system is rigged is
dangerous and risky. Without a basic foundation of trust, representative
government crumbles.
Instead of taking aim at “the system,” we could instead focus our
criticism on a more substantive target: politicians, including the two
presidential candidates, who have failed to serve us well in their debate
on the economy.
Much of the debate has revolved around immigration, trade, and other
issues of the moment. These are not unimportant, but they’re not the heart of the matter. The real issue — the one that politicians have proffered few
solutions for — is that the economy is not working for most people. True,
there’s been some improvement in the lot of middle-income earners, but
the fundamental issue that economists of all stripes have been warning us
about remains. This is that we face significant structural problems,
driven not so much by foreign competition and immigrant workers, but by advancing technology and globalization.
Our real economic challenge, in other words, is how to provide meaningful
work and good wages to tens of millions of clerks, accountants, factory
workers and service providers whose jobs are disappearing because of
robots, machine learning, and other irreversible changes in how work is
accomplished.
Politicians need to place much more emphasis on economic growth, which is the key that unlocks many doors and is the preferred course to ease the anxiety and cynicism abroad in the country. Growth should be the central
aim of economic policy, and how to achieve it should be the focus of the
policy debate.
The problem is, this election isn’t providing us with a substantial
policy debate. We’ve heard plenty about personality, vision, and the
alleged dirty dealing of people on the other side. Serious debate about
policy approaches has been replaced by sound bites signifying… well, not
very much.
Indeed, if anything characterizes this election, it’s the politics of
personal destruction. Demonizing the opponent has become the central
concern of many campaigns, up and down the political ladder. This approach is toxic for democratic institutions and political culture. We have to be able to disagree in this country on matters of great import and
controversy without tearing into and trying to destroy the opposition.
We have always had — and should have — vigorous partisanship. But
today, politicians prefer hunkering down with their fellow believers and
party members and circling the wagons. This makes it very hard to get
negotiations going, which is the only way to make the system work.
All of this — the attacks on the system, the lack of meaningful debate about improving Americans’ economic future, the generally substance-free
nature of the campaign, the politics of demonization — will make it very
hard for whoever wins office to govern well. The anger, frustration,
cynicism and outright pessimism that we’re seeing in this election cycle
will not miraculously dissipate on Election Day.
It used to be that when a president came into office, a substantial majority of the American people gave him the benefit of the doubt, and with it an extended period in which to get things done. I don’t believe that’s going to happen after this election. And all Americans will be worse off as a result.
By Lee H. Hamilton
Lee Hamilton is a Senior Advisor for the Indiana University Center on
Representative Government; a Distinguished Scholar, IU School of Global
and International Studies; and a Professor of Practice, IU School of Public
and Invironmental Affairs. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives
for 34 years.
