The Ratchet of Politics is Broken: It Mostly Goes Only One Way – Down

After listening to the NPR broadcast of the Senate confirmation hearing on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh for the last hour or so, a thought just sprang up from nowhere. The back and forth between the democrats and the republicans includes references to past Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees. What is striking about the debate is that each side points to past actions that one side or the other has taken that supports the argument or point a senator is trying to make. The tendency is to use actions of one's own side that support the argument, but when that isn't available, what the other side has done is used.

Stepping away from the back and forth, what seems to be happening is that the direction of partisanship is mostly moving in a direction that reduces transparency. The democrats accuse republicans of an unprecedented refusal by republicans to release documents related to Kavanaugh. That dispute is ongoing now. Republicans respond by arguing that some of the documents are subject to privilege of some sort. Whether some or all requested documents will be released is unclear.

What seems likely is that in the future, if ever a republican (or democratic) president has a nominee before the senate, this fight will be used as precedent for democrats to hide documents about their nominee, if circumstances so dictate. Future republican Senators will point to this dispute as evidence that democrats wanted transparency when they asked for it, so therefore they should have it now. Democratic Senators will point to the same dispute and argue that it was Republicans who established the precedent.

Thinking back, this has not happened in just this context. Disputes and tactical argumentation like this has been going on for years, but the general trend seems to be a slow trend to less transparency. Despite a significant US role in fostering transparency in governance globally, it is not clear that existing transparency is sufficient or is keeping up with relevant social and technological changes.

Campaign finance and lobbyist operations arguably are not transparent enough. Donors can contribute tens of millions to political causes and politicians and hide their identity. Public perceptions of corruption, which necessarily requires opacity and deceit to thrive, have increased dramatically in the last couple of years: “The current US president was elected on a promise of cleaning up American politics and making government work better for those who feel their interests have been neglected by political elites. Yet, rather than feeling better about progress in the fight against corruption over the past year, a clear majority of people in America now say that things have become worse. Nearly six in ten people now say that the level of corruption has risen in the past twelve months, up from around a third who said the same in January 2016.”

So, the question is this: Is intense tribal partisanship fostering a trend toward less transparency, more opacity and more corruption? It feels that way, but feelings are not objective data.

B&B orig: 9/4/18