The Voters Don't Care about Politics

Matt Bai describes some political research that confirms what I have long been saying about American voters and that therefore must be brilliant and prescient:

In other words, independent voters have tended to side with whichever party can legitimately claim not to be in charge at the moment, and ideology doesn’t have a whole lot to do with it. . . .

The focus group that met here in New Jersey on Monday included a bartender, a lawyer and a school bus driver. The dominant theme of the discussion, in which jobs and taxes came up only in passing, seemed to be the larger breakdown of civil society — the disappearance of common courtesy, the relentless stream of data from digital devices, the proliferation of lawsuits and the insidious influence of media on their children.

One woman described a food fight at the middle school that left a mess school employees were obliged to clean up, presumably because the children couldn’t be subjected to physical labor. A man complained about drivers who had grown increasingly hostile and inconsiderate on the roads, which drew nods of assent all around. Another described the Internet as just plain “bad.”

The economy was discussed mostly in connection with these other stresses. “We all think that if we had a lot of money,” one woman said, “everything would slow down and we could enjoy ourselves.”

These voters did not hate politicians. They simply saw both parties, along with the media and big business, as symptoms of the larger societal ailment. And this underlying perception, that politicians in Washington conduct themselves just as childishly and with the same lack of accountability as the kids throwing chicken casserole in the lunchroom, may well be the principal emotion behind the electorate’s propensity to vote out whoever holds power.

These people are right about some important things. The biggest problems in America are not in any simple sense political, that is, Congress can't pass laws to fix them. Politicians can't give purpose to people's lives, find them meaningful work, take away the pain of loneliness, or make it easy to be content with less than their neighbors have. Where these people are really stupid is in casting votes according to some non-political agenda. We elect politicians to run the government. That's their job. Yes, it's nice when political leaders can make people feel better about the country as a whole, but it's a lot to ask and it isn't really their job. People should vote according to what they want the government to do, not according to how they feel this week.