Journalists fail to report the benefits of our messy political process

On the day Gov. Mark Dayton called the special session to end Minnesota’s historic government shutdown, I decided to head over to the Capitol to get a better sense of how the final deal had come together.  While there, I had the pleasure of engaging in a little banter with Rep. John Benson, a DFLer from Minnetonka who I knew in 1990 as Mr. Benson, my tenth grade AP American History teacher.  With a smirk, he usually introduces me as one of his students that went to the dark side—i.e., the conservative side. 

We discussed a number of hot button issues and eventually hit on the so-called political dysfunction at both the state and federal levels. Rep. Benson took the conventional view—the view that there’s something wrong with our system when it’s so hard for our political leaders to reach agreement.  I, of course, had to take the opposing view.  We were, after all, bantering.  I argued that political “dysfunction” is exactly what our founding fathers had in mind when they designed our republican form of government.   Though cornered into the argument, I also happen to believe it. 

Making my point, more cogently than I could probably muster, are David Rivkin and Lee Casey in the Wall Street Journal. Commenting on the debt deal, they write, “Our messy political system is working exactly the way our Founders intended it to.”  They further explain:

To the extent House members were the most intransigent during the process—a matter of opinion, in any case—they were meant to be. The House of Representatives is the "popular branch," as described in The Federalist Papers, and was intended to "have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people." …

By contrast, the Framers conceived the Senate as a body of graybeards (or, at the very least, as modestly mature individuals who have reached the age of 30). It was meant to represent the interests of the states and to serve as a check on "the impulse of sudden and violent passions," or the danger of "factious leaders" offering "intemperate and pernicious resolutions" that might in time characterize the lower house. …

The result was a compromise, as it has nearly always been throughout our history. This will be a disappointment to many who voted for real and immediate fiscal restraint, but that too is to be expected. The Framers believed in gradual change.

Sen. Rudy Boschwitz picked up the same theme in the Star Tribune, writing in response to a Sunday article, “Disgust runs deep along the St. Croix.”   In another nod to our nation’s founders, he writes:

[I]f I were to go out to Washington County and question citizens about what form of government they would prefer instead, I suspect they would be supportive of our current system of government, because –despite its warts and partisanship and argument and other problems (not the least of which are these last-minute negotiations)—the founders of our country were an absolutely remarkable group who got it right.

A better system than they came up with has yet to be devised, and those who complain and express their "disgust" (and the founders gave citizens the full right to do so) should keep that in mind (and probably do if you were to ask them).

For me, the most unsettling part of Minnesota’s government shutdown and the federal debt-limit controversy has been the near universal disdain piled on the political process and the political leaders involved.  Virtually every reporter and commentator infused their writing with incendiary remarks that denigrate the political process that built this great nation.  This imbalance warps public perceptions on the process, which, without warrant, steers the public to lose faith in their government and their political leaders. 

Doug Grow, a columnist for MinnPost, recently declared, “Few can have much confidence in the ability of Washington to lead after watching the political slapstick of the last several weeks.”  Similar sentiments have been expressed on the leadership in St. Paul.  If he’s right, then the lack of public confidence should not be traced to our political leaders.  Rather, the lack of confidence can be largely traced to those journalists that fail to acknowledge or appreciate the benefits that this messy political process has delivered to this nation for over two centuries.