In politics, we demand a spectacle, we get a spectacle
This is what happens when a democracy treats politics as a basketball game instead of a duty.
When we were in middle school, domestic terrorists blew up an Oklahoma City federal building, killing 168, including 19 children, mostly from the building’s daycare center, and injuring 680. The image of a dying child being carried by a firefighter still haunts.
In the wake of that tragedy, the FBI hired 500 agents to investigate and prevent domestic terrorism, almost every state and federal law enforcement agency formed a domestic terrorism unit, and domestic terrorist groups were successfully destabilized and decentralized nationally.
We were in college when al-Qaeda terrorists flew airplanes into buildings on 9/11. We remember where we were when we heard. We remember the sense of fear and uncertainty that day. We remember the way our nation came together to do what we were told would keep the terrorists from winning, from shopping to Congress overwhelmingly passing the USA Patriot Act.
A year after the attack, the 9/11 Commission came together to report on the deadliest terrorist attack in history. Its charge was to investigate every element of the attack. The resulting "9/11 Commission Report" was a bestseller, and many (though not all) of its recommendations were adopted.
But since then, things have changed. Consider Afghanistan. The U.S. spent roughly a trillion dollars (yes, that “t” is correct). Thousands of U.S. troops died and tens of thousands more were injured, to say nothing of the Afghan losses. We created a special inspector general to oversee our efforts in Afghanistan. The IG found that our government failed again and again, across decades and presidential administrations, to set a strategy based on “what they could realistically achieve” instead of “their own political preferences.” The dramatic and tragic end to the war showed the follies of this approach.
We are similarly failing to address acts of domestic terrorism like Jan. 6 or extremist mass shootings. Last month, the Government Accountability Office released a report finding that intelligence agencies have failed to follow most of its recommendations for preventing future insurrections.
Why the failures in Afghanistan and domestic terrorism? An independent evaluation of the 9/11 response by the Bipartisan Policy Center in 2011 goes to the heart of the matter:
The success of the [9/11] Commission’s work was due to political leadership embracing its findings and recommendations, pushing hard to enact them, and continuing to drive reform.
And that is the problem: We fail when our political leaders are not motivated to support our watchdogs’ recommendations. Today, they are increasingly willing to pay attention only to those issues that benefit them politically or line up with their supporters’ beliefs.
Take Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks: she often speaks about the Mexican border and has visited the border multiple times in the past year, focusing on an area that matters a great deal to the average Republican. Conversely, she has given little attention to the fact that a mob overran the Capitol building during her first week in office.
In Iowa, our politicians spend huge amounts of time and energy picking on trans people while allowing our bridges and dams to deteriorate and basic government accounting work to languish to the point of endangering federal funding.
This is what happens when a democracy treats politics as a basketball game instead of a duty. We spend a lot of time cheering when our team makes a point, whether by jubilant social media posts or donating our hard-earned dollars. When we demand a spectacle, we get a spectacle. By being fans instead of citizens, we lose our focus on making our country better and safer for all of us. Instead, we focus on beating the other team, and we all lose. We need not a spectacle, but good governance. So let’s start asking our political leaders what they have to say about the most recent GAO report and cheering when they support accountability.
Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa.
Originally published in the Iowa City Press-Citizen on July 6. 2023.
Absolutely. Miller-Meeks and the others of her ilk value getting elected more than actually serving the public. To meet that goal, they have to keep riling up constituents who--to borrow from you analogy-- would rather see the other team lose than support policies that would actually benefit everyone.