If things are going well, why are our politics so dreadful?
I dread the upcoming electoral season. It is sure to be a monumentally dispiriting enterprise.
And there will be no escaping it in Arizona. We are a battleground state for the presidency and the U.S. Senate. Three of our congressional districts will be targeted, to at least some extent, by one party or the other. We will be inundated with the worst the country’s politics has to offer.
Elections should be, at least in some measure, a celebration of selfgovernance. There, however, is unlikely to be anything edifying or uplifting in this one. It will be ugly, unpleasant and, if you pay too much attention, torturous. And I have a professional obligation to pay too much attention.
What strikes me is how discon
nected the nature of our politics is to the actual conditions of the country and state, which are relatively good.
There’s a contradiction in the position of Democrats regarding the economy. On the one hand, they say that the good numbers in economic growth and jobs are a continuing dividend of the policies of the Obama administration, not to be credited to the presidency of Donald Trump.
On the other hand, they say the economy stinks, is rigged, and is leaving average Americans behind.
In reality, there’s an observable uptick in economic performance since the Trump policies of corporate tax cuts and deregulation have been implemented.
The most notable is much improved wage growth for those without a college degree.
Trump’s policies have increased the demand for labor across the board.
Despite the caterwauling from the Democratic presidential aspirants, the results demonstrate that markets, given the appropriate political economy, still work, including the labor market.
Gov. Doug Ducey has been in the practice of issuing year-end reviews, sort of an annual report. I suppose it’s Ducey in his CEO motif.
The annual reports always say that things are going swimmingly for the state, and Ducey’s policies deserve much of the credit. His PR apparatus floods social media with digestible nuggets.
This is obviously self-serving. It can be irritating and produce a cynical response. I may have succumbed to that in the past.
But, in reality, things are going well in the state, particularly in the Phoenix metro area. We have regained our position prior to the housing bubble and bust as one of the country’s most dynamic and successful regional economies.
The extent to which Ducey’s policies are responsible is less clear. He has turned out to be a tinkerer rather than a reformer. But he has tinkered adroitly, both substantively and politically.
State government is in far better shape than when he was first elected. And his pro-business attitude and engagement do make a contribution to our economy regaining its dynamism.
At a minimum, Ducey hasn’t screwed things up. And with respect to political economy, having politicians who don’t screw things up is a considerable asset.
So, if things are generally going well, why are our politics so dour and dispiriting?
The answer is clearly Donald Trump. Trump is a one-trick pony when it comes to campaigning: attack your opponent in as personal of terms as possible. All the time, with no bottom to be reached. He is incapable of making a policy argument.
Now, American politics were nasty and personal before Trump. But Trump takes it to new extremes. And he’s an accelerant, increasing the venom from others, friend and foe.
There’s this paradox: Any other Republican running on Trump’s record would undoubtedly win in a walk. The Democrats would be in the process of repeating the McGovern debacle of 1972. Trump is the only Republican they have a reasonable chance of beating.
This is what makes Trump’s hold on the Republican Party so hard to understand. He’s an incredibly weak candidate. In 2016, he ran behind other Republicans in state after state, including Arizona.
In 2016, John McCain’s vote exceeded that of Trump by over 100,000. Trump carried the state by just 3.5 percentage points.
Four years earlier, Mitt Romney carried Arizona over a much tougher opponent, an incumbent president, by 9 percentage points.
In such circumstances, the logical thing for other Republican officeholders to do would be to support Trump’s policies where they are well directed, but let Trump stew in his own juices regarding the way he practices politics. Instead, they have become loyalists and imitators.
A Republican running for reelection on Trump’s record should be about to reprise Ronald Reagan’s “It’s morning in America” campaign of 1984.
Instead, with Trump, it’s thunderstorms everywhere, all the time.