At the close of my prior post on the current "dysfunction" of American government, I noted that while I disagreed with Grover Norquist about the cause and meaning of dysfuction in government, that currently dysfunction exists is obvious. Since I reject the notion that the problem is a structural problem with the Constitution, a major other possibility is a change over time in the nature of the "inhabitants" of government, i.e., the politicians. The Washington Post article to which I referred pointed to the changes in socio-economic status of members of Congress as a possible culprit. The Post notes that in the past 40 years, the percentage of congress persons who are not millionaires has dropped sharply, and that the life-background of the average congress person now differs sharply from that of much of the "average" Americans. The Post blames a lot of the change on campaign financing excesses,which make it impossible for anyone but a self-funded millionaire or someone heavily beholding to special interests to afford to run for office. That, the Post concludes, may now make politicians unable to appreciate and act on the real problems which they were sent to Washington to solve.
It is tempting to follow the Post's thinking, but doing so gets only part way to the heart of the problem. Through much of American history, congressional demographics have not reflected the "average" America. The average blue collar worker does not now, and for the most part never has either wanted to or been able to afford to run for Congress. Yet many politicians have performed nobly on behalf of those with which they had little in common, Anyone has only to read a good account of 19th century America to know that Congress has always been in the grip of special interests, but that did not prevent passage of legislation for the common good. Though campaign financing is a real problem in its own right, the dysfunctionality problem runs deeper. But the Post writers are right when they reflect on how a congress person because of their background may be unable to appreciate the needs of constituents.
Part of the problem is the increasing isolation of socio-economic classes reflected in the Post article. An interesting essay about a year ago in The American Scholar, entitled "The Invisible Lower Middle Class", noted that the typical graduate of an elite private college could not hold a social conversation with their plumber. We are surrounded by things that isolate us from the difficulties of the world, but in doing so they also isolate us from people "not like us." So barriers which make it hard to appreciate and act on the problems of the "not like us" are an increasing challenge with which all of us must deal. Both the college grad and the plumber must work at it.
That understanding gets us to the deeper problem. The "ability to appreciate and willingness to act on the problems of others" is a definition of empathy, and the lack of it is a societal problem at the heart of governmental dysfunction. A recent book, The Empathy Gap by J. D. Trout, reported that in Europe about 60% of people, asked why some other person was struggling with a problem like unemployment or homelessness, would say it was the unfortunate life situation the person was dealing with; in the U.S. over 70% would blame some characteristic of the other person himself, such as stupidity or laziness. The lack of empathy is the dark side of our societal mythos of individualism. It makes us cringe at Bill Clinton's "I feel your pain." It makes some of us sneer at "it takes a village to raise a child." It makes us unable to understand the problems of the farmer or the plumber or the small businessman. And it makes us unable to overcome governmental dysfunction by developing a common vision of what needs to be done for all of us.
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