Part III: Why Are Today’s Politics So Awful? › American Greatness "Why are today’s politics so awful?” There are several reasons, many of which will be explored in this four–part series. In a nutshell (pun intended), the Communications Revolution has enormously contributed to the belief politics is more awful than ever due to its impact upon the public, the media, the politicians, and the country. The prior two weeks we examined the publicand the media. Today, we examine the politicians.
"One of the most common misperceptions about politics is that one must be elected to be a politician. This is decidedly not the case. Indeed, some of the most intense politicians are found in areas that are the most unaccountable to the public, such as the bureaucracy and the judicial branch.
"While the judicial activism warrants a singularly devoted examination, suffice for our present purposes to note that when judges arbitrarily ignore current, duly enacted statutes or successful ballot initiatives and, instead, take it upon themselves to create new laws, it subverts the critical principle that we are a nation of laws not individuals. While many judges loathe the prospect of being distracted and/or disparaged by media partisans as they strive to make impartial, objective decisions, other judges seem to revel in the limelight and the attention. In conjunction with the Communication Revolution’s explosion of information, this drives the perception that democracy is ultimately a meaningless exercise, since the hard-won electoral results can be dismissed by a single individual who capriciously reinterprets and/or rejects the public’s decision, whether it had been expressed by the legislature or directly through the ballot box on referenda and other electoral initiatives.
"Deepening the public’s sense of dysfunction in democratic institutions, federal (and state) bureaucrats have well adapted to the Communications Revolution. This may seem counter–intuitive. After all, one could once reasonably assume bureaucrats shunned public attention. While this remains true, the bureaucracy has learned how to manipulate for its own venal purposes the Communication Revolution’s competition between traditional and social media." . . .
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