Oops. Colorado Snow Pack.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2010 David Rocchio

Backcountry Breckenridge Twelve Thousand Feet.

North Shoulder, Red Mountain, 11,900'.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2010 David Rocchio

There Is Nothing Like A Great Coffee Shop

Amazing Grace, Breckenridge, Colorado.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2010 David Rocchio

Changing the Focus in America

Politicians campaign using money raised from people, companies and interest groups.  They gain attention during the political process by riling their base, building a kindling of support and branching out to show different groups they can win and will represent them.  The most effective technique to raise money from a base is to advocate to the edges – argue to the core constituencies on emotional issues.  In presidential politics this is called being ‘in primary,’ which means staking out positions, sometimes extreme, which play to particular groups of motivated, core voters who will give money and vote your way.

As politics has become more crowded, and the paths to reach voters fractured and diffuse, the rhetoric and the tone of delivery on the campaign have grown harder.  To be noticed takes saying daring things and playing to your base.  Candidates look for ‘wedge issues’ to increase the emotional pull toward voters – or the emotional pull away from other candidates (and voters).

Wedge issues are things politicians can talk about to get people motivated.  Immigration, abortion, nuclear power, the death penalty, war.  These are issues capable of making people angry; they are issues where people might leave their logic and analysis behind them.  Anger motivates voters.

The sticky part is once a politician has motivated the base, raised tons of money and gotten elected how can they get anything done?  Once a politician has painted him or herself into a corner to be elected to Congress on – say – the issue of immigration, how does Congress then address immigration using logic and analysis?  Obviously it doesn’t.  Hence no immigration reform, energy policy, education reform, etc.  If a politician does compromise on issues to achieve results they get lost in the crowd, the party turns on them, they lose their base.  Lucky us.

Slobodan Milosevic was a politician like this.  He saw in the break-up of Yugoslavia a chance to advance his own political fortune by playing the Balkan Nationalism Card.  I wonder if he ever regretted having done that.

In America, we have taken longer to see the changes harsh wedge issue politics can bring to governance, but we see it now.  We cannot blame the vicious murders in Arizona on politics, but we can point to the harshness of the debate and admit it did not help.

I remember watching an interview with Bill Weld – the former Massachusetts and New York Governor – around the time of Bush v. Kerry.  The interviewer was trying to get Weld to bash Kerry and he wouldn’t.  He said, with a smile, Senator Kerry was a very good guy and would make a good president, even if Weld did not agree with everything Kerry said or would do as President.  I could almost see the interviewer slump.  He hated the answer.  He wanted blood, not judgment.

Cleary the media in America loves the wedge issue approach to politics.  We want our elections to be red meat and ratings – Super Bowls, not spelling bees.  That’s too bad.  But the media just serves up what we want – anger and righteousness and divisiveness, not thoughtful discord and discussion.  Sometimes we get what we ask for.

Typically, I write about what is just right in front of me.  Raising kids, planting a garden, fighting predators out to eat my chickens.  I do this specifically because it is all exactly like what everyone else experiences.  Ninety-nine percent of the people on this earth are focused on getting up in the morning, raising kids, cooking dinner, doing some work, finding some peace.  It is, well, life.

We live though in a society that is one hundred percent focused on the one percent of life that is not ordinary and expected.  That is, I submit, a mistake.  Mostly, it does not matter what we each believe about religion, war, the death penalty, immigration or education.  No matter what we each think we can all just go about our day and get along.  Something about the focus on that one percent is starting to get out of hand and we need to change that.  And no one can do it but each of us.  And the time to do it is now.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2010 David Rocchio