The Baseball of Politics

According to http://www.pollingreport.com/right.htm 81% of Americans think the country is heading in the wrong direction.

To use a baseball analogy, it's game 6, we're down by 2, 2 outs, runners on 2nd and 3rd and the manager is just sitting on his hands instead of pinch hitting for our worst batter. So the question we have to ask ourselves is why would the manager do this? Why would he just do nothing? The basic answer is that he's either too scared or he's too stuck in his ways to change.

This might not be the most perfect analogy ever, but I'm going to try and weave together a narrative that I think will tie it all together.

First, the manager is too scared. The sports media of New York City present a perfect example for this portion. The managers of the Yankees and Mets are under a microscope of such insanity that every minutia of action they take is dissected and investigated and discussed ad nausea. This is mirrored perfectly in politics with special interest groups and radio talk/shock jocks running down elected officials to the point where they are inept to do anything for fear of inciting someones wrath. The moveon.orgs, Randy Rhodes, Mark Levins, and Rush Limbaughs of the world have galvanized and polarized their followers to the extent that there is an actual dislike and I might go so far to say a hatred of those on the other side of the political isle or the folks in the other dugout to come back to our analogy. This leads to politicians being afraid to make any move on a bill for fear that the opposition might demonize them or that their base might disavow them as happened to Joe Lieberman in his 2006 re-election bid for his Senate seat. From the Democratic Party's Vice Presidential Nominee to outcast with active challenges from with-in his own party in a short 6 years. His is a cautionary tale for any other elected official that wishes to step out against his party. John McCain is feeling that heat now as he tries to repair ties with the base of the Republican Party before November.

This fear is exactly why managers like Grady Little (formerly of the Red Sox) left Pedro Martinez in the game too long and ended up losing to the Yankees in a 2003 playoff series. Little – had managed 16 years in the minors and had a + 500 winning percentage in his two years in Boston and was generally well liked by the players. Yet because of that fear of being lambasted by the media, he left his ace in the game a little (no pun intended) long. Unlike Leiberman and McCain who took action and challenged their party line, Grady Little is a cautionary tale, you can do nothing out of fear and still get burned.

To the point of the second question, entrenchment in their ways, we see managers like Joe Torre of my beloved Yankees who became too complacent and too set in their ways to motivate and challenge a non-performing team. Additionally, Torre either refused or was un-able to make drastic changes and moves in his line-up to replace non-performing stars with younger, un-proven but hungry talent. This led to the Yankee's being ousted early from the playoffs several years in a row and thus eventually cost Torre his job in NY.

We see similar situations with elected officials. Partially based on the above mentioned polarization, we've ceased being a country that can come from two very divergent perspectives to find a common ground to solve a problem with a solution we can all live with. We are now two entrenched camps unwilling to give an inch in order to compromise. Congress has two very big problems, the first being the lack of an ability to compromise as parties (there are brave individuals who will step out) but as a block we rarely see majority decisions anymore unless the legislation is so watered down it is useless or is so laden and loaded with pork that it puts us farther into the hole.

Whether it is from being in the position for so many years that you are unwilling to try new things (i.e. Orin Hatch 31 years and Ted Kennedy 46 years) or being too tied to your own ideology or your job, politicians today get little to nothing of substance accomplished. As fictional president Andrew Sheppard says in The American President, "I was too busy keeping my job to do my job." These men and women tend to have a harder time working with the other party and/or refuse to compromise. They have an inability to meet in the middle and they utterly refuse to give up their ideology for the good of the nation as a whole. They do this again out of fear for losing their jobs and out of a complacency that is inherrantly bred from being stagnant in one job or place for too long. These individuals who are just too entrenched into their mindset of how things are and are unwilling to do it differently need to be fired. Even beloved and revered managers reach a point where they are no longer at the peak of their game. It's time to let the Joe Girardis of the political world replace the Joe Torres.

So, what do we do to fix the problem? With regard to the first and second, I think that term limits are the answer. The founding fathers of this nation never intended government service to be a career. These men were farmers, bankers, traders, and doctors. They intended to serve and then let someone else take over. Washington himself limited himself to 2 terms as the young nations president. We need to come up with a compromise that allows for a happy medium between being there long enough to understand the system and operate with-in it, but that is not to long to think of it as a career. For the Senate, perhaps that is two terms or 12 years total. For the House that would be 5 terms or 10 years total. This allows us to stop demonizing individuals with the hope of forcing them out of office or embarrassing them into a resignation and it also allows us to have a continuation of fresh ideas coming into government every so many cycles. Lastly, it stops officials from having to chose between what is right for the country or what is best for the expediency of their political careers.

There are certainly other potential solutions out there, but I think I'll let you throw them at me in the comments section. Our debate can continue in game seven!

Here is to an exciting political year and the re-start of the baseball season...PLAYBALL!