Sympathy for the Darrell

Ever been predisposed to dislike someone, and then read an article basically all about how the person is a crook, and yet end up somehow finding the person more likeable because of the article? No? I guess it's just me and

This profile of Darrell Issa

...

Okay, so the only point of this post is that I think the title is funny. So what?

Politicians are Surprisingly Good People

I realised don't really understand how political parties work given their reputations and incentives when it comes to getting power. So one thing that is a problem that is often discussed is that it's in the interest of parties out of power to sabotage the country so that the parties in power look bad. This is a problem, but in general it's not so bad because in most forms of government the parties in power are more numerous, and they certainly have greater power to enact their agenda (otherwise being "in power" is pretty meaningless). So, you would think that, even if the out-of-power parties were trying sabotage while the in-power parties were trying to improve the situation, overall it would be improved. And so it's reasonable to judge the in-power parties by their performance.

The additional problem that I don't understand how to resolve is the problem of reputation. Say, in America, the Democrats are associated with taking care of the poor, and the Republicans are associated with tough anti-terrorism measures. So, when people are really scared of terrorism, they are more likely to vote Republican. And when they are really scared of being poor and not taken care of, they are more likely to vote Democrat. Given that, it would be really good for the Republicans if there were more terrorist attacks, and good for the Democrats if more people were poor. Now, obviously, with some lag, there is a resolution. Given a long enough period of time, if it becomes clear that every time the Democrats are in power, there's a depression, and every time the Republicans are in power, there is a terrorist attack, then the reputations of the parties would change. However, that would take a very long time. Economic cycles are slow and terrorist attacks don't come so often that correlations are easy to discern. This isn't limited to the US - it is the case anywhere there are parties that are not based on leaders' personalities, but instead on policies.

Thus it seems to me if a party wanted to be cynically manipulative to stay in power, it should actually try to develop a reputation of caring about something the members don't actually care about and then make sure that's a strong concern for everyone (say, by completely neglecting doing anything about the issue when in power). Happily, this becomes somewhat problematic in a system where the party structure itself is somewhat democratic since party leaders would have to have the opposite desires from other party members, and that is unsustainable. One thing is I've not seen examples of this (except maybe Republicans on the Deficit?), so maybe politicians are not as cynical as everyone makes them out to be - they're not even acting in rational self-interest! They're, all things considered, being pretty altruistic.

The other upshot of thinking about this is that it is actually a good idea to have a grassroots-style primary process. Which is some consolation for the fact that as a result half of all time in American politics is spent campaigning. At least I see the point.