Some observers, such as veteran political reporter Ron Fournier at National Journal, think disgust with the personalities and politics of Washington is so deep and intense that voters are nearly motivated to break free of the parties and find new organizations and new kinds of campaigns to replace them. I’d like to live to see it, but I doubt I will.
That’s not because I think entrenched and wealthy special interests have rigged the system so that it can never be replaced. Rather its because, as the acerbic Barney Frank once observed, “the voters are no picnic either.”
Voters who can’t be bothered to vote in party primaries, much less precinct and district elections, as a way of selecting candidates who don’t consider bipartisan problem solving a venereal disease aren’t likely to go to the trouble of forming new parties. Voters who find campaign ads repugnant but don’t take it upon themselves to acquire information about policy issues from nonpartisan sources readily available in the Internet Age probably lack the initiative to build issue platforms to campaign on.
Unless voters can be convinced that they — more than wealthy special interests and self-interested politicians and campaign consultants and the media — are responsible for the ways elections are contested and the nation is governed, nothing much will change. Until voters actually decide to do more something more useful than complain to pollsters about their anger and frustration, politics and government will remain as irritating and unsatisfactory as ever.
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