Peter Wehner - The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

T his is a book that pushes back against what people have come to think about politics. The word itself conjures in our minds an image that is nasty, brutish, and depressing. My aim, however, is to leave you far more hopeful about politics than you are, because you have far more power than you think.

Even I need to be reminded of this, as someone who has spent my whole career in politics, where Ive seen the good, the bad, and the ugly; where things work and things fail; and where Ive encountered men and women of integrity, as well as scoundrels. Ive worked as a college intern in the Washington State legislature, as a senior advisor in the White House, and in the previous three Republican administrations. Today, in my current capacity as a New York Times contributing opinion writer, contributing writer for The Atlantic, and frequent commentator on political talk shows, my focus has been on the general calamity caused by President Trump.

In such a context its not always easy to get beyond fear and worry, deep disappointment, and a sense of genuine outrage at what is being done to the profession I value and the nation I love. This book, then, has been beneficial for me; I hope it will be for you as well. We have lost sight of who we are as a people and as a nation. We need to relearn what American politics ought to be about, and we need to realize that as citizens we have the power and ability to repair the fraying we have witnessed.

Heres the problem: when Americans think about politics today, their first thought is that it is inherently dirty and undignified; that most politicians are corrupt and unprincipled, either knaves or fools; that those involved in politics only care about their self-interest and not at all about the interest of the country; that it takes no special skills to be a politicianin fact the less experience, the better; that the problems we face as a nation are simple, the solutions obvious, so either stupidity or malice must explain why the solutions havent been implemented yet.

Many people today have given up on politics, believing it to be irredeemable, and their frustrations are understandable.

We are indeed at a low ebb in the history of modern American politicsa period when politics is both trivial and dehumanizing, when large challenges are being either ignored or made worse, and when politics is an arena for invective. Virtually across the board, in both parties, the political leadership ranges from mediocre to dismal. Republicans and Democrats have contempt for each other. They cant work together to solve our common problems. And the most important and powerful political office in the world is occupied by a man who is intellectually, temperamentally, and morally unfit to be mayor of a small city, let alone president of the United States.

Its just messed up now is how one woman put it to the Washington Post. Its not even a political system. Its a reality show. Another said American democracy has become a rock-throwing contest.

But that is not the whole story. To hold a uniformly negative view of politics is selective and misleadingand in important ways it is simply wrong. It mistakenly assumes that our current predicament is a permanent condition. But just as a television series shouldnt be judged by a single bad episode, just as a professional basketball player shouldnt be judged by a single bad series, politics shouldnt be judged by its worst moments. Certainly American politics has seen moments of squalor, but our politics has also seen moments of grandeur. Most of the time its something in between. Here is the risk of allowing ourselves to be cynical: When we imagine that this nadir is the norm, we let ourselves and our leaders off the hook. We imply that there is no point in demanding better or in working to do better.

In fact, it is precisely at a low point like this one that we should remind ourselves of the potential of politics, both to better understand what has gone wrong and to think more concretely about how to turn our politics around. We simply cannot afford to settle for the reigning arguments that politics is beyond repair and our corrupt leaders and institutions are to blame. The core argument of this book is altogether different. It will argue that by remembering and restoring Americas noble and necessary political traditioncovering the roles of morality, religion, rhetoric, debate, and citizenshipwe can heal what has been fractured and get back to the task of making America a more perfect union.

Much of the blame for our ugly and unfortunate state of affairs can be laid at the feet of politicians and the political class, of which I have been very much a part. Not everyone is culpable, of course, but as a general matter our elites have been detached from the problems and creeping hopelessness that have overwhelmed many Americans, especially those without college degrees and those who are living in rural areas.

Rather than shaping events, Republican and Democratic lawmakers have often seemed at the mercy of them. The last several years have been characterized by unusual pessimism, a deep sense of unease and apprehension. Weve witnessed a collapse of trust in government, particularly the federal government; and that loss of trust is in important ways justified.

But we the people are complicit in this state of affairs, too. In a self-governing nation, we generally get the government we deserve. The people who serve in public office havent been installed by some hostile alien force. Its ordinary Americansin congressional districts, in states, and in the nation as a wholewho elect House members, senators, governors, and presidents.

Your reaction to politicians as a class may be To hell with thembut To hell with them really means To hell with us. Its just too easy for all of usmyself includedto point the finger at others and never at ourselves, to assume that the troubles plaguing American politics have everything to do with other people and nothing to do with me. We quickly and mercilessly condemn what we consider to be a very unattractive garden (politics) without giving a moments thought to the role of those tasked with planting the gardens flowers (voters).

The rancor and division in our politics reflect the rancor and division in our nation. Its too facile to say we have a healthy country but a broken political system; in fact, our broken political system reflects the brokenness of our country.

But here is the most important point you should take away from this book: whats broken can be mended. We are not in the grip of forces we cant control. We can reverse what has gone wrong; we can build on what has gone right.

The wrong way to think about politics today is as if were collectively afflicted by a terminal disease, an illness with no cure. The better way to think about politics is that were out of shape, the result of doing a lot of things wrong over the years. Shedding pounds and rebuilding muscle is difficult, but it can be done and we know how to do it. Its a matter of summoning the requisite will, energy, and commitment.

So the task before us isnt easy, but its hardly beyond us. If we demand more of our politicians by demanding more of ourselves, our politics will get betterand so will our country. But that requires us, person by person, to assume the mantle of citizenship.

ESCAPING THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND

I have spent my entire adult life involved in politics in one way or another. I served in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations and, for seven years, in the George W. Bush White House, where I was deputy director of speechwriting before becoming the director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives, a kind of in-house White House think tank. I have been involved in two presidential campaigns, in 2004 (George W. Bushs reelection) and 2012 (Mitt Romneys), and have worked in several leading public policy and research institutions.