Singh
It is a politician’s job to get elected every two to four years. Once elected, constituents re-elect incumbents overwhelmingly. Given that narrative in American politics, our politicians have very little incentive to take a detailed look at policy measures.
As long as they get 51 percent of the vote and don’t get caught doing something obscene in the process, they’re happy.
So what is an election-fearing politician to do when a serious, substantive debate comes up? Make a catchy slogan and run with it.
Political slogans have become the law of the land in political discourse. They are common in large and small elections, and the strategy is pretty simple: make complex issues sound simpler than they really are.
With regulation — more so than any other issue — this is the narrative that unfolds. And with an ideological twist, the campaign season begins.
Democrats complain that without regulations the marketplace will run wild and hurt a lot of people. Republicans insist that overregulation can restrict the healthy risk-taking needed for a vibrant free market.
We believe them, most of the time.
There are two reasons why. One is that we are all partisans. Democrats happen to know business is evil. Republicans happen to know government is evil.
It is easy to categorize an issue that affects the market in terms of ideology because we all think that way. We would all like things to be easy. Politicians like easy, and thus they like slogans.
Another reason is that as informed as a citizen might be, people usually do not have the time to ponder how best to regulate Wall Street or how to create an environment suitable for business.
That’s the whole point of representative government; we send people to Washington, D.C., to do their homework, find out what is not working, and perhaps hammer out a solution to make life easier for everyday citizens.
People hope, genuinely and rightfully so, that their elected officials — Democrats as well as Republicans — have a clue as to what they’re talking about.
The debate over regulation shows that all too often this is not true because these clowns keep getting elected.
The results are regulations that might work politically, but are simply bad policy.
Democrats pass legislation to micromanage every action of industry under the guise of protecting consumers. They give corporations and small businesses alike abstract and counterproductive rules that do little to stabilize the marketplace while creating a lot of uncertainty.
Republicans then get elected and they’re not much better. They see the frustration building in the marketplace and proclaim they will cut regulation for businesses to thrive.
But in doing so, they don’t take away repetitive bureaucracy or streamline rules in the market. They cut the vital regulations needed to keep stability in the markets.
The recent examples are hard to argue with. Alarmingly, there were 400 related agencies responsible for overseeing AIG, each regulator with a tiny part of the puzzle who never figured out the big picture.
Conversely, there were zero agencies responsible for overseeing derivative trading from Goldman Sachs or Barkley International’s financial casinos.
During the BP oil spill, there were 14 federal agencies in the Gulf who had little clue as how to communicate with one another. Since each agency had veto power, it’s easy to see why the residents of the Gulf were frustrated with slow progress in cleanup.
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Additionally, it’s well documented that the Minerals Management Service, under President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush, allowed the oil industry to essentially write its own regulations.
And that worked out well.
This is what happens when U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi writes our financial reform or former Vice President Dick Cheney oversees environmental policy. We hear regulation is either good or bad, always and forever.
Accountability to the agencies that are supposed to be doing the people’s work is lost.
Rarely are the agency heads pragmatic leaders who understand industry needs and excesses. Too often ideologues are put there simply to make a political point.
Thus, regulation is a multifaceted subject that requires case-by-case analysis, not partisan slogans.
I look for the few, intelligent politicians from both parties that genuinely take the time to study issues like this prudently.
Ameek Singh is a State News guest columnist. Reach him at sodhiame@msu.edu.
