"Do Insiders Always Suck?"

[babylonsister]

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1869

Do Insiders Always Suck?
by: Mike Lux
Fri Oct 12, 2007 at 18:07:55 PM EDT


From Matt Stoller's post earlier today:

I'll also note that this confirms a rule of thumb I live by. Here it is. No matter how brazenly stupid or corrupt you think that insiders might behave, they will not only be worse than you expect, but will continue to shock you with how much worse they are than you expected they would be.

Wow. Having one foot on the insider side of my divide, that's more than a little sobering. But beyond my own worries that I will always be worse than Matt expected I would be, I want to say two things:

1. I think it is very hard to stay in politics, to keep fighting the battle day-in and day-out, if this is how you view the world. Politics is a messy, frequently ugly business, with many disappointments along the way, but good things do happen, too. To get things done in politics, you sometimes have to give people a chance to understand where they are coming from, to understand why they are making the decisions they are. And it's not always pretty, but it's also not always bad, either. I think assuming that a whole class of people, even if that class is political insiders, just suck, is not a useful way of getting things done.

2. I know that my perspective is poisoned by too many years on the "inside," but Matt's rule of thumb is not what I have experienced. That's not to say I haven't been infuriated and disappointed many, many times, because I have. But I have also seen many examples of courage and honor and righteousness by insiders, too. I've seen people put their political careers on the line in doing the right thing. I've seen people stand up to all kinds of pressure and still do the right thing. I've seen people take huge political risks, knowing the odds were against them. And I've seen many times over, good people wrestling with how best to do the right thing weighing a variety of good values that were sometimes in conflict, trying to figure out a path far more complicated and nuanced than it sometimes seemed to those on the outside. I am very disappointed in Pelosi's decision to help Wynn, for example. But I also know a leader has a hundred factors to weigh on how to hold their caucus together, and I don't know all the reasons she did what she did. I think it was the wrong thing to do, but I am not going to condemn her as a person for doing it.

We should battle for what we believe, fight hard for what we think is good policy, and express our disappointment and anger when politicians don't do what we think they should. But I just don't agree that we should be so quick and so automatic in condemning all insiders for everything they do.

If that makes me a sellout, bummer…