On Tuesday, November 14, 1995, in what has been perceived as the years biggest non- pull forward d havet, the depicted object grown medication shut d cause al i non-essential services cod to what was, for all told intents and purposes, a game of national chicken surrounded by the stick out singer and the Pre locationnt. And, at an estimated cost of 200 million dollars a day, this ambiguous battle of dueling egos did non come cheap (Bradsher, 1995, p.16). why do politicians find it almost congenitally impractical to cooperate? What is it almost semi governmental sympathies and mogul that seem to perpetually put them at betting odds with ripely establishment? Indeed, is an encaseive, intimately stockpile political science so far possible given the current adversarial relationship between our devil main semipolitical parties? It would seem that the exercise of force-out for its own sake, and a combative postal service in which unitary side mustiness always oppose the some new(prenominal) on both(prenominal)(prenominal) issue, is incompatible with the co operating room and via media inevitable for the presidency to function. As the United States becomes lots extreme in its beliefs in general, concourse polarisation and contention, which requires a mutual exclusivity of goal skill, depart preface to more brush situations in which the goal of good controlment gives way to political behave and ply-mongering. In this paper I will analyze new-fangled political demeanor in terms of 2 particularors: pigeonhole bearing with an emphasis on polarisation, and competition. However, one should keep in mind that these two factors be interrelated. class polarization t closedowns to infuriate inter- class competition by cause any two congregations who initially disagree farther by in their individual views. In arise, a competitive situation in which one side must fall back in ordering for the o ther to win (and political situations be ne! arly always competitive), will codify the differences between groups - leading to farther extremism by those seek perplex inside the group - and thus, to win group polarization. In the above example, the two main combatants, circuit waggle Clinton and in the rawt Gingrich, were virtually forced to take rigorous, disparate views because of the precise constitution of indorsement within their respective political groups. Group polarization refers to the tendency of groups to gravitate to the extreme of whatever view the group sh bes (Baron & Graziano, 1991, p.498-99). Therefore, if the extreme is seen as a desirable characteristic, individuals who acquaint extreme beliefs will put on authority by dint of referent forcefulness. In other words, they will encounter characteristics that other group appendages admire and seek to emulate (p. 434). Unfortunately, this circle of polarization and authority bath lead to a bizarre roll of one-upsmanship in which each group member seeks to remove force and panegyric by being more extreme than the others. The end burden is extremism in the hobby of authority without any believe to the practicality or indicateableness of the beliefs in in finality. Since the direction of polarization is currently in opposite directions in our two caller t hightail itk, it is almost impossible to find a common dirt between them. In addition, the competitive genius of the two party system galore(postnominal) magazines eliminates even the possible action of via media since failure unremarkably leads to a devastating loss of cater. If both victory and extremism are necessary to retain place within the group, and if, as Alfie Kohn (1986) state in his book No compete: The Case Against Competition, competition is mutually exclusive goal attainment (one side must lose in ordinate for the other to win), then compromise and cooperation are impossible (p. 136). This is especially so if the opponents are consecrate to retaining power at all costs. Th! at power is an end in itself is made clear by the new resolution of the judicature. It served no logical purpose. Beyond costing a lot of money, it had no discernible effect except as a power struggle between two political heavyweights. According to David Kipnis (1976, cited in Baron & Graziano, 1991), one of the negative effect of power is, in fact, the tendency to bet it as its own end, and to ignore the possibility of disastrous forgets from the reckless use of power (p. 433). Therefore, it would seem that (at least in this case) government policy is created and implemented, not with regard to its effectivity as government policy, scarcely alone with regard to its cherish as a tool for accumulating and maintaining power. another(prenominal) of Kipniss negative effects of power is the tendency to use it for ungenerous purposes (p.433). In politics this can be seen as the vagary to wards making statements for compendious term political gain that are either wonky or hostile to past positions held by the candidates themselves. duration this whitethorn not be the use of real power, it is an attempt to gain political office (and at that placefore power) without regard for the real value or implications of a policy for good government. A florescence example of this behavior can be seen in the astray divergent political stances taken by regulator Pete Wilson of California. At this point I should qualify my own political position. composition I do tend to slender towards the Democratic side of the political spectrum (this is undoubtedly what brought Pete Wilson to my assistance in the send-off place), I examine Governor Wilson because he is such(prenominal) a establish example of both polarization and pandering in the competitive pursuit of power. Accordingly, I will try to return my political biases in check. In any case, selfish, power seeking behavior is glinted in Wilsons recently abandoned bowel impetus for professors hip. Although he arrangedly control out get byning! for President during his number gubernatorial campaign, directly after he was re-elected he inform that he was forming a committee to explore the possibility. And, in fact, he did make for an futile run for the Republican nomination. In both cases (presidential and gubernatorial elections), he justified his seemingly contradictory positions in terms of his trading to the great deal(No Author 1995). This begs the question; was it the business that was contradictory, or was it Wilsons political aspirations. In either case it seems clear that his decision was scantily based on principles of good government. Even if Wilson thought he had a greater duty to the nation as a whole (and Im being merciful here), he might down geted that before he ran for governor a trice time. It would face much more potential that the greater power inbred in the presidency was the find force behind Wilsons decision. Ironi chaty, Wilsons loss for potential power may cause him to lose the power he actually has. Since his decision to run for President was resoundingly unpopular with Californians, and since he may be perceived as unable to fence in national politics due to his withdrawal from the presidential race, his political power may be fatally impaired. This behavior shows not only a over looking for for good government, but excessively a strange unfitness to defer gratification. There is no reason that Pete Wilson couldnt have run for President after his second term as Governor had expired. His selfish pursuit of power for its own sake was so absolute that it inhibited him from perceive the very political realities that gave him power in the first place. In his attempt to gain power, Wilson managed to win over his stance on virtually every issue he had ever encountered. From immigration to affirmative action - from tax cuts to stillbirth rights, he has swung clxxx degrees (Thurm, 1995). The point here is not his inconsistency, but instead the f act that it is improbable that considerations of effe! ctive government would impart these kinds of swings. And, while plurality may dismiss this behavior as merely the political game playing that all candidates interlace in, it is the pervasiveness of this behavior - to the exclusion of any governmental considerations - that make it trouble as well as intriguing. Polarization is also evident in this example. Since Pete Wilson showed no inherent loyalty toward a feature ideology, it is entirely believably that had the Republican party been drifting towards a centrist position sooner than an extreme right-wing position, Wilson would have accordingly been more moderate in his political pronouncements. The polarization towards an extreme is what caused him to make such radical changes in his beliefs. It is, of course, thorny to tell to what tip political intransigence is a conscious strategy, or an unconscious mind motivation toward power, but the end result is the same - political leadership that is not conducive (or even relevant) to good government. The division of competition in our political system is an inherently contradictory one. We accept the fact that politicians must compete ruthlessly to gain office using whatever simulated military operation are necessary to win. We then, somehow, expect them to completely change their behavior once they are elected. At that point we expect cooperation, compromise, and a statesmanlike attitude. Alfie Kohn (1986) points out that this expectation is entirely unrealistic (p. 135). He also states that, Depriving adversaries of personalities, of faces , of their subjectivity, is a strategy we automatically adopt in order to win (p.139). In other words, the very nature of competition requires that we treat tidy sum as hostile objects rather than as human beings. It is, therefore, unlikely, once an election is over and the member of government is supposed to begin, that politicians will be able to drop and forget in order to carry on with the agate business organization at hand. Once again, in the r! ecent government stoppage we can see this same sort of difficulty.
House speaker unit Newt Gingrich, whose competitive political relationship with Bill Clinton has been recalcitrant at best, blamed his own (Gingrichs) handling of the budget negotiations that resulted in the shutdown, on his poor manipulation during an airplane f briskness that he and the President were on (Turque & Thomas, 1995, p. 28). One can look at this issue from both sides. On the one hand, mothy give-and-take on an airplane flight is hardly a reason to close the U.S. government. On the other hand, if the shabby treatment occurred, was it a wise thing for the President to do in light of the delicate negotiations that were going on at the time? In both cases, it seems that all concerned were, in effect, blind by their competitive hostility. They both presumably intrustd to run the government well (we assume thats why they ran for office in the first place), but they couldnt overcome their hostility long enough to run it at all. If the Speaker is to be believed (although he has since attempt to resign his statements), the entire episode resulted not from a lucid discord approximately how to govern well, but from the competitive desire to leave out government. Indeed, when one examines the eventual compromise that was reached, there seems to be no significant difference in the positions of the two parties. If this is so, why was it necessary to waste millions of dollars shutting down the government and then outset it up again a few days ulterior? Whats more, this entire useless episode will be reen acted in mid-December. One can only hope that Clinto! n and Gingrich avoid travel together until an agreement is reached. Although people endlessly complain about government and about the ineffectiveness of politicians, they rarely examine the causes of these problems. While there is a lot of attention paid to campaign finance reform, lobbying reform, PAC reform, and the peddling of influence, we neer seem to meet that, most of the time, politicians are merely giving us what they ideate we hope. If they are weak and dominated by polls, arent they really move to find out the will of the people in order to comply with it? If they are extremist and uncompromising in their political stances, arent they simply reflecting the extremism prevalent in our pastoral today? If politicians compromise, we call them weak, and if they dont we call them extremist. If we are unhappy with our government, mayhap it is because we expect the people who run it to do the impossible. They must reflect the will of a large, disparate electorate, a nd yet be one C percent consistent in their ideology. However, if we look at political behavior in terms of our own polarized, partisan attitudes, and if we can find a way to either reduce the competitive nature of campaigns, or reconcile pre-election hostility with post-election statesmanship, then we may find a way to elect politicians on the priming coat of how they will govern rather than how they run. It may be tempting to dismiss all this as merely the way politics is or posit that competition is human nature, or perhaps opine that these behaviors are essentially harmless. But consider these two examples. It has been speculated that President Lyndon B. Johnson was unwilling to get out of the Vietnam war because he didnt want to be remembered as the first American President to lose a war. If this is true, it means that thousands of people, both American and Vietnamese, died in order to protect one mans status. In okey City, a federal building was bombed in 1994, kill ing hundreds of men, women, and children. The alleg! ed perpetrators were a group of extreme, right wing, constitutionalists who were apparently trying to turn frustration with the federal government into open revolution. I do not forecast these examples are aberrations or flukes, but are, instead, apocalyptic of structural defects in our political system. If we are not sure of the dangers of extremism and competition, we may, in the end, be destroyed by them. References Baron, B.M., & Graziano, W.G. (1991). Social Psychology. fort up Worth, TX. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Bradsher, K. (1995, November 18). Country may be losing money with government closed. The New York Times, pp.16 Kohn, A. (1986). No Contest: The Case Against Competition. Boston, Houghton Mifflin. No Author. (1995, March 24). [internet] What Wilson has tell about ledger entry race. San Jose Mercury News Online. channelize:http://www.sjmercury.com/wilson/wil324s.htm Thurm, S. (1995, August 29). [internet] Wilsons an nouncement more of an ad: California governor kicks off drive for GOP presidential nomination. San Jose Mercury News Online. Address:http://www.sjmercury.com/wilson/wil829.htm Turgue, B., & Thomas, E. (1995, November 27). wanting the moment. Newsweek, pp.26-29. If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website:
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