I understand where the cynicism is coming from, and there is certainly a core of truth there, but I think it exaggerates considerably.
Isn't pretty much LIFE in general, unless you are a lone hermit, a matter of favors done and favors recieved and crafting compromises rather than getting exactly what you think would be best?
Why on earth would you expect politics to be anything different; and why is compromise (which is often, not always, what the 'favors' being discussed consist of)
necessarily a bad thing??
Nobody is literally SELF sufficient, everyone lives in a world filled with other people who have just as many needs/wants/wishes/dreams/dislikes/problems/lines-in-the-sand as you yourself. Nobody can have everything their own way. Thus, give and take are an unavoidable and *appropriate* part of social life, including but not limited to government.
Remember that as hard as person A is pushing for the agenda they believe in wholeheartedly (and for sensible reasons), usually there is also a person B pushing for a conflicting agenda that THEY believe in JUST as wholehearttedly (and often for just as sensible reasons).
Either it's a permanent impasse and nothing at all gets done, like the Dr Suess book about the Northbound Zax and the Southbound Zax who will neither of them yeild an inch for the other; or people agree to get SOME of what they want in exchange for the other party getting SOME of what *they* want.
Of course this is not always used in the service of particularly noble goals, but I think it *usually* is, it's just that what you consider particularly noble DIFFERS AMONG PEOPLE
I mean, I myself may not think it's real important that some town in East Moose Elbow, Minnesota gets a clause tacked onto a bill that gets them federal money to start a National Pogostick Museum... but if you are a business in East Moose Elbow hoping desperately for more tourism, or figure it will create local jobs and half your family is unemployed, or you just genuinely think that pogosticks are *fascinating* and there *should* be a museum about 'em... then you will be glad that your representative found some way of making this clearly worthwhile and beneficial thing happen at long last.
The only thing wrong with that sort of pork, IMHO, is that it is unfairly routed according to which areas have the most powerful congressmen; and that all those $100,000-ses really start to add up budgetwise when multiplied across the whole country.
As far as "I will vote for your bill to legalize riding horses through town on a sunday if you will vote for my bill to decrease the tax on lettuce growers by 1%", you're back to REASONABLE grounds for compromise, IMHO.
You can't get everything you want. EVER. The wise man knows what's most important and tries to get THAT, while conceding nothing he is strenuously against. And that really *does* happen in politics, a lot more than is being given credit here.
Again, I would say to those who are baffled at how politicians can be such terrible people and why don't we vote them out and replace them with *nice* people, YOU go get elected and try it yourself, it will be most educational ;>
Pat
