By Stanley W. Samarasinghe

In American electoral politics there are two fixed traits that have got recycled in every recent election. One is to proclaim that Washington is broken and condemn those who run Washington. The other is the promise given to the electorate to reach out across the aisle and usher in bipartisan governance. In this essay I will argue that a “broken” Washington is what you get in the democracy that we have and that we need to learn to live with it. Then we can focus on the more real issues such as the economy. I will take up the bipartisan issue in a later essay.

Undoubtedly there is some scope to improve the quality and speed of governance in Washington. But that does not mean that it is easy to do as the critics generally imply. There are several reasons for it.

First, consider who is available to fix the broken system. It is more or less the very same people who have been running the system for many years and presumably should be held accountable for breaking it. Consider the election cycle just concluded. McCain and Biden are vintage Washington products. If Washington is so broken, they were very much a part of it. Obama has much less experience in Washington but much of his professional life has been in politics in Chicago. It is hard to argue that Chicago politics is any less broken than that of Washington. Ironically Sarah Palin is the only one among the four on the two tickets who has had relatively less experience in that kind of politics. However, from what we have learned in the last two months about her skills and knowledge she is the least qualified of the four to hold presidential office. In fact her very selection as the Republican VP nominee by a Washington veteran who rails against Washington is another indication of how broken Washington really is.

Then consider the Congress. The vast majority of the Senators and Congressmen who will come back next January are incumbents. They usually win comfortable majorities that suggest that the voters also do not really mean when they proclaim that Washington is broken and that they want to “throw the rascals out.” It is worse. The Senator from Alaska Ted Stevens who is a convicted felon is set to return to the Senate. A convicted felon cannot vote in Alaska or anywhere in else the US but can stand for election to the Senate and the very same voters who condemn the broken system happily vote for him.

This brings us to the so called “pork” issue that refers to earmarks that the legislators get for their own constituencies. This is cited ad nauseam as an example of how broken Washington is. The $700b rescue package for financial institutions also contained earmarks. Senator McCain who is the most outspoken warrior against earmarks supported the bill because this is what practical politics is all about. The public may condemn earmarks in general but not the specifics for their own states or congressional districts. That is why those who bring more pork to their respective states and districts continue to win easy reelection. Senator Stevens is a supreme example.

Actually the fuss about pork, rather than the pork itself, can be considered more of a sign of broken Washington. The total amount in earmarks in the 2008 budget was about $20b accounting for 0.7% of total federal spending. First, this amount is relatively very small. Second, while Alaska’s bridge to nowhere gives a bad rap for every earmark, there is no logical reason to assert that every dollar that is earmarked is wasted. The Senators and the House Members often respond to community needs and that is not a bad thing in a democracy. Arguably it is a better way to use tax dollars than have a faceless bureaucrat decide what to do with the money. Sometimes one feels that Parkinson’s Law is in play here where a big fuss is made about some small item of spending when real waste is allowed to go unchecked. It is well known that some departments, most notably Defense, waste enormous sums on failed projects, badly written contracts, and over-payments.

Finally consider the filibuster and the idea of divided government which is also cited as an example of broken Washington. When the Republicans realized that they were facing a massive electoral defeat they argued that divided government where one party does not control the Senate, House and the White House is good for governance. The Democrats took the opposite view and wanted a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate to fix what is broken in Washington. If the party electoral fortunes were the reverse the arguments also would have been the reverse. It is basically a lot of hypocrisy.

“Broken” Washington comes with the separation of powers that we have in our Constitution that we cherish. It may have a cost but we have to be prepared to pay it if we want to keep the system that we are so proud of.