Читать книгу DC Confidential - David Schoenbrod - Страница 6

Foreword by Governor Dean

This is an alarming book, and indeed we should be alarmed. Americans already know that there is total lack of responsibility in Washington. That knowledge helped to produce the turmoil that we experienced during the election of 2016.

Washington and the campaigns of those seeking to get there have become like middle school on steroids: with the raging hormones, complete lack of civility, and, most tragically, abdication of any sense of dedication to a cause greater than ourselves.

As David Schoenbrod points out, this has been some time in the making. The Five Tricks of Washington that he discusses were not invented by the recent crop of candidates but rather are the result of decades of self-absorption by our political class, including the media.

A layperson reading this book may be tempted toward despair. Don’t go there!

The Five Tricks are complicated; otherwise they would not have been so successful for so long. But the real recurring theme here is very straightforward: the power to get rid of Washington chicanery is not within Washington, it is in each of us.

Yet, as Americans, we have failed to articulate the most important part of the solution. We debate ad nauseam about our rights as Americans, but it’s been a long time since I’ve heard a serious discussion about our obligations to one another. So, we get pulled into hot-button emotional issues about rights, most of which I support, but we never get around to asking what we ourselves must do to maintain a political system that allows us more rights than almost anywhere else in the world. Half of us vote, at best, and yet we wonder why the people we vote for can get away with using tricks that wreck the nation to get reelected.

I am, however, optimistic. Not long ago, I heard a conservative North Carolinian interviewed about the election of 2016. I disagreed with him on immigration and much else. After he bemoaned the state of the country from his point of view and talked about his fears for the future—the debt, the loss of jobs, and the prospects for our kids—he concluded by saying, “I am a social conservative, but I think we may need to put social conservativism on the shelf for a while in order to straighten this all out.”

I agree, but not because he spoke of putting aside social conservatism. We all, regardless of our favorite cause, need to work “to straighten this all out.” Our politics can’t be about winner-takes-all anymore. We have to make common cause and talk about real issues, including unpleasant subjects like debt and entitlement reforms. To do that, we must stop the tricks.

As you read this book, think not just about how mad you are at the tricksters. Think, as the social conservative from North Carolina did, about our obligations to one another as we fix the problems. We must refuse to respond to divisive tricksterism, and start to demand accountability from politicians, the media, and, most importantly, ourselves.

Howard Dean, MD

Governor of Vermont, 1991–2003

Chair, Democratic National Committee, 2005–09