Play-acting has increasingly become an integral part of professional soccer. Players dive to the ground rolling in agony as if they were suffering an injury so severe as to demand immediate hospitalization and notification of their next of kin — only to pop back up and return to play moments later.
Everyone knows that they’re simulating injuries in the hope that the referees will be persuaded to call fouls on their opponents. Meanwhile, disgruntled fans wait in irritation for the play-acting to end and the real play to resume.
Play-acting may be harmless in soccer, but when it comes to policymaking, such fakery deserves a red card. Unfortunately, elected officials increasingly seem to be doing the political equivalent of diving to the turf. They posture and preen to score political points but ultimately accomplish nothing.
For example, whenever gas prices climb, you’ll see politicians work up a righteous anger and vow to prosecute those evil price-gouging oil companies getting rich off the suffering of the driving public. It’s a sure bet that they will commission a study, just as they did after the price increases following Hurricane Katrina. And like that study, and all the other dozens of investigations that preceded it, they’ll find no illegal market manipulation or price gouging, only natural reactions to market forces.
Politicians know that they’ll get this same result every time, but both parties eagerly call for such investigations anyway. Faced with constituents upset about high gas prices, our elected representatives are desperate to be seen as doing something to alleviate the pain at the pump. Only those who know something about economics or recent history will recognize a price-gouging investigation for the play-acting it is.
Campaign finance reform is another example of political play-acting. In 2002, the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act sounded noble and pure as its sponsors promised it would prevent soft money from corrupting election campaigns. At the time, opponents of the bill argued that no law could keep money out of politics. Those who want to give money to candidates and those candidates who want to receive money would find a way to achieve what they both wanted.
Sure enough, within months of BCRA going into effect, those warnings proved prophetic: Soft money stopped going to campaigns and instead poured into the previously little-known 527 organizations. As groups like MoveOn.org and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth spent tens of millions of dollars slugging it out in the 2004 election, BRCA’s promise of campaigns untainted by money was nowhere to be seen.
So, now the politicians are ready to repeat their mistakes by trying to limit the 527s. Yet again, politicians will be able give the impression of having solving problems by passing a bill that sounds good but accomplishes nothing.
Last week the House passed a resolution that was ostensibly a condemnation of the leaks about the SWIFT financial tracking program but actually involved much political posturing by both parties. After a debate in which the Democrats accused the Republicans of trying to stifle the press and the Republicans condemned both the leakers of the story and the press for endangering our fight against terrorism, the House, along mostly partisan lines, passed the resolution.
The Democrats became political soccer players bawling about supposed restraint of press freedoms when the real issue is leaks that harmed our ability to fight the terrorists. The Republicans postured in enjoyment of the opportunity to bash the leakers and the media, while placing the Democrats in a sticky wicket on an issue regarding international terrorism.
However, the Republicansdidn’t have the courage of their convictions to actually name the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times as the media outlets that had published the leaked story even after officials in the administration and the leaders of the Sept. 11 Commission had begged them not to.
The Republicans want the illusion of confronting the media over damaging leaks but can’t even bring themselves to name which media they’re condemning. So, the resolution became just a political ploy rather than a specific denunciation of the media at fault.
In 1893, my state, North Carolina, adopted a line from Cicero as its state motto, “Esse Quam Videri,” or “To be rather than to seem.” Sadly, modern politicians of both parties seem to have adopted this motto in reverse: “To seem rather than to be.”
As we celebrate the Declaration of Independence this week, ponder what our Founding Fathers would think of today’s elected officials elevating appearance over substance. Somehow, I can’t picture the Founding Fathers, who risked everything in rebelling against Great Britain, taking the political equivalent of a dive in soccer.
Betsy Newmark is a member of The Examiner’s Blog Board of Contributors and blogs at Betsy’s Page (http://betsyspage.blogspot.com).
