The Audacity of Hope - Barack Obama [48]
At the end of the meeting, people will usually come up to shake hands, take pictures, or nudge their child forward to ask for an autograph. They slip things into my hand—articles, business cards, handwritten notes, armed-services medallions, small religious objects, good-luck charms. And sometimes someone will grab my hand and tell me that they have great hopes for me, but that they are worried that Washington is going to change me and I will end up just like all the rest of the people in power.
Please stay who you are, they will say to me.
Please don’t disappoint us.
IT IS AN American tradition to attribute the problem with our politics to the quality of our politicians. At times this is expressed in very specific terms: The president is a moron, or Congressman So-and-So is a bum. Sometimes a broader indictment is issued, as in “They’re all in the pockets of the special interests.” Most voters conclude that everyone in Washington is “just playing politics,” meaning that votes or positions are taken contrary to conscience, that they are based on campaign contributions or the polls or loyalty to party rather than on trying to do what is right. Often, the fiercest criticism is reserved for the politician from one’s own ranks, the Democrat who “doesn’t stand for anything” or the “Republican in Name Only.” All of which leads to the conclusion that if we want anything to change in Washington, we’ll need to throw the rascals out.
And yet year after year we keep the rascals right where they are, with the reelection rate for House members hovering at around 96 percent.
Political scientists can give you a number of reasons for this phenomenon. In today’s interconnected world, it’s difficult to penetrate the consciousness of a busy and distracted electorate. As a result, winning in politics mainly comes down to a simple matter of name recognition, which is why most incumbents spend inordinate amounts of their time between elections making sure their names are repeated over and over again, whether at ribbon cuttings or Fourth of July parades or on the Sunday morning talk show circuit. There’s the well-known fund-raising advantage that incumbents enjoy, for interest groups—whether on the left or the right—tend to go with the odds when it comes to political contributions. And there’s the role of political gerrymandering in insulating House members from significant challenge: These days, almost every congressional district is drawn by the ruling party with computer-driven precision to ensure that a clear majority of Democrats or Republicans reside within its borders. Indeed, it’s not a stretch to say that most voters no longer choose their representatives; instead, representatives choose their voters.
Another factor comes into play, though, one that is rarely mentioned but that helps explain why polls consistently show voters hating Congress but liking their congressman. Hard as it may be to believe, most politicians are pretty likable folks.
Certainly I found this to be true of my Senate colleagues. One-on-one they made for wonderful company—I would be hard-pressed to name better storytellers than Ted Kennedy or Trent Lott, or sharper wits than Kent Conrad or Richard Shelby, or warmer individuals than Debbie Stabenow or Mel Martinez. As a rule they proved to be intelligent, thoughtful, and hardworking people, willing to devote long hours and attention to the issues affecting their states. Yes, there were those who lived up to the stereotype, those who talked interminably or bullied their staffs; and the more time I spent on the Senate floor, the more frequently I could identify in each senator the flaws that we all suffer from to varying degrees—a bad temper here, a deep stubbornness or unquenchable vanity there. For the most part, though, the quotient of such attributes in the Senate seemed no higher than