Who wins when the government shuts down? You might think the right answer is “Nobody.” Lots of people get hurt or inconvenienced. It’s a terrible way to do budgeting. It’s just stupid.
Politicians think they know better. They will win by blaming the other party. But, of course, they get blamed themselves. Take a step back and you can see the long term effects on the citizenry – disillusionment with politics, cynicism, alienation from civic life, the conclusion that democracy does not work.
From that vantage point the winner is clear:
Vladimir I. Putin.
His plan for the 2016 US elections, I believe, was the same as in other elections Russia has tried to influence. It was not to defeat Hillary, or get Trump elected. That would be fine with Putin. . But he plays the long game, and sees the real threat to his regime, not a specific politician, but a challenge to autocratic rule. His e goal is to destabilize democratic liberalism.
He is succeeding brilliantly, with the help of unwitting collaborators. The shutdown serves him up a victory on a silver platter.
This is collusion by inadvertence, a kind of shortsightedness induced by focusing too intensely on the Blame Game. Once afflicted in this way political parties and their followers adopt a common agenda and send a common message – democratic governance does not work. There are plenty of people, in this country and abroad, who are vulnerable to just such a message. In disgust and disillusionment they are likely to abandon civic engagement. For them the shutdown is an invitation to cynicism.
Behind it all, I suspect, is a failure of political imagination, the inability to envision what a vibrant democracy can achieve and what it takes to achieve it. Without such a vision politicians play right into the hands of every dictator who knows he can never be secure in his power when democratic governance succeeds.
January 2018
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