On Sausages and Congress

On sausages and congress:

People famously say that lawmaking is like sausage-making; you wouldn't want to see either in action. I've come to realize that there is even more to this analogy than first meets the eye. What sausages do is take pieces of meat and animal products that would otherwise be inedible and disgusting, and wrap them all together to make something delicious. Congress has a similar function. It takes all sorts of ideas and priorities from the amazingly vast array of constituencies across these united states, some bad and some good, and turns them into something that we can all live with and sometimes enjoy. This process is ugly, slow, frustrating, and seemingly corrupt, but it yields an acceptable whole product made from otherwise unacceptable parts. 

Similarly, I find frustrations about pork a little misplaced. I understand the desire to see politicians acting as cleanly as possible, but I believe that pork is actually necessary to the functioning of Congress. Again, when you have such a wide variety of conflicting priorities emanating from a country as diverse as the United States, you need something to grease the wheels. These pieces of varying size and shape can only come together when the right incentives can be used to get members to vote on an otherwise unacceptable piece of legislation. I’m not sure to what extent this is true, but it cannot be denied that some of today’s legislative gridlock is the result of limitations on pork and earmarks. That, combined with unprecedented right wing partisanship has made it harder and harder for members to convince each other to support measures that may not align with their partisan interests. The great thing about last year's hit movie Lincoln was that it showed how one of the most important pieces of legislation in human history (the 13th Amendment) was only passed after a series of deliberate bribes were handed out to various members.

That being said, I don’t think that even the best written laws can always counteract the moral failings of the most powerful people in business and government, but it is imperative that we try. When there is no justice, no rule of law, no punishment for antisocial behavior, those behaviors will spread and society will decay. The lesson of the past decades is that men in power can make vast sums of money trampling over uncodified social norms and get away with it (remember that Mitt Romney guy?) Because we no longer live in small, intimate societies where social norms can be enforced with personal contact, as many of these norms as possible should be codified at the federal level and enforced consistently.  All actors in our modern society, public or private, and especially the most powerful, must come to realize they are ultimately subordinate to the will of the people, written and enforced by a democratically elected government. This is the essence of our American democracy, and it will fail without it.