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Consequences of buying into campaign fantasies

Las Cruces Sun-News
Walt Rubel

A headline on our front page Wednesday caught my attention: “Institute teaches students to govern.”

What does that involve these days, I wondered. At a time when the Republican front-runner in the race for president has no governing experience, and his followers roundly denounce all those who do, how does one prepare for a career in government?

U.S. Sen. Tom Udall was in town for the Student Leadership Conference at New Mexico State University. The annual event brings together high school juniors and seniors to learn more about the workings of government and how they can get involved.

“I kind of knew it, but didn’t realize how much you have to work together to get anything done,” said Hailee Cook, 17, a junior at Arrowhead Park Early College High School. “There’s a lot of compromise.”

Good grief, isn’t Udall teaching these kids anything? They’ll never make it in politics these days with that attitude. Where was the session on effective use of Twitter in character assassination, abuse of the filibuster process to thwart the will of the majority or creation of political action committees funded by anonymous money to run vicious attack ads they can later claim to have had no knowledge of?

Mario Cuomo once observed that politicians “campaign in poetry” and “govern in prose.” I think it goes further than that.

Campaigns are about the fantasy that a significant majority of the country will rally behind the obvious goodness and virtue of our cause and produce a political revolution that will make fundamental and lasting changes for the better. That is the phase we will be in until the election on Nov. 8.

Governing is what happens Nov. 9 when the sad reality sets in that there was no political revolution and we’re still going to have to find a way to work with those dullards on the other side.

Our system of government was intentionally set up to bring together different people with different beliefs and values from every region of the country. The ideal goal is representation for all. The more diverse our Congress and state legislatures are, the closer we get to that goal.

It only works when people of different beliefs come together to find common ground. Yet our current campaign seems to be a competition of which man or women will be the most unyielding in defense of their orthodoxy.

Our New Mexico Legislature has too often mirrored the dysfunction in Washington. But this session they came together for a very reasonable and sensible compromise on the driver’s license issue. Yes, it came after six years of fighting, and only with the threat of federal consequences for our noncompliance with the REAL ID Act. But the point is, they did it.

Under pressure from people throughout the state, the governor, House and Senate all gave in a little and came up with something that almost everybody could live with.

That’s governing. But you won’t hear much about that in the months to come.

Every election year, millions of people buy into the fantasy of the campaign. Half will be disappointed on election night. The other half will be disappointed later, in the months and years to follow. But they will all be disappointed eventually, because the reality of governing can never live up to the fantasy of the campaign.

You can take that as lies and broken promises and get mad about it if you want to. But it will only leave you in a state of perpetual anger.
