Conventional wisdom would have us believe that the reason for our political dysfunction is excessive partisanship.

The confluence of unlimited money and ceaseless communication, proponents of this view contend, has made campaigning not a periodic cycle but a perpetual cycle. This, in turn, makes politicians not collaborators in governance but enemies in battle. The result? Begging and bragging. Politicians spend all their time asking for money and playing to their bases, leaving little time and less interest in governing.

While the logic of this argument is compelling, I don’t think it gets at our basic governmental problem. That problem, I think, is our gradually and almost imperceptibly changing collective definition of the purpose of government. Ask the question, “Is the purpose of government to serve the public interest?” to a representative sample of U.S. citizens. Fifty – even 25 – years ago, my guess is that an overwhelming majority would have answered, “Yes, of course.” Today, I think that majority would answer, “Yes, but …”

Maine citizens today are, I suspect, more fearful than they were a generation ago. “Of course I’m interested in the public interest,” my hypothetical person on the street would say, “but only after government assures me that nothing done to serve whatever that ‘public’ interest may be affects me in any possibly negative way; government’s first priority must always be to ensure that no changes hurt me.”

Politically, the growth of this attitude means that fewer and fewer policy changes are feasible. And it means that the negative impacts of those that are feasible fall increasingly on those who don’t have the means to protect their interests. Ironically, the siren song of “just tax the rich” does far more to increase inequality by stifling all change (and thereby economic opportunity) than current tax structures and rates.

Nowhere is this attitude and its economically destructive effects more clearly on display than in efforts to expand the sales tax to services and to develop underutilized urban real estate. In both cases, the public interest is far better served by spreading both the costs and benefits of change across all citizens. But if the first priority of government is to ensure that no one suffers a direct cost from a proposed change, then real costs (higher tax rates on the existing base and/or decreased services) are forced invisibly on to everyone else. The narrow but vocal individual interest trumps the public interest.

Our fundamental political dysfunction arises not from partisanship but from the mistaken belief that change can be sanitized, that all children can be above average and that we can solve difficult social problems without hurting anyone. This attitude is magical thinking. And it is deeply rooted in our human, even reptilian, nature. Its source is fear. Change is frightening, so we resist it. But the harsh reality is that life without change is impossible.

Tasking government with the job of ensuring that no change hurts is to condemn ourselves – all of us, both the fearful and the courageous among us – to become the victims of economic and demographic trends that are all too obvious around us. No, it is not partisanship we must reject; it is fear.

We need to act together to face an uncertain and, yes, fearsome future with courage based in the belief that we as a unit can create a not painless but a better future.

Charles Lawton is chief economist for Planning Decisions Inc. He can be contacted at:

clawton@planningdecisions.com

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