It should be fairly obvious by now that we think programs like Activist Solutions could offer a great deal to the public, by giving them new and more meaningful ways to have influence in the democratic process. What may be less obvious is the benefits that such programs could have on the government, in addition to their impact on the governed.

The net effect of the problems described above – the lack of public participation in the democratic process – has a profound and much discussed impact on the political scene. The fact that such a large percentage of the public is relatively disengaged has left the field largely dominated by large corporations and a few wealthy individuals. (This disparity is not coincidental, of course – these same powerful special interests go to great effort and cost to keep the public largely disengaged). Therefore, the priorities set by government at every level are too often disproportionately shaped by these influential entities, and the public’s interests are routinely trumped by those of the wealthy and well-connected.

It’s common in certain circles to demonize the players in this drama, but our current situation seems to flow almost inevitably from the way the system has been set up. Officeholders are elected to do the “people’s work,” but in fact spend a significant percentage of their time and effort doing what it takes to get re-elected. Those that don’t give this task the highest priority don’t tend to get re-elected, and therefore natural selection has made this focus more and more predominant. Getting re-elected in our current political environment often has little to do with relating to the needs and desires of the public; because so much of the public is disengaged, winning elections has much more to do with raising and spending money on carefully crafted media campaigns. It’s a lot easier to raise money through corporate sponsors, and it’s a lot easier to get corporate sponsorship if you try to accommodate their needs and desires. Forgoing corporate sponsorship would require an officeholder to spend even more time soliciting small contributions, which arguably would leave them with even less time to do the people’s business. Of course, some individuals can finance their own campaigns, but this requires unusually great wealth. In the end, most officeholders can’t afford to give the needs of their constituents more priority than the needs of their financiers. Money talks, and those without it have a much harder time getting a hearing.

Money does not play such a central role in politics because politicians are necessarily corrupt and greedy (although some of them undoubtedly are). As described above, they literally can’t afford to stop fundraising and cultivating new sources of campaign finance. And money is not so influential because corporations are essentially diabolical either (although some of them undoubtedly are). They are doing what corporations must do, according to their own bylaws – maximize profits for their shareholders. They spend money to influence the government in order to improve their bottom line – the public’s relative lack of influence is not their responsibility. (Although, they do exercise considerable influence on the public as well, in the process of doing what they can to keep the public disengaged so that they can maintain their semi-monopoly on government influence.)

Money plays such a central role in politics because politics has become little more than a series of televised media events, with victory usually going to the candidates and issues that are the best packaged and get the most play. Because so many people are so disengaged from the political process, public scrutiny of political candidates and issues is largely limited to sound bites and thirty-second advertisements. As a result, raising the money to create and broadcast an effective televised message is almost a prerequisite to effective political influence.

The fact that money is so influential in politics necessarily skews the priorities of political figures. But the public’s disengagement distorts the democratic process much further in other ways. For one thing, it starves even the most well-intentioned leaders from information that they must have to govern well. The millions of people who have been cut out or have dropped out of the process are not adequately communicating their needs to the government. Some of this information can be gleaned indirectly, through polls and focus groups, but the fact remains that the flow of information from most constituents to their representatives is not fully available.

Perhaps the biggest and most dire consequence of public disengagement, though, is the dumbing down of public discussion of issues. The problems that we face as a nation and a world are too complex to be accurately summarized into sound bites and slogans, so the summaries presented are oversimplified and inaccurate. There are many possible options available for addressing these problems, but there isn’t time to present them all in the one or two minute slots available in prime time, so most of them aren’t presented at all.

This lack of a suitable environment (and audience) for serious public discussion doesn’t just lead to a poorly informed populace; it also makes it less and less important for politicians to be knowledgeable, as well. If you speak in sound bites for a living, pretty soon you start thinking in sound bites. There is little electoral advantage to developing a deeper grasp of the issues, since the well-financed will predictably defeat the well-informed. Cultivating an easily packaged public persona is far more important that developing a detailed grasp of the issues.

In addition, the limitations of the mainstream media as a public forum make it difficult to present specific positive ideas. For one thing, there usually isn’t time to carefully lay out a complicated solution; it’s far easier to criticize an opponent, often using oversimplified language.

In the end, the spectacle of our current political scene – which is only possible because of the severe extent of public alienation from the democratic process – takes a terrible toll on the government’s capacity to govern wisely and competently. It distorts the priorities of elected officials, making them slaves of the fund raising process and the moneyed elite that lubricate it. It deprives them of the input of the majority of their constituents. It makes knowledge and reason largely irrelevant compared to image and presentation. It forces them to condense their message into short snippets of information, which not only come to represent thought in the public arena, but come to replace thought in the minds of the politicians who must repeat them over and over again.

The Activist Solutions program will by no means single-handedly solve these problems, but it does begin to address the various root causes of our current democratic crisis. We are not historians and make no claims about whether popular political engagement was substantially better or healthier in some bygone “golden era.” We do believe, however, that the current state of affairs can be dramatically improved. Specifically:

• The public could be much more involved in the political process and in their own governing;
• People could engage politically in more valuable and meaningful ways than they do now, if they were given the opportunity;
• These two changes, and in fact any increase in the quantity and the quality of public involvement in government, would benefit (both the public and the government).

Real opportunity for meaningful contribution to public policy may be one of the few viable but missing ways to build a more active electorate. Well-structured vehicles are needed to make it easy for ordinary individuals to express their ideas and to work together as teams that decide what action to take to support the solutions they come up with. The Solution Exchange and the DNA groups will provide the structures necessary for better horizontal as well as vertical communication around positive problem solving work.