Despite evil depictions of power in movies, acquiring and using it in the right way is healthy. It’s the currency of politics, like profit is for business.
Eric Lieu compares power to fire, which, he says in You’re More Powerful Than You Think, is “inherently neither good nor evil, but deployable for both and thus a phenomenon to understand and master. That metaphor treats power as a tool. It suggests that power doesn’t corrupt character so much as it reveals it: What will you do with this flame?”
A shared sense of morality certainly drives any of us to get involved in politics. But the practice of politics actually isn’t about moral victories. It’s not about right or wrong or how ideologically pure someone or a policy proposal is.
It’s about winning and losing. Did a candidate or a piece of legislation get the most votes, or not? Did public opinion shift? Victory is an outcome, not a vibe. It’s not social media metrics. Politics, to me, is about outfoxing your opponent for power. It’s about figuring out how to get what you want in terms of policy and values.
I’m not sure this hard reality is widely understood or accepted among a large segment of voters.
“Republicans care about power more than they care about anything else,” former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke said on CNN last summer. “Whether it’s right or wrong, ethics, morality, the constitution, the rule of law, self-government. Democrats care more about being right than they care about being in power. We have to change that. We must be ruthlessly focused on winning power.”
Certain obstacles can get in the way of those on the left acquiring power, including an adherence to parliamentary decorum of a bygone era; the elongated need for intellectual debate; demands for ideological purity and in-fighting; and the fervent need to get justice.
All of these goals are understandable or noble. But they can get in the way of political victories if too much emphasis is placed on them over the ultimate goal: to win.
Expanding the number of seats on the Supreme Court, for instance, would boost Democratic power by diluting the court’s conservative majority. Some liberals are opposed to it because expansion would erode the Court’s integrity and legitimacy.
The public’s view of the Court is already the lowest in American history.
Some won’t agree with my purposeful tunnel vision approach, where the most important question is Will doing X or Y help us win?
But if you don’t win, or make tangible progress, none of your values or policies will see the light of day. You’re left with tons of opinions. And no power.
And then disillusionment.