President Biden’s overly conciliatory comments regarding House Republicans’ reactionary draconian debt ceiling proposal led to one of my recent columns. I addressed the structural flaws of the American system of governance.
On further reflection, I don’t think my positions deal comprehensively with the situation. I even consider them superficial.
We have more Black elected officials at every level of government than anytime in American history. However, as a community we’re more politically impotent today than at any time in my lifetime.
The scale of the sustained multiracial national protest to the murder of George Floyd was historic, as was the national resonance of the Black Lives Matter Movement after the police killing of Michael Brown. Both are evidence of a changing America. However, the vitriolic, racist, fascist white reaction is evidence that much of America hasn’t changed. So how does Black political leadership understand and deal with this paradox?
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”
The structural nature of the American governance system, no matter the moment in history, has dual realties. There is the tactical/operational aspect of politics, and then there’s the strategic or metaphysical aspect of politics. There’s a short game and a long game.
The short political game is the daily grind, making it work day to day. The long game is about normative policy and what the trajectory of society ought to be. Think of it as the difference between a great mechanic and a great systems engineer.
Don’t sleep on the importance of the short game. Real political skill is about governing, using the tools of government to serve the interests of the people that sent you into the arena.
When you look at President Biden, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and others, you’re looking at masters of the political short game – great mechanics.
That skill set is why we still speak with reverence and awe about Maynard Jackson, Coleman Young and Marion Berry, and if you’re from around here, this includes state Senator “Jet” Banks.
Biden is showing that he is a great political mechanic, a master of the short game. On the debt ceiling deal, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy came into the Oval Office wearing a tuxedo and left in his underwear. Biden is a prototypical American Democratic professional politician.
He functions day to day, with no real long-term strategic vision. The inherent contradiction between the short and long political game is the reason Black and other marginalized communities regularly get shortchanged. A political party led by political mechanics, no matter how skilled, will never design and build a better future.
The Black community is in desperate need of elite political operators; the political system engineers who can consider contradictory propositions and retain the ability to function. People who can play both the long and short game simultaneously.
Each system is designed to achieve the results it seeks. Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige, unarguably two of the greatest players in baseball history, could not play in the Major Leagues before 1947. This is the system operating in an intended way.
The collective condition of Black Americans isn’t a result of individual character flaws; it’s a function of the way the American social governance systems operate.
As W.E.B. DuBois pointed out, a system cannot fail those it was never meant to service and protect. This is why the implied guiding principle of Black politics in America has always been about system change, the long game, while maximizing what’s possible in the short term.
We have more Black elected officials at every level of government than anytime in American history. However, as a community we’re more politically impotent today than at any time in my lifetime.
I think there’s a simple explanation. We have produced a Black political leadership class that’s collectively not particularly good or committed to long-term politics. They have shown exceptional skill at electioneering, they know how to get elected, and advance their personal political ambitions.
They are entrepreneurial politicians. They fail at protecting and advancing the collective short- and long-term political interests of Black people.
I agree with Fitzgerald’s observation that from a political perspective, we seem to be suffering from a lack of intellectual capacity. Politically, I feel we’re suffering from a character deficit.
We were once taught lessons in countless ways. That became an almost genetic part of who we were.
I found a quote by Franz Fanon that rightly captures it.
“As a man of color…. I have one duty alone: that of not renouncing my freedom through my choices.”