Because, of course, nothing is more important than what's good for politics. Isn't the fact that these people think that way sort of the root of the problem?
Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post is one of these Beltway media types who is held in high regard within Beltway circles, but generally speaking writes about insider baseball that no one not obsessed with the minutia of politics cares about. So when he started perusing a Gallup poll that shows Americans don't have much regard for anyone in Washington - government or media - his knee jerked in exactly the direction you would expect, worrying about what this means for politics. Because that's what it's all about:
The declining belief in institutions is -- surprise, surprise -- a very difficult reality with which politicians (and the broader world of government) have to grapple. How do you get people to vote for you who simply don't believe you know or want to do the right thing for the country? How do you get people to read you if they think you are pushing an agenda? How do you get the public to follow your legal decisions if they are skeptical of why you made it?
We -- and by that I mean the political-media complex -- haven't happened on an answer.
That last sentence is revealing because, whether Cillizza meant to or not, he just admitted that this crowd is really a broad monolith in which there are different roles but one overarching agenda, which is to preserve itself.
By the way, the answer they're looking for is obvious. Start telling the truth, and start taking serious things seriously. Politicians' primary objective is to create an appealing image of themselves, and to do that they hire high-priced consultants - many of whom have come from the governmental or media world - to help create those images, and these people are also part of the political-media complex as Cillizza calls it. The media themselves obsess over "gaffes," polls and inside baseball, and do precious little to inform the American people about the substance of how we're being governed. The mainstream media largely pushes a left-wing agenda, and the conservative alternative media - which grew up as a reaction to what the MSM does - largely pushes a right-wing agenda.
People are not stupid, and can easily see that neither the politicians nor the media are really serious about their jobs. They can see that both give lip service to solving problems, but never actually solve the problems and never really deal squarely with the fact that the problems are going to present consequences at some point for the rest of us to deal with.
Basically you have a bunch of people who got excited to join the Big Exciting Club, and spend their time hobnobbing and enjoying their status, making everything a priority but serving the people. And when a rare serious person like Ted Cruz manages to make it to Washington - and declines to be assimilated - the rest of Washington treats him like he's nuts.
So of course no one trusts the political-media complex to do the right thing. Because it never does. And judging from the fact that, as Chris Cillizza points out, they can't think of a solution to the problem - we can be pretty confident they never will do the right thing because that's not why they're there in the first place. They're there to feel important and go to parties. It's a lot better than having to have a real job and deal with real life like most of us have to do.
So it's no wonder they're running up debt that can never be paid back, and they pass insanity like ObamaCare that makes promises on which it can never deliver. That's what you do when your entire purpose is to get to and stay in a place where you can escape reality and get paid handsomely for it. Oh, and if you get the chance to feed your own narcissism in the process, so much the better.
So yeah, Chris, that's why the country doesn't have any confidence in Washington. Now you can share the answer with the rest of the political-media complex. Glad to help.
