Politics is the art of the possible.
Otto Von Bismarck, German politician (1815 – 1898)

remark made on Aug. 11, 1867 (source)

Politicians and fishermen have a few things in common. They share inflated expectations when they set off on their bold endeavors. But when fishermen come home empty-handed, they redeem themselves with one-that-got-away stories. For politicians who almost achieved their goals, the homecoming is less ennobling. They are derided as useless hacks, quixotic bums, or Willy Lomans with lawn signs.

And justly because real politicians don’t lose.

The full aesthetics of Bismarck’s otherwise gruff observation is in its negative space. What isn’t politics? To Aristotle’s disappointment, politics is not the art of rhetoric. Jane Austen may be dismayed to hear that politics is also not the art of persuasion. Politics is also not popularity, which will astound politicos who think twitter follower count is a measure of their electability.

Real politics don’t lose. Indeed, Bismarck though enough of “real politics” to coin the term realpolitik — which keeps it real, in all the contemporary, slang senses of that phrase.

Coming closer to the mark is the more prosaic notion that politics is the art of getting (oneself or someone else) elected. Ultimately, politics is that aspect of human endeavor that results in successful resolution of open questions. Politics only applies to winning winnable contests. Losing un-winnable contests is not what politicians do; that is what martyrs do.

This blog posits that all good politics is about winning contests — popular elections, committee consensuses, private disputes — and that the future of social order depends critically on those who manage to win.

So is winning everything? This leads to the eternal moral question: do the ends justify the means? For Bismarck’s realpolitik, the answer would be natürlich.  I see the problem in more of an epistemological sense. Which are the means and which are the ends? They are more plastic that we’d like to believe, and they can mutate into one another in a single distracted moment. Political operatives themselves are professional “means” — means-for-hire — and as such are ends in themselves. In a world where, transmutation of means and ends is trivially achieved, we must bring a moral compass to help sort out the right vs. wrong. I’ll bring mine; you bring yours. Let’s hope they line up. And let’s do the right thing.

Beyond that, expect Shakespeare and philosophy and some literature and popular culture and my own flavor of peevishness when I see that I am misperceiving the possible as badly as the next Willy Loman with a blog.

But save for a few weeks of respite in the desert southwest, all I had was Congress to see me through the humid summer days of life in the national swamp. Sam Ervin, William Proxmire, Scoop Jackson, Birch Bayh, Ed Muskie.  This was my starting lineup. And their hits and saves were reported by rockstar reporters like Woodward and Bernstein, who also played umpire with other neutral observers: R.W. Apple, Jr., Haynes Johnson, and David Broder.

Paul Duke, then Martin Agronsky, were the week-in-review guys, and Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern were still just mean-spirited little leaguers.

Things changed when John MacLaughlin took the weekly talk show, and the self-possessed Cronkite gave way to the self-conscious Rather who gave way to the self-centered Blitzer. Oh what a falling off was there.

And when the Republicans, led by a bewildered Bush41, allowed the meaner side of gutterball to be mixed with the high octane GOP funding sources to create an explosive and toxic environment that napalmed facts into twisted horror stories, no reporters/umpires were left to cry “foul ball.”  Michael Dukakis was Willie-Hortoned by alligator Lee Atwater long before John Kerry was run over with a Karl Rover swift boat.

But by then, I’d grown up and moved away.

To the current crop of high schoolers who wonder why snarling off-the-cuff comments from WWF mega-stars are more gentlemanly than the RNC talking points, I can only say founding father John Adams feared exactly this. Founding father Thomas Jefferson told us we’d survive it and be stronger for it. In the 70s, it was easy to favor Jefferson. Now, I’m leaning toward Adams.

Baseball — albeit bad baseball — is back in DC now. Hooray. But I’d give it up again for a bit of that 1970s-style missionary journalism and a few clean politicians that can thrive in an alligator-free swamp.