When I served in the Virginia General Assembly, I learned the hard lesson that campaigning isn’t governing. Campaigning is the argument to eventually govern.
Most people who enter politics do so with an agenda in mind. That agenda is based on their world view and further refined by their ideology. That results in policies they would like to enact if elected. For me that was lower taxes, more freedom, and greater opportunity.
Those worthy goals were general in nature. They required refinement and definition. When one campaigns for lower taxes, what does that mean? After all governments can’t function without necessary revenues, something most voters understand. As I went door-to-door speaking with thousands of constituents over sixteen years, I would learn—unsurprisingly—that many people don’t like to pay taxes. So, the “lower tax” message was rarely rejected. But I would also learn that people wanted roads, appropriate spending on education for their children, construction of a new volunteer fire department built to replace a dilapidated one, or healthcare for themselves, their children, and their aging parents.
What I learned was that my constituents were very reasonable people who thought things through and were willing to consider balance when it came to taxing and spending, even as they railed against the hated personal property tax, particularly on automobiles. I found almost no one who liked the car tax. And what I gleaned from that was this. If you plan to reform taxes by eliminating one, you had better think through what that means when it comes to spending on the things those same people supported.
Yet people were less flexible over social issues that ranged from abortion to firearm rights. I recall that some voters would quickly brush aside a discussion over taxing and spending and immediately focus on what they considered paramount in deciding who to support in a campaign. Their questions were straightforward. “Where are you on guns?” “Are you pro-life?” “Do you support the right to an abortion?” Sometimes they would disguise their actual view by framing the question to see how I would respond. Would I equivocate or be straight forward? I would be honest with them. But I would learn that most wanted me to embrace their view as my mandate and were not overly concerned about balance.
Enter the bothersome business of governing once you are elected. I learned that campaigning is child’s play compared to governing. Remember that lower tax business? Well, doing tax reform is like pulling a loose end from a well-worn sweater. If you’re not careful, you unravel more than you might intend and accordingly have a real mess on your hands. The politics of tax reform isn’t hard. Simply slash them, right? But the governing piece, where one must craft legislation, is an act of balance, details, and the avoidance of unintended consequences. It isn’t easy and the danger is that sometimes legislation takes the form of a meat axe as opposed to a scalpel.
Discarding balance can lead to assuming a mandate you do not have. The result is frequently bad, particularly with voters who—though supporting you—did not suspend their thinking on the need for balance. Many people who want lower taxes want rational spending. Many supporters of the second amendment also think there should be limits to who can purchase or possess a firearm. And women who personally oppose abortion—and would never have one—tolerate others who would. I was very conservative on all these issues. Yet I would learn on the campaign trail that my views were not always those of the majority of voters. Governing revealed that clearly. You cannot assume a mandate to do what you personally want, that is simply not the will of the majority who elected you to represent them.
The campaigning-governing conundrum is hard to reconcile. How do you sustain your principles in a governing process that requires compromise to enact legislation consistent with them? It’s difficult. If you seek to lower some taxes while having to raise others, you will quickly be accused of abandoning your principles. The same is true of rational restrictions that impact deeply held social issues. The temptation is to be uncompromising. And that leads to a unique form of madness in assuming a mandate you were not given by the preponderance of voters.
The midterm elections are upon us. The current rulers in Congress entered office in 2021 assuming a very radical mandate. It backfired on them across several issues leaving many people postured to turn them out. In their zeal to do what they personally wanted, they jettisoned balance and with it, the likelihood they will be able to achieve what they hold dear.
Now the “ins” are about to be “out” because they suffered from mandate madness.
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