It is said that through elections, we citizens get to choose
our future. But in fact that saying
involves a huge leap of faith. By voting
and electing our leaders, we do choose our future to a degree—but it may not be
what we thought it would be, based on campaign promises by the candidates prior
to election.
But even when elected officials keep their campaign promises,
that may still not be the full story as to what we get after their election to
office. I say that in view of the following
question: Is it possible that candidates
for office don’t tell us about every issue important to the constituents who
elected them?
Put differently, isn’t it possible—and in fact quite
likely—that candidates for office, including those who manage to get elected, keep
secrets from their constituents they would never want to be made public?
I’m not talking about the sordid personal indiscretions of
public figures, replete with embarrassing color photos, that fill the pages of supermarket
tabloids.
I’m talking about issues of public interest that belong in
the public eye because they involve the official duties of elected officials carried
out daily while on the public payroll between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM.
These issues go to the heart of our democratic republic and
its governmental processes and yet, in my 40+ year career, with 20 of those
years as a president of a “public” university in Pennsylvania, I have never heard
these issues discussed publicly, or mentioned in a book, magazine or newspaper
article.
To explain what I’m getting at, consider the following
provocative quote:
The above quote may sound like a punch line from a stand-up comic’s routine, but it was actually made by Dmitry Medvedev, the third elected President of the Russian Federation! His statement probably reflects a growing concern both inside and outside of Russia, whose adoption of “democracy” is both recent and fragile, in which many people fear that the Russian Federation will relapse into still another dictatorship similar to the communist dictatorships it escaped with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Based on recent Russian history and the meteoric rise of Vladimir
Putin as Russia’s second the fourth president—with a term as Prime Minister in
between—thanks to being appointed by President Dmitry Medvedev, his former colleague
and campaign manager, Medvedev’s quote is quite believable and may accurately
describe “democracy” in Russia today where, even allowing for a little
hyperbole, “everything is already decided” before the votes are counted.
But what could Medvedev’s quote actually have to do with
elections in America?
I believe that Medvedev’s provocative quote does have real relevance
to elections in America. It’s just that
while not everything in America has already been decided prior to the elections,
there are some things—of critical importance to the constituents—that have in
fact already been secretly decided.
Game Theory With Two
Players
Game theory is a branch of research in economics and
mathematics that studies the relative risks and rewards of one player either
cooperating with, or competing against, the other player in the game. A familiar example of game theory involving two
players is known as the “Prisoner's Dilemma.”
When two suspected criminals are captured for a crime and interrogated
in separate rooms, each prisoner knows that if they both refuse to cooperate, there’s
a good probability that they could both go free. But they also know that the first prisoner
who cooperates with police to help convict the second prisoner can also get
lenient treatment in the process of “giving up” their partner in crime. Hence the prisoners’ dilemma.
Game Theory with
Three Players
Virtually everyone who remembers their teenage years will recall
the potential treachery that often reared its ugly head when it came to “three-way
friendships.” Well as it happens, the
political and electoral processes in America may be understood fairly well in
terms of game theory with these three players: 1) the Electorate (E) ; 2) the
Democratic Party (D); and 3) the Republican Party (R). In this case, each player can choose to either
cooperate with, or compete against, one or both of the other two.
The Politicians’
Dilemma
We are all familiar with the scenario between those three
players in which the two political parties compete fiercely against each other in seeking
the favor of a majority of the voters in the electorate. The two parties constantly attack each other
publicly while trying to outdo the other party in securing the support of a
majority of the electorate by straining to meet the needs of the majority of
the voters.
Don’t Tell the
Children!
But as we recall from our teenage years, in a game with three
players, there are actually three different ways to play “Two against One!” They are: E + D against R; E + R against D; but
don’t forget D + R against E!
Like I often say, “Don’t tell the children,” but it is
possible and in fact quite common, for the two political parties to cooperate
with each other to the disadvantage of the voters who elected them.
Details later.
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