Shutdowns have never been politically successful. They’ve always been a nuclear option for the party in the minority to try to flex their muscle when they’re out-matched. Historically these have been used by Republicans to object to out-of-control spending (on the one or two times since the 90s when we actually still mean that). But this shutdown – the longest in US history – seems to have been motivated mostly by spite on the part of Democrats who unable to grasp that voters rejected them so soundly in 2024.
And it’s been politically unsuccessful. Its architect, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, is now the most unpopular politician in the country. That’s bad for him, but it’s also bad for the country. He’s unpopular with moderates for the shut-down but more unpopular with his own party that it ended. When those rational Senate Democrats who voted for cloture are accused of “caving,” it means that extremists to their left are already sharpening their knives. And whoever replaces them won’t make the same political mistake: it’s hard for cooler heads to prevail when there’s no reward for cool heads.
All of which makes me increasingly doubt that democracy can survive the Internet.
In his book Difficult Conversations, Harvard lecturer Douglas Stone described three big challenges to making such conversations and negotiations successful. The first is the subject matter itself, the second is the emotions attached to the conversation, and the third challenge is how they can challenge our identity. “We all view ourselves a certain way,” Stone said. “And conversations that feel the most difficult for us are exactly the ones that have the potential to threaten this self-image. … As a result, my identity is on the line.”
Anytime until about 10 years ago, most politicians’ identities were relatively opaque, and so were their negotiations. Everyone came out of the conference on a bill saying “We all won big!”, patted each other on the back, and then took the late flight home out of DCA. You can’t conduct a meaningful negotiation when no one has the room to maneuver because the Internet means their identity is on the line in front of everyone all the time.
When I was a young politico, the only conflict of substance was over the Iraq War, and even on that all the arguing was more restrained than what bombards us in our social feed every morning.
Transparency is good in a Constitutional republic undergirded by democratic elections and institutions like a free press. However, in the age of the Internet, excessive transparency is sewing dysfunction. Everyone is posturing all the time because it’s rewarded. Reels about thoughtful policy analysis probably won’t get as many eyeballs as rabble-rousing. And given that democracy is a popularity contest, whoever has the most followers has the most clout.
Adversarial dictatorships are free from this kind of conflict, as well as democracy’s many other inefficiencies. In a 2013 TED Talk, Shanghai venture capitalist Eric Lee said, “I was asked once the party wasn’t voted in by election, where is the source of legitimacy? I said, ‘how about competency?’”
Now Eric was happy to skip over things like the Chinese government’s slave labor, concentration camps, organ harvesting, and its inevitable collapse because of mass abortion of baby girls. But all these wonderful, open institutions put us at an enormous short-term disadvantage against adversarial governments, organizations, and non-state actors unencumbered by them.
We have people insisting that we must never surrender to each other who are inadvertently surrendering to a foreign power eager to hasten our demise. This reminds me of Sir John Glubb’s Fate of Empires, where he writes:
“Another remarkable and unexpected symptom of national decline is the intensification of internal political hatreds. One would have expected that, when the survival of the nation became precarious, political factions would drop their rivalry and stand shoulder-to-shoulder to save their country. … True to the normal course followed by nations in decline, internal differences are not reconciled in an attempt to save the nation.”
We used to say that politics ended at the oceans, and if we can’t restore that idea, then our politics could end for good. This all bodes ill for the future.
Jared Whitley is a longtime DC politico, having worked for Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and in the Bush White House. In 2024, his columns for Utah Policy were named the best in the Intermountain West by the Top of the Rockies competition.
