The Political Virtues of Hypocrisy
For legislators, cooperation is a form of political currency. They act in concert with other legislators, even at the expense of their own beliefs, in order to bank capital or settle accounts: “Because parliamentary bodies have to arrive at binding decisions on the full range of human activity in an atmosphere lacking the structure provided by either money or hierarchy, members have to find ways to bring some order out of what could be chaos,” Frank writes. So trading votes is how the business of politics is conducted. “Once you have promised another member that you will do something—vote a certain way, sponsor a particular bill, or conduct a hearing—you are committed to do it.”
.. As Frank has it, legislators have to act in ideologically inconsistent ways in the short run if they want to advance their larger objectives in the long run, as those larger objectives can only be achieved with teamwork. And the other members of their legislative team are only going to play ball with them if they know that they’ll take one for the team, that they’ll vote for something they don’t like because the team needs it.
.. Frank’s view of hypocrisy is a self-serving narrative, to be sure, but it’s also a very rare example of a legislator choosing to actually explain such behavior, rather than pretending that such behavior does not exist.
.. “Legislators who accommodate voter sentiment are denounced as cowardly, and those who defy it are just as fiercely accused of rejecting democratic norms,” he writes. And while “both of these opposing views of a representative’s obligations are wholly defensible,” something “less” defensible to Frank is “the tendency of most voters to alternate between them, depending entirely on whether or not they agree with the official’s substantive position.”
.. “In a partisan political system, pleas of political self-interest outrank a claim to know better than one’s party colleagues what is best for the country.” Privileging partisanship over personal beliefs, Congress rewards those who look past the strength of the available evidence or the depth of their own convictions, choosing instead to vote to accrue credit or pay political debts.
.. Posner and Sunstein think we can close some of that gap with new approaches: introducing a veil of ignorance into certain decision-making by removing partisan markers from policy proposals