The Dangers of Political Hubris

As long-time followers of The Democracy Center know, a main focus of ours back in California was initiative politics. In 1996 we published my book on initiatives, The Initiative Cookbook, which remains a staple still among activists nationwide. We advised campaigns and on election nights NPR brought me in to play pundit.

So, I have kept my eyes on the wild special election in my home state, in which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger put his power on the line and found it smashed by voters back in his face yesterday. Here is the political lesson I see in those results, one that stretches from Sacramento to Washington and on to Bolivia: Beware the curse of political hubris (arrogance).

I have worked around politics and politicians for more than thirty years (I started young) and one thing you see over and over again is how full of themselves people get when elected and fawned on. It’s heady stuff for all involved. Hey, none of us are exempt. In 1984 I worked the New Hampshire primary for Gary Hart and in the months following our surprise victory there everyone involved was talking about what job we might get in the White House the next year. Of course, as it turns out that would have involved working for Ronald Reagan.

Schwarzenegger thought he was the new century’s equivalent of Hiram Johnson, the California progressive governor who championed the battle against the railroads and won approval of the initiative process in 1911. Arnold’s targets, however, were not robber barons but nurses, firefighters and teachers. Voters didn’t buy the comparison and rightly so.

A year ago Schwarzenegger caught the hubris bug and converted himself from a bipartisan moderate to, quite literally, former Governor Pete Wilson on steroids – same staff, same right wing vision. Wilson sat at Schwarzenegger’s side last night as he got the bad news. Now his governorship is becoming the political equivalent of all those really bad original sequels to Planet of the Apes (I think one involved them visiting a shopping mall in Van Nuys). California’s actor-governor is on the march from strong to silly.

President Bush suffers from a hubris problem of his own, one that didn’t take a landslide to acquire and which has produced far more damaging results. What kind of arrogance does it take to carry the nation to war based on a lie? What kind of hubris does it take to break the law to attack those who call you on your lies? Bush walks in the footsteps of every second term President (from both parties) of the past forty years. Johnson thought he had a mandate to escalate in Vietnam and fudge fatality statistics. Nixon thought he had justification to use the powers of the federal government against his political opponents. Reagan sold arms to Iran to fund his illegal contra war in Nicaragua. Clinton was enthralled by a thong, an arguably minor offense by comparison.

Here in Bolivia in a month’s time voters will go to the polls and elect a new President, most likely a right-wing former IBM executive who wants to restore order and safety for foreign investors or a left-wing coca grower leader who wants to put the country’s resources into public hands. Both Tuto Quiroga and Evo Morales are men with a great capacity for political hubris and, along with their supporters, a great capacity for overestimating the mandate they will capture from a wickedly split electorate and wildly polarized country.

I know a few antidotes for hubris. First, live with two teenagers and a three year old. You will find no shortage of observations about all your shortcomings, from mismatched clothing (my specialty) to not putting enough green food coloring in someone’s oatmeal. If that isn’t political enough, start a Blog and invite comments. If you are wrong on the facts, someone will catch it. If you are sloppy in your analysis, someone will point it out. So far I haven’t gotten too much comment on my clothing problems, but that may be the benefit of using just a headshot.