Political Suicide

Today I was once again hit in the face with a part of politics that frustrates me - the fact that those who hold public office will not go outside the overton window.

The Overton Window is a political theory which originated from Joseph P. Overton. He observed that when public policies in a given areas, such as education, are arranges from freest to least free only a relatively narrow windo of options will be considered politically acceptable. This window of politically acceptable policies is not defines primarilty by what politicians would prefer; rather, it is defined primarily by what they believe they can support and still win re-election.

And for this reason, I have a lot of respect for Governor Christie of New Jersey - this guy is incredible! He gets out there and tells it the way it is. At the rate he is going he will never be reelected, not in a million years.

Look at this video...

I have never seen - and reckon I will never see any other person in political history ever make such remarks regarding the teachers unions! They just wouldn't and you know why? Because they have a massive group of grassroots teachers and their networks whom they not only forcibly collect money with, but then give that money to specific candidates and typically those candidates win. They just have that much power.

The perfect example here in Utah, specifically relating to education, is the 2007 voucher referendum. Governor Huntsman had approval ratings never seen in political history - if any political figure has more than 80% approval rating they are just telling everyone yes and doing nothing. Governor Huntsman was 100% on board with vouchers, but was he going to come out and do anything about it - nope. He didn't even allow his Lt. Governor to so much about it. He just sat because he did not want to deal with the possibility of political suicide, can't handle only 70% of the population approve of you? (On a complete side note - he was appointed by Obama to be ambassador to China, go figure).

This is merely one example of one person, the fact is most people involved in politics will never step outside the overton window, they just won't - it would cost them their job.

I do not have much hope that I will ever meet someone that is willing to look outside the window to policies that are actually sound government policy - but if you are sincere about doing so, I would do anything to get you elected.