Notes on Editing (Or: Why We Need a Different Thesis Statement)
Laura Blessing | January 7, 2022
In marking the one-year anniversary of the January 6th insurrection, many are taking stock of the state of the response as well as our democracy. The latter has not made for easy reading—the US has been categorized as a “backsliding democracy” for the first time or otherwise downgraded by think tanks studying it—a problem for the world, not just the US. A variety of more alarming pieces making broad historical comparisons have proliferated of late. Some of these pieces leave one feeling as if one has read an incomplete student essay: the assignment was to identify similarities AND differences; where is the latter? Others note changes to election laws and procedures that address actual mechanisms of change: changes in state voting laws, changes in election officials (eg. PA) and who gets to certify elections (esp. GA, AR), as well as potential election officials now running in 2022. And while there are many responses to last year’s events, these laws number among them. I can’t seem to get a line from the inimitable Joan Didion out of my head: “the major casualty of political life is memory.” This may be the greatest legacy of January 6th. How does one govern a country divided by reality?
How does one write about such things? How does one teach about such things? As the editor of our newsletter here at GAI, I get to steer the content of these pages, and have since I came on board as a Senior Fellow in September 2015. I’m really proud of what this has become: a professional vehicle for regular pieces, the sort you’d see from much larger institutions. Some are shorter pieces that respond to the events of the day, some do a deeper dive and act as larger “explainer” pieces and often prompt press inquiry, to use our educational mission for a wider audience. I have a wonderful stable of folks to draw on for their expertise, which I’m too proud of to not put in a footnote.
As you can imagine, pieces get selected for timeliness and topics of importance, and edited for tone as well as clarity—we’re an educational institute, our mission is to teach. There are, however, choices one makes when one adopts professional norms. Pieces are rarely personal. Not only are we an appropriately non-partisan institute, but beyond that the tone is more generally neutral. (The tone question is one I receive most often on partisanship, never about the newsletter but on the challenges of putting together classes in a polarized time, and with guest speakers who are practitioners. My answer always includes that if you cannot find people on both sides of the aisle to both admire and criticize- even have a hearty laugh at- you are not paying attention.) Tone is far more than any evidence of partisanship, however. Should one be neutral in the face of massive changes or volatility or dysfunction? What about an increasing disconnect between public views and policies pursued? At GAI we are all hearty partisans—FOR Congress. We’re unabashedly rooting for it to work.
There are so many important angles to January 6th, but a lessening policy accountability, a growing disconnect between public views and policies pursued deserves greater attention. There are a number of ways of charting such a development. The long-vaunted link between economic performance and (Presidential) elections has eroded, as partisans increasingly chose their own views of the economy. Political scientist Suzanne Mettler has crucial insights for what she calls “the Government-Citizen Disconnect”, namely, the wide gulf between what the public think the government does and the actual role it plays in their lives. I’m working on a book manuscript on policy-based party-building that looks at the GOP’s tax-cutting party-building, an unusual paragon of small-d democratic accountability where the party delivers on explicit electoral promises—but even here, that strongest of strong policies has become weaker of late: the 2017 tax cut was the first major tax cut to be underwater in public opinion.
One can argue, reasonably or not, about how closely policy should reflect public opinion, and how majoritarian our policies should be. Yes, the public can be misinformed, and the wording of polling questions can alter results substantially (I could write an entire piece on fiscal policy alone, here). The anti-majoritarian tendencies of the Senate have gotten a lot of attention. There’s always a question of generalizability: should we raise alarm over individual examples of legislation? Should we see thermostatic trends as evidence of the public responsiveness, even if its in a policy world of a dramatically shifted Overton window? (Returning to voting legislation: when the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized in 2006, it passed the Senate by a vote of 98-0.) To make a brief case for focusing on major legislation, it is such policies that can define the degree to which we are a democracy, as well as the citizen’s relationship with the state. On policy area after policy area, specific reforms that have overwhelming public support do not even muster serious discussion, even when one allows for the invariable compromising that necessarily happens during the legislative process.
This begs the larger question: what is the lesson here, in a piece that, unusually, centers on personal reflection, and questions how to think and teach and learn. I often advise students, when working on writing that could be improved with greater clarity, that they should “hold the reader’s hand”. Where am I leading all of you?
There is a problem in our discourse that undergirds and reflects the hyper-partisanship, alternate political realities, and lessening policy accountability. You could call it a common editing problem that is really a common analysis problem, and thus a problem for democracy. So much of cable TV but also other, generally more partisan, sources, start their coverage with a thesis statement that almost never changes: The other side is terrible because X, Y, Z. It’s time to change the thesis statement.
Ask what you want Congress to do. Ask others what they want Congress to do. When you read the news, follow those who explain what Congress either is or is not doing and why, and how it affects the country and your lives. Ask them to show their work. And then vote.
A footnote on excellent GAI newsletter pieces:
We’ve got a great crew here. In addition to institutions and parties I also research tax and budget policy, but draw on other projects. Josh Huder is an expert on legislative procedure in particular, but also covers other things. Matt Glassman, who wrote his dissertation on 19th century politics and worked for CRS, including a stint as a Leg Branch appropriations staffer, is often a jack of all trades. As a former long-term congressional staffer, Mark Harkins’s staffer’s view lends an important voice, also covering other updates. All current Senior Fellows have experience working in Congress. I try not to lean on Director Kristin Nicholson, who is admirably piloting our ship during a tumultuous time, but when I do she shines, bringing her views from 16 years as a Chief of Staff to our pages. I keep going to Sue Lagon, Nonresident Senior Fellow, for her judicial politics expertise in particular. Fellow (and Director of the Certificate Program) Katina Slavkova specializes in national security and oversight and regularly contributes such pieces, but also other topics.
Categories: Media Center, Revise & Extend, Updates