Ethics close to home

I received my copy of the Castle Pines North Connection yesterday, and dug in, hoping for good news. Alas, it was not to be. There on page 14 was the statement I was hoping not to see. It was in the Frequently Asked Questions article about the proposed incorporation of the area into a new city.

Q: Will CPN face new property taxes if we vote to incorporate?

A: No.

Over the past few years, numerous books have been published about the Bush administration's authoritarian leadership style, which relies in part on broadcasting lies, repeating as many times as necessary until they are widely believed. Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them is one famous example describing this style. The Authoritarians by Robert Altemeyer is a very readable survey of behavioral science research explaining why this tool is so useful to authoritarian leaders. Al Gore's recent book, The Assault on Reason (which I'll review in a future article) presents the cultural context and impact of authoritarianism and official lying.

As Gore and many others have pointed out, dishonesty by government officials has a corrosive effect on the functioning of our democracy. The lies are always discovered eventually. When they are, they add to a monstrous pile of reasons for the public to be cynical about politicians. Politicians, of either party, who make a sincere effort to be honest with the public, are dragged down by the weight of public cynicism and distrust.

But another harmful effect of Bush Administration lying is the ethical tone it sets for the nation. If a president follows a strategy based on dishonesty, and it works, and if he continually expresses the belief that the end justifies the means, then people of all parties start to copy it. Ethics is by its nature a cultural artifact, and as such it can be bent and changed over time. What we've seen in recent years is a resurgence in government dishonesty at all levels, reflecting a lowering of ethical standards.

It can even happen right here in tiny Castle Pines North. A small group starts to feel that its goals and its pet projects are so important that they justify any means necessary to accomplish them. They make an outlandish statement, incredible on its face, that a municipal government can be created and funded without raising property taxes, apparently by harvesting money from local trees. They hire a consultant to generate a tangled and confusing report that they claim supports their case, though it does no such thing. They assume the public doesn't care and won't notice the deception. They might be right.

I moved into CPN last Thanksgiving and was asked by this group to contribute my experience in elections and expertise in engineering economics. Several others from both political parties were also invited. I didn't know about the local petty political rivalries, but I soon learned. The numbers coming back from the consultant were not encouraging; a large property tax increase would be necessary. But the leaders of this group decided they were not going to tell the public, but would deal with the big tax increase later. They know that the community has some looming problems, especially water supply, and believe they — not the Castle Pines North Metro District, not the South Metro Water Supply Authority, and not the State Legislature — are the only people who can solve them. It's a common arrogance to assume no one else could possibly have relevant insight or help, to want to go it alone.

I pleaded with the group to be honest with the financial projections, lay it all out there clearly and let the voters decide. I showed them how. The community has some excellent communications people who I'm sure could do the job effectively. I reviewed a draft of the Frequently Asked Questions article, containing the statement quoted above. I marked a comment on it, to the effect that the statement isn't true and should be rewritten. I was over-ruled.

Two weeks ago I resigned from the group, citing the ethical issues. I suppose if I had stayed with it, I could have run for City Council, to become a big fish in this little pond. No thank you. If we have to lie to get into power, we don't deserve it and I don't want it.

Blue Douglas County

Within the Democratic Party, I often hear from nay-sayers who think Douglas County is too wealthy and too conservative ever to give serious consideration to Democratic candidates. Well, I've got news for them. In many ways, Douglas County is already shading blue.

So often, political insiders take the narrow view that success is defined only by past voting for the party's candidates. This is a big mistake, because it hides the changes — sometimes very rapid changes — that can happen in a fast-growing area. It also ignores the obvious changes happening in the parties themselves.

In Douglas County, the signs of change have been evident for several years. For Democratic candidates for Congress and State Representative, performance has been increasing dramatically in each election cycle. Voters are already voting with the Democrats in non-partisan contests. In 2004, Douglas County voters approved Amendment 37 (renewable energy), Referendum 4A (Fastracks), and Referendum 4B (Scientific and Cultural Facilities District). In the 2005 hotly contested 4-way race for District G of the Douglas County School Board, Democratic candidates received 70.43% of the vote, and a Democrat won the seat.

Also in 2005, Referendum C won in Highlands Ranch with 53.80% of the vote, higher than the measure's statewide performance of 52.06%. It fared even better in Castle Pines (North and Village) with 54.49%, and also won in Lone Tree and The Meadows. It won in Senate District 30 as a whole.

Douglas County voters are increasingly showing their willingness to evaluate candidates individually, to vote the candidate rather than the party. This is a very welcome change. In the 2004 election, Douglas County was second-highest (after Denver) in ballots cast for Ken Salazar but not John Kerry. Salazar's less partisan, more inclusive campaign helped him win the election.

Surprisingly, the Republican Party is trying to buck this trend. Republican candidates for Governor, State Senate, and State Representative are together in lock-step with a message made by Colorado Springs fundamentalist groups and Washington think tanks, with little recognition of the needs or preferences of local voters. They advocate using the powers of government to bypass parents and impose parochial religious viewpoints through the schools, in spite of the fact that Douglas County parents are quite able to handle it themselves. They reject competent government initiatives such as Referendum C, in opposition to the voters. They continue to tell us we can have more services and lower taxes at the same time, the same promises that nearly pushed Colorado into bankruptcy until the voters wisely put a stop to it.

While the Republican Party becomes more centralized and less responsive to local needs, the Democratic Party is moving the opposite way. Traditional institutional support from labor unions and interest groups is declining in its importance, replaced by support from individuals and small businesses. The Republican Party taunts that we lack a message, but what they mean is we lack the willingness to take centralized direction from Washington with a media-driven message. We listen to local voters, local civic groups, and local businesses. That means we differ from one place to another. If Castle Pines wants a reliable, competent government infrastructure to support the creation and growth of small business, then we'll give it to them: we'll be honest about what it costs, and we won't sell it in pieces to the biggest campaign contributors.

Anyone who doubts that Douglas County can elect Democratic candidates in a General Election, should take a look at Loudoun County, Virginia. This fast-growing, wealthy and well-educated, suburban county of 300,000 people, a clone of Douglas County, has been a traditional Republican stronghold, reliably red. In recent years, Democratic performance had been improving, but still not winning, and voters had started to vote with Democrats in non-partisan elections. The changes were under the radar, so campaign contributions fit the historical pattern where Republican candidates raised huge amounts of money from businesses hoping to buy legislation, while Democrats raised much smaller amounts from individuals and almost nothing from PACs or other institutions.

But 2005 was a watershed year in Loudoun County. Democrat Tim Kaine won the gubernatorial race in that county, and several Democratic state legislative candidates were victorious, some by significant margins. Instead of being among the most one-sided counties in the state, Loudoun moved to the middle of the spectrum. In the future, Loudoun's new role as a competitive battleground can only benefit its voters, who will never again be taken for granted. This all happened because the Republican candidates, glued to president Bush and a national platform, didn't make themselves relevant to local concerns, while the Democrats did.

Douglas County is on the same path. Referendum C did much better in Douglas County than it did in certain traditional Democratic stronghold counties, such as Adams. The political order of counties is re-arranging itself. Douglas County voters will benefit by letting go of partisan orthodoxy and taking a serious look at each individual candidate, encouraging a more meaningful political competition in the county.

Realignment

We've been hearing quite a bit about how the Republican Party is tearing itself up. The tension among Republicans is part of a fundamental change in the political landscape. The definition of "conservative" today would be unrecognizable to our grandparents, and "liberal" is getting closer to "libertarian" every year, especially in the western states. Republican and Democratic voters and politicians are increasingly hard to categorize by these traditional terms. Instead of liberal vs. conservative, the most relevant divide today is between ideologues and pragmatists.

This divide is a response to the complexity of the modern world. Ideologues try to tackle complexity by imposing a simplistic world view using centralized force; while pragmatists try to take advantage of complexity by negotiation and competition among decentralized actors. Since this difference is all about the distribution of power in society, it’s no surprise that the political parties have used it to redefine themselves.

As far back as the 1970s, left-wing Democrats who were strong believers in Federal power and had a messianic utopian vision of America's role in the world, broke off and joined the Republican Party, forming what is now called the neo-conservative movement. They found synergy with nationalists (think Tom Tancredo), who had already gained some prominence there, and shared their view of American (and sometimes white) supremacy. Southern Democrats who were slow to accept the complexity of the modern world and embraced the simplicity of religious doctrine, found they could not impose this simplicity on the world through the Democratic Party and decided to try to hijack the Republican Party instead.

Once the Republicans built a massive infrastructure to promote ideological world views, economic fundamentalism (think Jon Caldara) also found an opportunity to take hold among the more extreme supporters of fiscal conservatism. Corporatism, which had always called the Republican Party its home, took advantage of this infrastructure as well, and paid for its expansion. Both of these reduced the numbers and power of traditional pragmatic Republicans, the true moderates. All of these ideologies are consistent with valuing large, powerful, centralized organizations that simplify the world for us.

In a similar manner, people who believed in all forms of liberalism started to sort themselves into the Democratic Party. This included people who believe in the autonomy of the person, the freedom to make one's own decisions and to be left alone by the government and by corporations; in other words, maximizing the power and opportunity of the individual. It also included people who are not troubled by complexity, who are comfortable in a world of many power centers, many cultures, and rapidly advancing technology. Democrats, always concerned about the "little guy" and diversity, broadened that to focus on small businesses, privacy, diplomacy, and other aspects of distributed power.

Professionals have been a key part of this movement. They are used to individual autonomy and also tend to be pragmatic, viewing the world through evidence and cause-and-effect rather than ideology. They are not afraid of the future and are aware of the effect of current decisions on future quality of life. They focus on investment, education, science, and the environment; and are very concerned about indebtedness.

Now that this realignment has been underway for a few decades, it's a good time to discard obsolete notions and strategies based on a political landscape that no longer exists. The Republican Party today is all about consolidation into larger and larger organizations. Today, it consists of the five major ideological camps — neo-conservatism, nationalism, the religious right, economic fundamentalism, and corporatism — fiercely battling it out for supremacy in a combined party. Like a failed corporate merger, they have come to realize that their ideologies are incompatible with each other, in spite of the best efforts of brilliant strategists like Karl Rove. None of these ideologies is accomplishing much of what it promised, but the only solution each one has is to strive for more power to try to implement a more perfect ideology. Karl Rove echoes Karl Marx in this regard.

Meanwhile, pragmatic traditional Republicans are watching from the sidelines as the party they once owned spins away from them. They see all of these ideologies as over-simplified and ineffective. They are heartbroken to see America divided against itself. They want an efficient and safe society, but want to preserve their freedom at the same time. They see nothing wrong with wanting to protect the environment and build a better future for their children. They know the world is a complicated place. This describes most of the Republicans I know in Douglas County. It also describes most of the Democrats.

None of these ideological systems is going to go away. Some might form separate parties, but most will likely stay and fight for control of the Republican Party, as a matter of political strategy. This is why Holtzman and Beauprez compete based on adherence to ideology, why "both ways Bob" tries to have a foot in every ideological camp even though he doesn't have five feet. Meanwhile, a pragmatic social conservative like Bill Ritter is easily accepted by Democrats. Pragmatic Republicans, like Bill Kaufman, would have much more success in the Democratic Party and would be more welcome there.