Political journalism, like sports coverage, tends to concentrate on the big match. So for the next month, it's going to be Obama-Romney in the news and in the ads. Journalists can justify this: there are differences between them, there makes a difference which one wins in November (which is not the same thing as saying that there are differences between them), and besides the top of the ticket is what the public is interested in.

Well, maybe "interested" is the wrong word, since the public seems rather unhappy with both candidates, but at least the public is aware of the presidential race.

Opposite extremes: Obama is self-assured to the point of arrogance, while Romney is flexible to the point of opportunism.
(Left image from the White House, right image posted at Wikimedia Commons by Gage Skidmore)

It will make a difference who is elected.

• Perhaps not that much in the top tier of state, defense, justice, and the treasury: just as there was a lot of continuity from Bush to Obama (the wars in the Middle East, the expansion of the nuclear umbrella, military invasion of the judicial process, keeping big debtors afloat while letting small debtors drown), there probably would be a lot of continuity from Obama to Romney at that tier. (Although there would be some changes, e.g. Justice would lose interest in the right to vote.) It would be the second tier that would see a lot of changes.
• Commerce, Education, Energy, Health & Welfare, Interior, and the whole alphabet soup of regulatory agencies would see dramatic changes. A former community activist who believes that a competent and reliable government is necessary for democracy, Obama wants agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food & Drug Agency, and the National Traffic Safety Board to do their jobs. An opportunist who needs the support of the Republican base, Romney's appointments and cutbacks would compromise these agencies.

But neither party will get a 60-vote majority in the Senate, which means that the Washington gridlock will continue no matter who wins. And this is a reminder: the president has a lot less power than we think. A lot of the power is distributed through the rest of the ballot.

The United States has a federal system of government. The Federal Government's powers are enumerated ("strict constructionism") or restricted ("loose constructionism") by the U. S. Constitution. The remaining authority, according to the Tenth Amendment, goes to the states or the people (which often means, to local government).

If you go outside and take a walk, you will see local government at work. The sidewalks you are walking on, the roads on which cars whizz by, the presence (or absence) of buses (on a timely schedule or not), the streetlights overhead, the traffic lights at the intersection, the school up the street, the fire station down the street, the library five blocks down, the police station seven blocks that-away, all these are creations of local government. If you have to wrestle with a traffic ticket, if you want to keep a strip bar out of your neighborhood, if you have a problem with garbage pick-up, these are all local issues. The bottom of the ballot lists people who will have as much impact on your life, and the lives of your family, as the president of the United States.

According to Alexis de Tocqueville , Americans developed their notions of popular sovereignty from practice. The colonies were chopped into little pieces, called "townships"; in a typical township, the (adult male) citizens would gather in town meetings to determine policy - within constraints of crown colony policy of course. Americans have a somewhat rosy view of this system. But de Tocqueville, good elitist that he was, remarked that "A nation is always able to establish great political assemblies ... The township is, on the contrary, [is] composed of coarser materials ...." But then he admits that "local assemblies of citizens constitute the strength of free nations. Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people's reach, they teach men how to use and how to enjoy it ... ."

And there's the rub. If we are to preserve our liberty, we have to participate.

There are fifty states, each with a governor, one or two houses of the legislature, and a supreme court. Each state is divided into counties and judicial circuits. Each county is divided into a variety of tax districts, school districts, townships, etc, with various cities plopped in. Most of these entities have elected seats and offices; some require at least retention elections. And some put items, from constitutional amendments to bond issues, to the electorate for votes. That means governors (who execute laws that legislators pass), legislators (who pass those state laws), judges (who rule on those laws), county supervisors and city councilmen (who pass ordinances and determine taxes - unless they are determined by local tax districts), mayors (who hire police and fire chiefs), school board members (who determine school taxes and school policies - and hire administrators to run the schools), etc., etc. Do you want a local meals on wheels service for shut-ins? Do you want recreational classes for kids in the summer? Do you want music and art instruction in school? Do you want a traffic light at that dangerous intersection up the block? These are the people you go to.

These are not the elections that get all the media coverage. In a small town, the local politicians are the only ones handy, so they get covered. But in an era of editorial cutbacks, and with newspapers competing with the entertainment industry, there are limited resources for covering local elections. In a survey of coverage during past elections, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) found that the big metropolitan dailies gave little coverage of the huge numbers of elections in their areas of circulation. For example, " the year leading up to the 1994 congressional races, the New York Times only ran 27 articles on the 20 New York districts surveyed," or 1.4 articles each; the Los Angeles Times did better, at 2.1 each, and the Chicago Tribune did a respectable 7.5. That was a high: looking at smaller papers, FAIR reported that in the 2010 election, the Saint Petersburg Times ran 2.1 stories per Congressional district, the Portland Oregonian ran 5.8, while the Madison Capitol Times ran 0.3. And while Congressional races are smaller, they really aren't small races like the races for county commissioner, election supervisor, or district judge.

FAIR speculated that newspapers assumed "that, scandals aside, only competitive elections deserve coverage," and since gerrymandering made many races non-competitive (and what a scandal that is), newspapers ignored the cakewalks. Of course, FAIR disapproved, for elections are critical machinery for democracy, but FAIR did not wonder why non-competitive races were not covered. Of course, we can guess: cakewalks are boring, and what grabs readers is drama and suspense. Hence the gossipy sports-page political coverage we have now (how many times has FAIR complained about the lack of context and policy in political coverage?). But newspapers aim to remain solvent, so they serve up what the public demands, and the public is impatient with local elections. For example, in Florida fall elections, turnout for the 2000 - 2008 presidential elections averaged 73 % while turnout for the 1998 - 2006 off elections averaged 50 %. This would surprise our founding fathers, who assumed that as local elections involved hot local issues, turnout would be high.

The sports-&-gossip aspect of political journalism probably reflects public views about our political system. America may be a federal republic, but monarchy is never far from our thoughts, and the top of the ticket is about who will be king. This fixation has affected reformers. For example, while the Green Party has fielded candidates for small random sample of candidates, they follow the standard approach of nominating a presidential candidate and pouring their very limited resources into that race.

Like many a Hollywood scriptwriter, the Green Party has become entranced by the prospect of getting the right person into the White House. While most criticism of the Green Party has concentrated on the unlikelihood of the Green Party winning any electoral votes at all, together with partisan grumps about undermining Obama, perhaps the real problem with the Green Party is that it is pursuing a strategy that has nothing to do with people's lives. Whatever the conspiracy theorists may say, in a federal system, power flows up. And the Green Party has no grass roots, and is not developing any; they are merely seeking attention on a national stage. Meanwhile, the parties with the extensive root systems are ... Republican and Democratic.

In the United States, when we talk about grass roots, we're back at the local races. Those county commissioners, city alderman, and even school board members (which are often partisan, no matter what the ballot says) are the grass roots of the party. So if you are interested in grass roots, those races matter.

Politics is not like a Hollywood film; real life consists of millions of people with their own interests and their own agendas. People care about their own problems: only political junkies obsess over the abstractions that fill the pundits' Sunday morning routines. And that is why, as Former House Speaker Tip O'Neil once said, politics is local. Because it's local politics that put in the school crosswalks.

So this November 6, don't forget to vote in the race for who decides where to put those crosswalks.

-- 20 October 2012