Political outsiders can’t change the system

To get to the White House in 2016, candidates need to exploit a nationwide anti-Washington sentiment.

It’s at the core of campaigns for an unusually high number of political outsiders making noise in the primaries — Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson and Donald Trump.

Association with the government gridlock is now the equivalent of political suicide. Trump and Carson currently lead Republican polls — Trump is at 28.5 percent and Carson is at 18.8 percent. Fiorina, the other advertised “outsider,” is sixth in the polls with 6.3 percent of votes. Surprisingly, Bernie Sanders has escalated in polls as a result of his outsider image, despite his long history in politics. Sanders follows Clinton in Democratic polls with 23.3 percent of votes and has been involved in politics since 1971.

Oddly enough, much of the excitement about these candidates’ apparent “ability to tell the truth” comes from the same demographic that blasted President Obama’s pre-presidential political resumé as insufficient.

President Obama’s 2008 candidacy was also in many ways a product and an agent of the newfound electoral preference for outsiders. His unconventional approach to the race eschewed a corporate-type campaign for an ad hoc feel, emphasizing his lack of connection with the political elite to his grassroots supporters on the left. This approach, which played a large part in attracting the highest voter turnout for a U.S. presidential election since 1968, gave Obama the largest electoral victory of any Democrat since 1964.

What these voters fail to understand, however, is that whether or not someone is a bona fide Washington outsider doesn’t determine the  effect they might have on policy. Politicians don’t change the political system, voters do — and voters should do more than place their faith in outsider candidates to change the system.

Obama’s victorious outsider approach gave way to realism when his presidency made it clear that an outsider was no more effective than any given career politician when it came to the practicalities of policy. The outsider tag is meaningless — if anything, outsiders should have to demonstrate a higher level of leadership than their peers in government to be considered legitimate candidates. Outsider image is not the same as outsider policy — one doesn’t imply the other.

Americans’ faith in democracy is at a historical low. Midterm election turnout is at record 72-year lows, according to analysts at the University of Florida. The U.S. Congress, whose approval rating in Gallup polls hit a dismal 9 percent in November 2013, continues to hover at around 14 percent in more recent Gallup polling.

Pennsylvania, whose voter turnout has been considerably higher than the national average for at least the last three Presidential elections, is still susceptible to the effects of lower participation in years without a presidential race. Gov. Tom Wolf’s 2014 election to the governorship coincided with the state’s lowest turnout — 41.8 percent — since 1998.

More than 50 percent of GOP primary voters support amateur candidates like Trump or Carson simply because of their outsider identity, according to RealClearPolitics — one of America’s premier independent political websites, which culls political commentary from various web resources.

More interesting than the amateurs’ use of their position as newcomers, however, is the pursuit of the high-value outsider status by career politicians in the race. 

This trend was most evident in last Wednesday’s Republican Primary debate. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie attempted to claim, somewhat counterintuitively, that his tenure as New Jersey governor and his experiences dealing with a state legislature controlled by the opposition were precisely what qualified him as a political outsider.

“I’m a Republican in New Jersey. I wake up every morning as an outsider,” Christie said.

On the Democrats’ side, grassroots favorite Bernie Sanders has been contrasted with front-runner Hillary Clinton as the anti-corporate candidate in the Democratic Primary and the left’s own political outsider.

Nevertheless, Sanders has been a member of Congress since 1991 and has been involved in politics since 1971 — hardly a stranger to bureaucracy. 

Even Clinton has attempted to hold claim to outsider status.

“I cannot imagine anyone being more of an outsider than the first woman president,” Clinton said during an interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”

The Tea Party holds some responsibility for the wave of inexperience flooding the political forum today. The supposedly grassroots, anti-establishment movement put a marked emphasis at its development on fielding non-politicians as its candidates.

The Tea Party even lists the need for “Political offices to be available to average citizens” on an official list of 15 “non-negotiable core beliefs” laid out on its website.

What voters need to realize is that they, not a flashy politician, are the most important outsiders in American politics. Voting and other means of political action are among the most important duties we have as citizens. Only 36.4 percent of eligible voters cast their ballot in the 2014 midterm congressional elections, a share lower than any national election in the United States since the wartime 1942 elections.

No candidate can fix our disillusionment with the political system. Casting a vote for a candidate simply because they are an “outsider” isn’t so much noble as it is gimmicky.

Write Henry at hgg7@pitt.edu.