what you think you know about fixing American politics might be wrong
Article/Op-Ed
March 12, 2015
When it comes to political reform, we might have the most to
learn from the skeptics. According to Political Reform Director Mark Schmitt in
“Democratic
Romanticism and its Critics,” published in the Spring 2015 edition of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, these
skeptics are “less interested in an idealized democracy” than they are in
hands-on, practical solutions. In Schmitt’s reading, an increasingly diverse
chorus of thinkers are calling for reformers to re-evaluate their allegiance to
transparency and small donors—or at least contextualize them as more than
unchallenged wisdom. While it’s certainly true that a lack of transparency and the
deluge of soft money can breed corruption, they can also provide opportunities
for backchannel problem-solving and narrowing the reach of ideological
extremists in corridors of power. It’s clear, in Schmitt’s reading of the “school
of skeptics,” that when it comes to political reform, one size should never fit
all.