Opinion: Our democracy has no ideal amount of government transparency. The temporary solution lies in ourselves.
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During an unsurprisingly partisan Supreme Court confirmation for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Ted Cruz inserted himself into the conversation by holding up an unmarked and clearly unread copy of “Antiracist Babies,” in order to goad Jackson publicly into responding about the elusive republican notion of critical race theory. He was practically begging her to, repeating questions and hot-terms even after each answer.
Though Jackson maneuvered through the question perfectly, Cruz was not necessarily dependent on her answer. In today’s political sphere, a spliced video of his line of questioning assures his eager voting base that he is, in fact, pursuing a false narrative of racial supremacy that they believe to be true. A mere 5 second clip of his question would do.
To prove it, a picture circulated on Twitter minutes after Cruz’s confirmation performance of the senator searching his own name on Twitter. No, Ted Cruz was not concerned with the potential Supreme Court justice’s view on judicial restraint regarding race; what he wanted was his own face on the internet, involved in the political process — regardless of how belligerent he acts in reality.
Senator Ben Sasse was the first to call out this common behavior. Rebuking the presence of cameras in the confirmation hearings, he quipped, “I think we should recognize that the jackassery we often see around here is partly because of people mugging for short-term camera opportunities.”
Sasse is right. Congress’ insistence on transparency has been hijacked to instead serve opportunistic politicians looking to cash in on a voting audience with an incredibly short attention span.
The Senate is unique in this regard. It is always recorded. The Supreme Court’s happenings are not publicly accessible, nor are most of the executive branch’s meetings (apart from intentional videos and press conferences). Put reductively, other branches are far less often judged by their words and instead their services because they are not inherently in the political spotlight.
The voting polity that fell victim to Cruz’s antics is not just the far-right demographic. As college students, I can safely guarantee that most of us do not have the time or desire to go on C-SPAN all day and try to read congresspeople’s lips. Even an informed voter gathers information from clips that the news, social media or other media outlets curate for us.
Political transparency is important, but is there an optimal amount of it? At times, it would be nice for Judge Clarence Thomas to be subject to public scrutiny. In the same vein, one can imagine that much of the senator’s ridiculous tangents during Brown’s hearing would not be carried out in a room with no cameras or viewers.
A balance must be struck; voters, especially young and new voting blocs, need exposure to the political process. Without transparency, those voters remain uninformed and, in an evil world (because we totally don’t live in one right now) a closed-off Senate could rattle off some devastating legislation with no public accountability. On the other hand, the Senate already does that despite the transparency, and congresspeople use that “transparency” to further their bad-faith political agendas. Essentially, bad legislation still gets passed, and those pushing it forward are rewarded when they weaponize short clips of them doing what they’ve convinced their voting bloc is important.
The answer cannot be as simple as “the Senate should never be filmed.” It definitely should not be for Supreme Court nominations, but there are too many costs to an absolute ruling. The onus, then, is on voters. On a day-to-day basis, voters, particularly young ones, do not extensively partake in the democratic process. The process is not just about voting; it requires both an individual attempt to glean more information than what is given (i.e. not relying on Cruz’s five second clip) and a public responsibility to encourage others to do so as well.
For example, the race for Texas’ governor has the media fixated on one main issue: gun rights. While outlets push out content related to candidate Beto O’Rourke’s remarks about taking guns away, only a few searches reveal the bulk of his platform, including infrastructure reform, immigration reform and rural investment. These issues are not necessarily readily available to a passive voter but are possible with an active one.
Even though there is not an optimal amount of exposure to government transparency in a flawed democracy, the only concrete “solution” is greater civic engagement. To be a passive political hobbyist only enables senators to continue their meaningless tirades that secure an unengaged citizen’s vote. As students, that means paying greater attention to who has our interests in mind, and who is only pretending to.
