All Politics Is Local? Not In a Globalized Economy With Instant Communications About Everything From Everywhere.

By Joe Rothstein
Editor, USPolitics.einnews.com

February 26, 2007

One of the most revered axioms in politics came from the late Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill: "All politics is local."

O'Neill may have had it right for most campaigns in the past. But 2006 wasn't decided by local issues. And 2008 and the elections of the future won't be either.

Most issues have gone global along with our economy and our communications systems. Logically, from here on, the politics of most House and Senate contests will follow.

What's the number one issue for most voters? Iraq. What else is right up there for most voters? Terrorism. The outflow of jobs to low wage countries. Immigration. Energy supply and cost. U.S. trade deficits. The federal budget deficit and budget priorities. Climate change. The North Korean and Iranian nuclear threats. The price of food and the future of U.S. farming.

Not a local issue in that bunch.

The major issues that don't fit neatly into the global framework are still not particularly local: access to health care and its costs, stem cell research, the continuation of President Bush's tax cuts, and social hot buttons such as the right to have an abortion, own a gun or be gay. With No Child Left Behind, President Bush has even taken education out of the strictly local category and put us on the path to national standardization.

O'Neill's axiom implies that the key to winning a seat in Congress is bringing home projects for your district. If that were still the case, most members would be fighting harder to save the "earmarking" game, the prime legislative vehicle for steering money home. But years of flat out corruption, frivolous funding, and runaway costs have made earmarking synonymous with all that voters dislike about Congress. Earmarking now strikes more alarm bells than "pork," which itself never sounded particularly appealing.

Paralleling the globalization of issues has been the globalization of news. CNN started it with the 24 hour news cycle. That's a lot of air time to fill, and under Ted Turner, CNN did it with voices, faces and images from all parts of the world. Now there's the Internet and its capacity to drag down a Senator for using the word "macaca" at a small local campaign stop. Services like ours, (the ipdgroup.com) update news from anywhere, on virtually any subject, every few minutes, not recognizing day, night, time zones or editorial deadline distinctions.

More people are turning to the Internet for news, and then sharing that news with friends via email, instant messaging or cell phones. This all has enormous implications for elevating voter consciousness about events and issues that happen outside their own backyards.

Local news is still the province of local print newspapers, but need I mention that newspaper readership is declining? Local TV long ago abandoned any effort to do serious journalism, focusing instead on car wrecks, fires and minor crimes that can be covered by inexperienced reporters who don't cost them much. Local radio once was a factor in covering local news but now most stations are automated clones of some central big brother computer whose only role is to determine whether the station's format should be golden oldies or the top 40.

Even without the Iraq war to rivet our daily attention and to frame our attitudes about our candidates and their political parties, there's no turning back from the global track.

The major issues of our time are those that require global perspective, international agreement, mutual defense, multinational research or regulation, and cooperation with nations, peoples, institutions and companies beyond our borders.

The U.S. won't resolve its energy supply problems on its own. No single nation, including the U.S., can make a serious dent on reversing the forces of climate change. Any realistic resolution to the immigration problem requires the cooperation of Mexico and nations of Central America. Trade and agriculture are international issues with huge impact on U.S. jobs and cost of living. Security from radical Islam and other groups intent on terrorizing people is not a job that be done by the U.S., or any nation, on its own.

The candidate who sounds like Mr. or Ms Mainstreet will be increasingly vulnerable to the candidate with a broader worldview. The arguments of candidates who spell out realistic positions, seeing the world as it is, not how it was, will fall more persuasively on the eyes and ears of those who keep up with events through all of the new windows technology is providing.

Tip O'Neill gave his "all politics is local" advice not too many years ago, within the lifetime of many of us who still pay attention to such things. But for the politics of 2007 and beyond, he might just as well have been on a different planet.

Joe Rothstein, editor of US Politics Today, is a former daily newspaper editor and long-time national political strategist based in Washington, D.C.

See all previous articles by Joe Rothstein here.