It’s All in the Game

Many a tear has to fall
But it's all in the game

Those are the opening lyrics to the 1950’s pop standard “It's All in the Game.”  This sentimental love song has been covered by every artist from Nat King Cole to Van Morrison.  It also holds the curious distinction of being the only No. 1 hit to have been co-written by a Vice President of the United States (Charles Dawes).

More recently, the phrase (rendered as “It’s all in the game, yo”) was popularized by a character on the HBO drama The Wire.

The hipper members of Minnesota’s political press corps like to add the Twitter hashtag #allinthegameyo as they share their experiences on the Capitol beat.  I understand the anthropological reasons behind this behavior.  It signals both the writer’s cleverness and his/her prominent place within the political-insider hierarchy.

In the past week, I’ve been watching more live coverage of the Minnesota House and Senate proceedings than can be considered healthy.  As the end-of-session silliness unfolds, we have the usual bitter fights over obscure procedural rules.  However, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in these rules disputes.

In the past few days, I’ve seen one fight in the Senate invoking a rule to shut the doors to the chamber, a second involving voting procedures and another dispute in the House over amendments to bills that change dates.  All of which sounds so hopelessly arcane.

The Senate door dispute at least involved the comic relief of majority-Democrat senators literally sputtering with rage at having senate rules—that they imposed—being turned against them.  The two other disputes involved the Democrat majority ruling one way on a Republican motion but ruling the opposite when a Democrat made the exact same motion from the floor.

The common theme is the arbitrary application of rules by the majority against the political minority.  The “doors” episode, in particular, illustrated the assumption among Democrats that rules exist for the sole purpose of keeping Republicans in line.  That the minority actually expected Democrats to abide by their own rules was taken as a personal insult by affected members of the ruling party.

And that same attitude is at the heart of the recent national IRS scandal.  As the details emerge of the IRS’ treatment of conservative non-profit groups, it merely serves to reinforce what so many already suspected: the system (government) is systemically biased against those on the right of the political spectrum.  This week, columnist Peggy Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the IRS scandal,

It's not part of the game.  This is not about the usual partisan slugfest.  This is about the integrity of our system of government and our ability to trust, which is to say our ability to function.

And so it goes.  Every arbitrary ruling from the Speaker’s Chair, every time a Senator votes her own financial interest, every payoff to a campaign contributor, every broken election-year promise chips away at the public’s trust in the entire enterprise.

That our hard-bitten, speaking-truth-to-power, seen-it-all local media can turn it into a cynical punch line speaks to how complicit they are in the corruption of the public trust.  Maybe it’s just me, but I stopped laughing some time ago.