BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  OCT 22

Most of us use idioms in our daily conversations.

‘I would give an arm and a leg for that.’
‘Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.’
Here is one I hear from readers: ‘Don’t give up your day job.’

There’s one idiom that is especially pertinent today: ‘You can’t see the forest for the trees.’

Its origin is not clear, but it means you are so busy paying attention to detail, you are missing the larger picture. You see the pine needles, but not the tree; you see the tree but not the forest.

In presentations on political survey research, professional Dave Winston displays a slide of a white wooden-frame house in need of a paint job, with broken windows and a leaky roof. The House is also on fire. Winston makes the point that we spend too much time fixing the roof and replacing the windows, but ignore the fact that the house is burning.

Both the idiom and the burning house analogy deliver a potent message about this year’s national elections, about the American people, and about the long-term state of the Union.

The nation has been focused for nearly two years on presidential politics and more minutely on the behavioral idiocy it has spawned, the political theater and its domination by extremes. We’ve been fed lies, innuendo, outrageous and contemptible accusations, exaggeration, malicious divisiveness, vile language, slurs and salaciousness you would not want your children exposed to. And that’s just the last few weeks. For the most part we have chosen to be entertained rather than informed. We have chosen anger over reason. We have chosen extremism over moderation.

We have chosen to focus on just two trees in the forest.

The larger forest in which these weeds have sprung up, as Winston might say, is burning fast and furiously. It has been for some time and no one is paying attention.

We know now, with a good deal of certainty, what we’ve suspected for some time, Donald Trump will never be President of the United States. The fat lady has sung and that idiom couldn’t be more appropriate for Trump.

So with only three weeks left, maybe we should put an end to the campaign season early and turn attention to real issues and real crises.

There are many. They are rooted in problems that have been festering for decades. Trump and Hillary Clinton are not the crises; they did not cause the crises; they are only manifestations of them. Jonathan Rauch wrote recently in the Atlantic that “Trump, however, didn’t cause the chaos. The chaos caused Trump. What we are seeing is not a temporary spasm of chaos but a chaos syndrome.”

There are five in particular that need attention because they strike at the core of both politics and society in America, and they are critical to whether we can continue to govern ourselves.

They are:

1. The breakdown of our political process and the two-party system in particular;
2. The corruption of the American press and the broader implications of the emerging infotainment media;
3. Societal disintegration, marked by divisiveness, the absence of basic values and worst of all, a loss of trust and faith,
4. The collapse of our governmental institutions and the inability of those we elect to actually govern, and
5. The rise of the uninformed and unattached citizenry.

A book could be written about each.

The challenges the two major political parties face are significant. Neither party reflects the interests of the vast middle of the American political spectrum–the center right and the center left, where American voters reside, according to countless studies. Both parties have been dragged to the extremes, not always kicking and screaming. They will have to realign if we are to survive them. Both parties are failing. The Republican Party needs a new brand and new faces and a new identity. Ironically, post-Trump it will have greater flexibility to change than the Democrats.

Both parties will have to address myriad reasons for reform, among them:

• the excessive influence of party over public policy, and the 24-hour, seven-day, 52 week, 12 month a year, year in and year out campaign cycle that leaves  no time for governance;
• the redefinition and realignment of ideology and politics–terms such as conservative, libertarian, anarchist, moderate, liberal, progressive, socialist, democratic socialist and communism have utterly lost their meaning and made association with just two parties a study in contradictions;
• the transference and heavy concentration of much of campaign financing from the parties to outside, unaccountable interests;
• antiquated rules of engagement that render the parties weak and ineffective, from the earliest primaries to the national conventions, which are themselves an embarrassing, extravagant spectacles; and
• the divisive nature of “establishment” or “elite” party domination; whether real or perceived, a condition that stifles openness and inclusiveness, a spectacle Trump exploited to the extreme on the way to the convention and following it.

The American news media and journalistic profession arguably have undergone more change, more abruptly than in any time in the history of modern communications. Technology, alone, has produced an unprecedented degree of change, creating and unleashing an industrial behemoth that is highly diverse, virtually without regulation, oversight or standards of ethical and professional behavior, and driven by an insatiable appetite for profit.

My brother continually reminds me that content is king, but without quality control, it is becoming the Prince of Darkness. There are three general truths about the infotainment media complex that should be taken seriously in both a political and societal context:

1. ‘straight’ news is dead and the journalistic profession is celebrating its demise; which means
2. the public does not have access to reliable or trustworthy sources of information; and
3. the once sacred precept that the press must fulfill responsibilities in exchange for its entitlement under its First Amendment has become a sick joke, on us.

The media could at least create the perception it is interested in self-improvement by doing what it has never done–creating a diverse, independent, unrestricted and balanced entity to review journalistic and media practices and protocols and make recommendations to the news and entertainment industry and to governmental and civic institutions, if necessary, on changes required to re-establish the press and journalistic profession as a reliable, respected deliverer of news and information. The subjects craving reform are many, ranging from the basic definition of who is a journalist and what is journalism to conflicts of interest, anonymous sourcing, transparency, accountability, and ideologically balanced newsrooms, to the explosion of misinformation and incivility on social media.

The third crisis is the most vexing.

What has happened in society over the past dozen years, much of it instigated by media and politicians who choose to exacerbate, sometimes fabricate and then exploit the human condition, is becoming a national tragedy. Finding ways to change the downward spiral is difficult because it is very hard to believe that what we read in the press, see on TV and on social media, what we hear from the likes of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, is a true reflection of the country as a whole, or even close to it.

We are a better country than we are made out to be. We are better people. Trump has painted a picture of America harder to discern than a Picasso. His antics are beyond description–sad, really. He has depicted Americans and foreigners despicably. What he sees is not who we are. But he hasn’t been alone in the gutter.

President-elect Clinton, who identifies herself with Michelle Obama’s ‘when they go low, we go high’ motto, has far exceeded the cringe quotient too many times. She said she believes, for example, that half of Trump supporters are so deplorable–xenophobic, homophobic, racist, and sexist—that they are irredeemable human beings. She obviously realized within the hour that she should not have said it, as any normal politician would for obvious reasons, but, strikingly, she did not apologize or retract the accusation. She didn’t even try to explain it. She only made excuses for it. That could be a distinction without difference, but there is ample reason to doubt it.

It was as embittered as any statement Trump has made. Think about it. When she made the remark, she and Trump were fairly even in national polls among likely voters. Likely voters, according to figures compiled in 2012, make up 57.5 percent of those eligible to vote, or 135,267,600 out of the total of 235,248,000 people. Trump’s 45 percent is 60,870,150. Hillary said only half of them are irredeemable, or only about 30,435,075 million of her fellow citizens.

Unfortunately, in this era it is valuable political currency to divide people, by economic or social class, race, gender, ethnicity, education, physical condition, and as we’ve seen, even hair styles. Victims versus villains, good versus evil. It is deplorable politics, but like negative campaign ads designed to assassinate an opponent’s character, the tactic works. People fall for it. They shouldn’t because it reflects badly on all of us. It is a cheap, thin dark coating over who we really are.

Stopping the slide into social and political incivility can be done with new leadership and reformed political behavior, but in the end the answer is for the citizenry to bind itself to the basic values, taught in most families, preached in most churches and enshrined in the fundamental belief structure on which the country was founded. The values that define the human character, among them, honesty, generosity, humility, spirituality, and forgiveness, and the values that define our politics, among them freedom, opportunity, equality, civic responsibility, trust, consensus, and civility.

Our institutions of government are in peril, beginning with our Constitution. Those elected in November will have a responsibility to fix them and make them work again, with more than the empty campaign rhetoric about how rotten Washington is. You can’t fix government by talking about it or complaining about it. In Congress it will require compromise, bipartisanship, and bicameralism. Many of us have worked for several years to create a Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, which has historical precedent, to change the legislative process, transform the behavior of officeholders, and improve the relationships among  policy makers and between them and their constituents. Two Illinoisans, Congressmen Darin LaHood and Daniel Lipinski have introduced a resolution creating a Joint Committee. It’s a start and an important one.

Finally is the decline in civic knowledge and understanding, fueled by a lack of decent public education and a torrential flood of disinformation, misinformation, outright falsehoods, and con artistry overwhelming most citizens.

Justice David Souter, who sits on the Supreme Court, which one-third of Americans don’t know is a separate branch of government, has written and talked about civic knowledge often. An interview he did several years ago, has made its way back onto social media. He said then that what you should worry about at night is not a foreign invasion or a coup but the “pervasive civic ignorance of the Constitution and construction of government”  that can give rise to an authoritarian coming to power. “If people do not know who is responsible, someone will come along and say give me total power…that is the way democracy dies…people who say take the ball and run with it.” Hmmmm.

A survey this year found that 10 percent of college graduates think Judith Sheindin (aka TV’s Judge Judy) sits with Souter on the Supreme Court.

Souter pointed out that civics education in our schools has been in decline for 50 years. It must be fixed. Civic knowledge is also a problem exacerbated by media, resolved by a clearer understanding of the problems it has created and public pressure for change.

It is time that we all made a concerted effort to see the forest for the trees, but you have to climb high to see the whole forest. It is not visible from the gutter.

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.