BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  AUG 11

“I’m not happy with him and some of the things he’s done, but you have to look at the big picture and you have to look down the road.”

—A pearl of political wisdom from a Wisconsin teacher named Kim, after voting for her Congressman, Paul Ryan, in the Republican primary August 9, 2016.

There are other little pearls to be extracted from the Ryan landslide over a slick-talking, biker-businessman who the national media tried hard to mold into a credible candidate for public office when he was not.

First, politicians who rise to positions of congressional leadership usually suffer for it at home. It is inevitable. A good leader will take actions that will not sit well back home, because a leader has to balance the needs and interests of a local constituency that sometimes do not conform to the needs and interests of the nation. The condition is similar to the conflict of local and national interests that caused our infant nation to go from a loose confederacy of independent states to a representative Republic with a durable central government. More is demanded of a leader than a congressman or a senator and his/her constituents must sometimes bear the burden of giving to the country one of their own. That is not to say that a good leader cannot do both, serve his constituents and the country, and it is to say that constituents often accrue significant benefit from their representative in leadership. For Ryan it will not get easier serving as Speaker of the House and the congressman from the First District of Wisconsin.

Second, after Paul Nehlen got his whoopin’ from Ryan, he declared a “moral victory.”

Losing candidates can never just lose, they have to declare some sort of victory, but for Nehlen that was a stretch and a poor choice of words. His candidacy and his campaign were hardly the embodiment of anything moral. His candidacy seemed to be fueled by exaggerations of reality, lousy ads, political opportunism and the now nationally-pervasive exploitation of the human condition– the sense of loss, lack of access to the political system, vulnerability and fear for the future that so many Americans are experiencing. It is a condition that has created a void, into which many would-be politicians have leaped, from Trump to Nehlen.

One of the crudest manifestations of this brand of political behavior is its negativity and its personalization. Several days before voters went to the polls, Nehlen and some of his supporters—we don’t know how many–showed up at Ryan’s home in Janesville to vent their frustrations and create a photo opportunity.

Making a political campaign personal, turning opposition into a threatening presence on the front lawn of a candidate’s wife and children is behavior utterly lacking in morality and ethics. It exemplifies the kind of ignorance, arrogance and incivility that have corroded our political process and made governance so much more difficult, if not impossible. It is not as much politicians who have caused our system of government to go rigid with gridlock and succumb to chronic dysfunction, it is the behavior and attitudes of people like those who invade a family’s privacy, instigate violence at rallies, block traffic on city streets, spit on public figures and scream epithets at the top of their voice. Those who make anger and hatred the currency of public discourse; it is they who contribute to an environment in which governance is impossible. The majority of politicians don’t lead; they follow. They don’t act; they react. Job security is job one.

The growing disrespect for and degradation of our political process, a system for which millions of Americans have given their lives from Bunker Hill to Helmand Province (pardon the hyperbole), is excused away as an exercise of free speech or political expression in the ole’rough and tumble of American politics, always a contact sport; you know, not for the timid. To borrow from a term dignified by Fareed Zakaria, that’s bull…. It really is.

“I genuinely worry about the consequences that my agreeing to serve will have on them (his family),” Ryan told the Washington Post. “Will they experience the viciousness and incivility that we all here face on a daily basis?”

Unfortunately, Ryan does have to fear it; but he nor any Wisconsinite nor any American should tolerate it, especially when families are targeted. Too many politicians excuse it. Too many among the professional political consultant class tolerate it and encourage it and they shouldn’t. Media thrive on it and encourage it and they shouldn’t. Citizens who enjoy a good cage match are attracted to it when they should be repulsed by it. Incivility is like a cancer on the body politic, eventually destroying those critical cells of common sense, commonality and consensus essential to governing. It is a cancer on society as well.

The third observation has to do with the failure of contemporary campaigns and candidates to at least attempt to inform and educate the voting public. Campaigns used to be and should still be processes that frame issues and introduce us to the character and qualifications of candidates. Not so much, anymore.

The media share a big chunk of the blame. In the Washington Post’s long, pre-election preview of the Ryan non-contest, there was nary a word about issues, let alone an intelligence discussion of them. There was vague references to trade and a comparison of the fence around Ryan’s home in Janesville to the one Trump wants to build along the Mexican border—go figure—but nothing else.

Issues get cursory treatment in debates, but it is hardly enough. There’s plenty to talk about and plenty for the media to write about. Early in his Speakership, for example, Ryan embarked on an ambitious policy development initiative called A Better Way, in which six major issue areas—national security, poverty in America, health care, economy, taxation and the Constitution—were framed in a manner that transcended typical campaign-year glittering generalities and partisan posturing.

The 2016 campaigns are insidious exercises in irrelevancy, amplified and legitimized by news and infotainment media desperate to capture readers and ratings, with the notable exception of the fact-checkers such as the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, who must wonder what they got themselves into. It’s easy to understand why the father of the fact-checkers, Brooks Jackson, is now spending his days piloting a boat in the Chesapeake.

As a result of all of this, the American public, in an age when knowledge and reliable information are more critical than ever, is, relatively speaking, probably the least informed in some time. So the prospects for good governance won’t be any better than they have been in previous congresses. The issues won’t be framed and those elected to make policy will have little clear direction. Worse yet, the environment won’t be very conducive to consensus, certainly on a bipartisan level where it will be most needed in a divided Congress.

We are at the doorstep of what could be legitimately described as the third decade of governmental and political dysfunction in America. Here we are not only losing our capacity to develop policy, but also losing something of greater value, a cadre of honest and well-motivated men and women willing to run the barbaric gauntlet required to serve in government, knowing the system is stacked against them and their families.

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.