There is an old saying from the ballpark about rooting for laundry. Players get traded, coaches get fired, owners sell the franchise, and the fans go on cheering for the uniform. I have come to believe American politics runs on the same habit.
Ask a room full of Americans how they feel about their government and you will hear a long, sour chorus. In September 2025, only about one in six told Pew they trusted the federal government to do right by them with any regularity, and that trust rises and falls depending on which party holds the White House. We grumble about corruption, about money, about politicians who say one thing in March and do another in June. Then election season arrives, we pull on the jersey, and the behavior we condemned in October becomes forgivable in November, provided our side did it.
We have grown sharp-eyed about the other team’s dishonesty and nearsighted about our own.
Meanwhile the water still has to be clean. The roads still crack in February. Families still need a roof, a fair wage, a doctor, a decent school. None of that waits on the election returns, and somewhere along the way we let winning an election stand in for the work of governing.
Follow the money
In the 2023–2024 federal cycle, congressional candidates spent roughly $3.7 billion. Political action committees spent another $15.5 billion, some of it outside federal races, and independent expenditures came to $4.4 billion. The categories overlap, so the sums can’t be stacked, but the scale speaks well enough.
A 2023 Pew survey found that 80 percent of Americans believe major donors hold too much sway over Congress, and 70 percent believe the people living in a district hold too little. Republicans and Democrats answered much alike. A country supposedly split down the middle found common ground here, of all places.
The ordinary voter gets a ballot every two years and a form letter now and then. A well-funded organization keeps a professional presence in Washington the year round. Businesses, unions, and conservation groups have every right to make their case, and they often know their subject well. The question is whether a nurse coming off second shift can get a hearing from the same office.
Outrage has become a business of its own. Consultants, commentators, fundraisers, and ad shops all profit from a politician who stirs the pot, whether they work for him or against him. We owe it to ourselves to tell a genuine conflict of interest apart from a policy disagreement. Otherwise “corruption” becomes one more rock to throw across the fence.
The jersey
A proposal we liked yesterday goes sour the moment the other party introduces it. A remark we’d call shameful from a stranger becomes defensible from someone whose votes we generally approve.
The instinct to form teams has its uses. Competition sharpens ideas, exposes weak ones, and gives voters a way to send a representative home. Markets make good use of the same instinct. A shopkeeper, though, still has to sell something people want, and a representative owes service to the whole district, including the voters who backed the other fellow. The rest of us owe enough independence of mind to notice when our own side gets it wrong.
A town and its housing
Picture a town short on housing. Some residents want apartments. Others worry about traffic, property values, water and sewer capacity, or the feel of an old neighborhood. Shop owners want their workers to afford living nearby. Young families want a place to raise children.
Their interests compete, yet they share one larger wish: a town that works.
Getting there means looking at the actual shortage, the cost of construction, the limits of the pipes under the street, and then bargaining over the trade-offs. Three minutes at a microphone after the decision is already made doesn’t count as a hearing.
There are better tools. Participatory budgeting lets residents decide how a set portion of public money gets spent. Citizens’ assemblies gather a representative group of residents, often chosen by lottery, to study a hard question, hear the evidence, and make recommendations. The OECD has documented hundreds of these processes on infrastructure, environment, health care, and more. A city could reserve a slice of its capital budget for projects the public designs and chooses, or convene a citizens’ panel before a major land-use fight.
Technology helps. Budgets, development plans, and meeting records can live online, where a parent can read them after the kids are in bed. A web poll, though, can be gamed by organized campaigns and automated accounts, and it leaves out neighbors without good access. The OECD recommends pairing online tools with in-person methods and minding privacy and unequal access. And officials have to answer for what they do with the results. A consultation filed away in a drawer breeds more cynicism than it cures.
Decisions made in our name
No decision weighs heavier than war. When a country sends its military abroad, the cost falls on service members, their families, civilians overseas, and people not yet born. Citizens have fair grounds to ask why, toward what end, what alternatives were weighed, and how anyone will know when the job is done.
The people on the far side of a conflict are families with histories, far more than an opposing team. Nations face real threats, and international law recognizes a right of self-defense within real limits. Some decisions require secrecy and speed. Even so, congressional oversight, open debate about objectives, honest reporting, and accountability for civilian harm remain within reach. The graver the decision, the more daylight it needs.
Who gets to run
In that same 2023 survey, 85 percent of Americans said the cost of campaigns keeps good people from running. Public financing, stronger disclosure, independent redistricting, and different ways of casting ballots each deserve a look, and each carries trade-offs, not least the constitutional protection of political speech.
A representative can also serve a district faithfully while voting in ways I dislike. In a country this varied, my neighbors’ priorities will differ from mine, and they are entitled to representation too.
The conversation we skipped
An argument sets out to win. A public conversation sets out to learn what the problem is, which facts hold up, whose interests are in play, and what each remedy would do. Neither asks anyone to surrender a conviction. A believer in free enterprise can hear out organized labor. A champion of environmental rules can study their effect on the corner hardware store.
There are limits. Fundamental rights and equal treatment under the law can’t be traded away because a majority would like to.
Pew offers one hopeful figure: 63 percent of adults say ordinary Americans care about making the system work. That’s a place to start. A democracy has to serve the people who lost the last election, who disagreed with the last decision, who found themselves outnumbered, as well as the ones who won.
Grammina kept the ballgame on a little radio by the porch rail, and when I was a boy I once got worked up over a jersey someone wore to the game. She let me go on a while, then said, “Nathaniel, a shirt can’t love you back. Your neighbor might.”
