On its face, this looks like just another example of the Gargantuan hypocrisy of those elite lawmakers. But dig deeper, and that story won t wash. Maine s legislators are among the least coddled in the nation. And the bill makes a certain amount of sense, certainly enough that it ought not create a firestorm. Maybe there is a policy disagreement here, but it doesn t need to be a food fight.
Social scientists have a concept called social capital.
Eroding social capital is at the root of many of our modern problems. At the Institute, we refer to civic capital as the ability to work and engage with democratic institutions. Democracy, by definition, requires a certain amount of civic capital, of basic trust, to function. If we felt better about democratic institutions in general and elected government in particular, if we had not squandered the civic capital we now so urgently need, we might welcome the chance to consider another way of saying thank you to legislators who help us to continue this, the oldest experiment in self-governance on the globe. But instead, there will be a roll call vote on the floor of the Maine House of Representatives, at which lawmakers will line up to vote against the bill not because of its substance, but because the vote is an opportunity to stay out of the line of fire.