Admit it: Of the many entries in the democratic lexicon, "transactional politics" is one of the most overused and worthless.
While four people will give you an equal number of divergent definitions, the phrase is generally taken to refer to the barter economy in which political support is swapped for the advancement of a certain public policy agenda. Over the past few years, it has eclipsed all the weather-beaten old expressions for the same phenomenon: the intimacy of one hand washing the other, mutual back-scratching, that sort of thing.
If you're confused about the difference between TP and plain old "politics," you have my sympathy and my fellowship.
Loud denunciations of TP were flying across New York state two weeks ago in the aftermath of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's endorsement by the Independence Party, an organization that stands for exactly nothing except the attractiveness of its brand name, which preys upon the independent-minded but confused voter. (This is why I keep kicking myself for not organizing the Free Beer America's No. 1 Party.)
Securing the Independence Party line meant so much to the governor that he apparently forgot he had signed the necessary documents a few hours before a reporter asked him about it. He said the decision to accept the line would be made "down the road," which would have been an honest answer if he had said it while driving in the customized DeLorean time machine from "Back to the Future."
Cuomo's acceptance of the Independence line can't exactly be described as TP, since Cuomo didn't have to do anything to earn it: didn't have to show up a convention, didn't have to give a speech, certainly didn't have to declare his fealty to the party's platform — because it has none beyond the vaguest platitudes. (Its mission statement proclaims it to be "an Organization where New York's growing population of independent-minded and politically aware people may find a home with others of similar views." Are you still awake?)
But those accusations of TP were nothing compared to the imbroglio surrounding Cuomo's quiet courtship of the progressive Working Families Party, which actually has a platform.
Cuomo has a long and often contentious relationship with the WFP, which has never failed to cross-endorse the Democratic gubernatorial candidate despite its quadrennial protestations of its vaunted independence (with a little "i."). Angered over some of his most high-profile fiscal agenda items, its rank and file had lined up behind Fordham University law professor Zephyr Teachout as its kamikaze candidate. As usual, the party's delegates stomped and hollered last weekend at the Desmond in Colonie but ultimately handed Cuomo its line, extracting from him a live speakerphone call and an eight-minute prerecorded video in which the governor rallied the progressive troops around the banner of retaking the state Senate majority, a fight that Cuomo until recently could have cared less about.
Two days later on WNYC, Teachout used ... that phrase. "This is not a time for transactional politics," she said, threatening an equally doomed Democratic primary run against Cuomo. "This is a moment for some kind of fundamental transformation."
Sigh.
The Working Families Party diehards weren't the only ones to decry the deal. The state Republican Party, whose candidates have long sought Conservative Party cross-endorsement to get a boost at the polls, was so shocked — shocked! — by Cuomo's successful courting of the WFP that it called for a criminal investigation into whether the endorsement amounted to a bribe.
It even cited the state's bribery statute, under which it's a crime for a public servant to solicit or accept any benefit with the "understanding that his or her vote, opinion, judgment, action, decision or exercise of discretion as a public servant will thereby be influenced." One could say that's a fairly concise description of TP.
It's easy to have disdain for Cuomo's relentless hunt for these two minor-party lines while also recognizing that the transactional politics it represents is in the great American tradition. It was the lack of TP — taxation without representation, the ultimate bad swap — that ticked off our Colonial ancestors to the point that they revolted against the British, leading to a series of transactions that allowed men of wildly diverse interests to lash the nation together.
Put another way: Our "fundamental transformations" are usually the result of a series of complex transactions, usually carried out in back rooms by elected officials of decidedly mixed motives.
Cuomo's WFP video reminded the progressives that he was the guy who attained the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2011, an achievement that had as much to do with deal-making — with Republicans, LGBT groups, fractious Democrats and more — as it did with basic questions of civil liberty.
So before we knock a politician for being transactional, let's make sure we're not simply disappointed in the bargain they're striking.
cseiler@timesunion.com • 518-454-5619