Incompetence is baked in

I don’t recall when it was, but from an early age I knew that one advantage in life is to be articulate. Not a huge advantage such as being born into the upper classes, being lucky or having a good business brain, but to be even modestly articulate is undoubtedly an advantage.

Yet articulate people do not necessarily benefit society as a whole. Politicians for example. They are articulate in that they always have a reply or comment to make and don’t usually resort to inarticulate abuse. Yet they frequently evade the subject, gloss over uncertainties or merely talk drivel. Articulate incompetence we might call it.

We tend to assume there is something devious behind this kind of articulate incompetence, as if it is not really incompetence. Some political goal is being pursued, one we need to spot if we are to avoid being duped. We assume that the political classes could be more competently articulate if only they were not so devious, if they did not have yet another fraud or bungled mess to slip under the radar.

We also assume that this intractable problem is something to do with ideas. We believe in ideas, including the political ideas supposedly distorting political discourse. As if ideas are structures in the mind. When we speak of ideas we are in a sense describing those structures. We go on to discuss politics as if politicians have sound ideas buried in their devious minds, but they deliberately distort them for political gain.

Suppose it isn’t like that at all. Suppose the real battle of ideas is a verbal battle and only a verbal battle. What we see and hear is what there is. All is on the surface. There are no ideas, no structures in the mind. It sounds like incompetence because it is incompetence. 

We are already familiar with groups speaking in ways which partly define them as a group. In an important sense they are verbal communities and people are almost always members of more than one. A football supporters club for example. A local political party. A national political party. A police force, school, church, rambler’s association, trade association, professional body or book club. There are vast numbers of them.

Political groups are verbal communities, but there are no buried ideas behind their discourse. Their discourse defines their political bubble as a verbal community. They may have written doctrines, plans and projects, but they are all inactive until turned into discourse.

Unfortunately for voters, members of political bubbles may not be exposed to alternative verbal communities beyond their bubbles. The more senior they are, the less likely it is that they will have significant exposure to life beyond their bubble. Limited previous experience of the outside world will have a similar effect. Add the two together and it becomes apparent why intelligent people can be wholly unsuited to senior government positions.

A consequence is that professional politicians and senior bureaucrats cannot bring alternative discourse into their bubbles, into their professional lives. Within the bubble, this would probably be seen as gauche, inappropriate, embarrassing, unprofessional. There are things which are just not said within any verbal community.

In other words, political disconnection it is not a problem of ideas, but a problem with political discourse generally. It is essential that politicians are familiar with verbal communities beyond the machinery of government, but far too many are not. Senior bureaucrats tend to be equally insulated as  they too have their bubbles.

Consequently we have a political class which cannot competently speak the language of doubt, criticism, uncertainty, analysis or alternative explanations. It is not ideas they misunderstand, it is limited access to competent verbal discourse. They cannot say what the problems are. The media are no help at all. They want incompetence every time – that's where the drama, disasters and poisonous gossip come from.

Political discourse seems incompetent because it is. The incompetence is usually genuine, it is not usually faked in order to promote certain political ideas. This kind of incompetence cannot be corrected without exposure to the outside world, without extensive experience of life beyond the bubble. Incompetence is baked in.