The Politics Industry Quotes

“For an elected official, there is virtually no intersection between acting in the public interest and the likelihood of getting re-elected... Party primaries create an eye of the needle through which no problem-solving politician can pass.”
― Katherine M. Gehl, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy

“It is time for a new role for American business, one that moves away from single bottom-line thinking and toward a more holistic balance sheet that includes the health of our great nation, writ large.”
― Katherine M. Gehl, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy

“America has a great philanthropic tradition. Since Warren Buffett and Bill and Belinda Gates created the Giving Pledge, hundreds of the world's wealthiest individuals have pledged to donate at least half of their wealth to charitable causes, adding up to hundreds of billions of dollars. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Annual charitable donations from all Americans reached 410 billion dollars in 2017 - and that doesn't count the time and energy Americans volunteered to countless causes tackling a wide array of social challenges. But as substantial and heartwarming as philanthropy is, it's a pittance compared with federal and state government spending. Together they spent nearly the same amount - roughly $405 billion - every 4 weeks during the 2017 fiscal year. Philanthropy is no substitute for effective government.”
― Katherine M. Gehl, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy

“If you live in one of the 26 states in which direct democracy is an option, you can throw your support behind non-partisan ballot measures to adopt top five primaries and ranked choice voting and general elections as soon as the next election cycle. If you live in one of the other 24 states, you can organize a coalition and lobbying effort using collective citizen power to demand that officials pass these reforms legislatively.”
― Katherine M. Gehl, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy

“Investing in political innovation begins by evangelizing its benefits. It grows to joining innovation campaigns in your state. If no effort is underway, you can take the critical step and founding one yourself.”
― Katherine M. Gehl, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy

“As was seen during the Gilded Age, economic and social disruption can provide fertile grounds for political dysfunction - and innovation.”
― Katherine M. Gehl, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy

“The American public has never been more dissatisfied with the political system. Public trust in the federal government is hovering at a near 60-year low. In 1958, three out of four Americans trusted the government. By 2017, just one in five did. Congressional approval ratings, meanwhile, have averaged under 20% every year since 2010.”
― Katherine M. Gehl, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy

“The American political system is perfectly designed to serve the private interests of this political-industrial complex colon to grow its power and revenues and to protect itself from threats. It's not designed so well to serve citizens - those who should, by rights, be the most important customers of the industry.”
― Katherine M. Gehl, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy

“America's political system has become the primary cause of our decline and the preeminent barrier to addressing the very problems it exists to solve.”
― Katherine M. Gehl, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy

“The root cause that endures across all election cycles and administrations, is the system - the politics industry, not specific people, parties, or policy.”
― Katherine M. Gehl, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy

“For more Americans, the political system surrounds us in much the same way water surrounds fish. It's just what we know. It's normal. And while we complain about its performance, we don't question its nature because we don't believe it can change. We accept dysfunction, gridlock, and government in action - even in the face of national adversity - as normal. And when we return to our polling places on election day and yet again see only two choices on our balance - neither of which we really like - we accept that as normal, too. Here's what else has become normal for far too many Americans over the last 50 years: A quality-of-life downturn so significant that, when compared with the thirty-six other peer democratic countries with advanced economies, we Americans are near the bottom across numerous dimensions we once pioneered. We are thirty-third and access to quality education, thirty-third and child mortality, twenty-sixth and discrimination and the violence against minorities, and thirty-first and the clean drinking water - just to name a few.
The actual water in America is getting bad now.”
― Katherine M. Gehl, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy

“What should be a problem-solving, outcomes-driven cycle of elections and legislative leadership is instead an industrial-strength perversion that fosters unhealthy competition and blocks the innovation and progress for which American democracy is known. Politics has become the preeminent barrier to addressing the very problem it exists to solve.”
― Katherine M. Gehl, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy

“spending in federal elections during the 2016 cycle was more than $16 billion, which is greater than the annual budgets of at least a dozen states.”
― Katherine M. Gehl, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy