Mónica García, from Más Madrid, tells us the difference between politics with capital letters and politicking

Since my life is balanced between the two professions, medicine and politics, one of my favorite pastimes is to turn my head in search of similarities and differences between both disciplines, trying to elaborate a rudimentary theory that serves to link the two. worlds.

Not only because it connects two of my passions, but because I believe that the practice of politics has a lot to learn from the practice of medicine (or science), and vice versa.

The covid-19 pandemic in our country, moreover, has revealed the difficulties involved in uniting the two worlds and has confirmed a new divorce between the values ​​of politics and those of science.

The divorce between the need to diagnose the complex reality through knowledge, with a flexible and evaluable tool such as science, and the urgency of giving a simplified, self-interested treatment, often without an empirical basis, with a rigid tool such as politics, which relegates knowledge and complexity to the background.

Medicine and science in general have their rules, their codes and their art, but... what about politics?

My proposal arises from trying to transfer some of the codes that prevail in those to the exercise of the latter.

Not only its ethical code, but also its good arts, its capacity for progress, continuous evaluation, rigor and its permanent availability at the service of development and evolution.

A policy understood and described by

as "the practice of the art or science of directing and administering the states".

Because, could we consider politics as an art?

And if so, what elements would be necessary

Apart from the description of Oxford, I think it is important to differentiate what is politics from what is politicking, as it is important to differentiate science from pseudoscience.

My great friend José Manuel López explains it perfectly in his book

, in which he draws a parallel with the various terms used in English to define concepts that are different: “In English there are three terms for politics:

and

,” López writes.

refers to the concept of the State, the logic of government, the structure and the institutions

;

also to common sense, to the idea of ​​normality, to the paradigm.

_

It consists of the principles for management, public policies and ideas.

Finally,

is the activity of political parties and interest groups.

That is to say, Politics with capital letters, public policies and politicking.

This last one is the one that is usually used to overshadow the other two and devalue their art.

For those of us who share the two worlds, the political and the medical-scientific, the political must have a rational, empirical, palpable basis;

something that can be worked with beyond the messages, the opinions and the electoral promises.

There must be anchors that connect politics with reality and with knowledge of the environment on which you want to intervene.

Because, otherwise, politics becomes a useless and incomprehensible tool that is related more to beliefs than to experiences, to the needs of those who hold representation than to the problems of those represented.

A tool that moves on a stationary bicycle in a parallel universe alien to reality.

And as we well know in medicine,

it is impossible to change reality based on esoteric formulas or dogmas of faith that belong to a dark pre-scientific past.

However, we continue to observe them in a no less dark political present.

On one occasion I heard a representative of the ruling party in the Madrid Assembly say that a law that had not yet been approved was already working.

Good news!

How is it possible?

Miracles in the form of laws were not seen coming by the Holy See.

The question is: did it work for what and for whom?

If the purpose was propaganda, it was clear that it had worked.

But if it was political, it was impossible to anticipate its effectiveness without relying on blind faith or without previously demonstrating that the same law has already worked somewhere else.

A law is like a treatment.

It is not enough just to prescribe it;

it is necessary to evaluate if it has worked, if it is necessary to change it, reinforce it or maintain it, because the end is neither the law nor the recipe but the result.

Everything else is quackery.

Maimonides, doctor and philosopher of the twelfth century said: “Make my patients have confidence in me and in my art, that they follow my advice and prescriptions.

Keep the charlatans away from the bed of my patients.

Give me the strength, the will and the opportunity to expand my knowledge more and more...”.

In the same way that we want to keep charlatans away from our patients, and just as we denounce and counteract the messages of pseudoscience, we must put filters and obstacles to the exercise of pseudo-politics both in its charlatanism and in its ignorance.

Because politics cannot be the only profession that bases its decisions on ignorance and does not evaluate its consequences.

It cannot be the only art that is not fed back by rigor and empiricism, no matter how many interests it hides.

Isaac Asimov said that “if knowledge creates problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them”.

Therefore, the more attached politics is to the knowledge of reality, the more it demonstrates its potential and its true nature.

And the further it goes, the more futile and unnecessary it is.

Those who do not trust politics, those who like to use the profession only as a tool to achieve and sustain power, despise and degrade it.

And there is no better way to lower its potential than to misuse it, turning it into a private club of untrustworthy charlatans,

because they themselves do not believe in its transforming power.

That is why placebo policies are so harmful, empty headlines, those that seem to do without really doing, as well as policies that remain halfway to the problem to be solved because they promise results that we know in advance will never happen. to be real and effective.

It's like giving half the dose of an antibiotic, giving the wrong antibiotic, or prescribing it when what the patient really needs is surgery.

And that is the best breeding ground to sow mistrust in politics, and that mistrust is the best tool to subordinate politics to the worst interests.

those that seem to be done without really doing, as well as policies that remain halfway to the problem to be solved because they promise results that are known in advance will never be real and effective.

It's like giving half the dose of an antibiotic, giving the wrong antibiotic, or prescribing it when what the patient really needs is surgery.

And that is the best breeding ground to sow mistrust in politics, and that mistrust is the best tool to subordinate politics to the worst interests.

those that seem to be done without really doing, as well as policies that remain halfway to the problem to be solved because they promise results that are known in advance will never be real and effective.

It's like giving half the dose of an antibiotic, giving the wrong antibiotic, or prescribing it when what the patient really needs is surgery.

And that is the best breeding ground to sow mistrust in politics, and that mistrust is the best tool to subordinate politics to the worst interests.

giving the wrong antibiotic or prescribing it when what the patient really needs is surgery.

And that is the best breeding ground to sow mistrust in politics, and that mistrust is the best tool to subordinate politics to the worst interests.

giving the wrong antibiotic or prescribing it when what the patient really needs is surgery.

And that is the best breeding ground to sow mistrust in politics, and that mistrust is the best tool to subordinate politics to the worst interests.

Mónica García

(Madrid, 1974) is a spokesperson for Más Madrid in the Madrid Assembly and an anesthesiologist.

This excerpt belongs to the book 'Politics without anesthesia', by the Plaza y Janés publishing house, which will be published this May 19. 

Sign up for the weekly Ideas newsletter