Is the electorate the problem?

Great Debates
1

Mods, since this is a debate, but is also about the elections, I wasn’t sure where it belonged and put it here. Move as you see fit.

The debt crisis has elicited commentary that neither Republicans nor Democrats are serious about making the changes necessary to balance the budget. By and large, Republicans refuse to consider raising taxes; Democrats reject any substantive cuts in Medicare or Social Security.

Some of this commentary criticizes politicians who won’t “lead”; i.e., make the hard decisions. But a recent poll (I’m digging up a link) got me wondering if that would ever work. This poll indicated that only 25% of the public believes substantial changes will be necessary to balance the budget. The majority thinks it can be done by cutting “government waste”, without raising taxes. Americans (both liberals and conservatives) invariably overestimate the percentage of the budget devoted to things they don’t care about, like foreign aid, and assume that the cuts will be painless:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/polls-show-americans-largely-clueless-about-where-us-budget-goes.php

Obviously, American media outlets, who draw viewers/listeners/readers largely by telling people what they want to hear, are not inclined to say, “you’re the problem, people!”.

And forget about the candidates talking about this. None would get traction, even in the primaries. If anything, the current long-shot candidates like Michele “two-dollar-gas” Bachmann and Herman “9-9-9” Cain make even more outlandish claims about how easy it will be to fix things. Remember when fringe candidates like Ross Perot were the ones who raised the unpopular things that filtered into the mainstream debate?

I admit that Ron Paul actually talks about making tough choices. My problem with him - and I assume this is the case for other voters - is that he also advocates some things that strike me as truly reckless, like returning to the gold standard and ending the income tax.

The only way I can picture a president actually making tough changes (substantive cuts, higher taxes) would be if someone got elected after promising a pain-free solution, and then announced that things were worse than realized, so some tougher measures would be necessary. Whoever tried this would also have to be a politically-skilled, well-positioned moderate who could get cooperation from the opposing party. The cries of “flip-flopper” would be deafening.

Bill Clinton basically did this: after getting elected in 1992 with promises of a middle class tax cut, he announced that he was canceling those plans and raising income taxes on incomes of over $300,000. (I’m not giving Clinton full credit for the recovery that followed - he was the beneficiary of the unexpected high tech boom. I’m merely describing his political tactics).

Perhaps a moderate Republican president like Mitt Romney could get that kind of support from Democrats in Congress? If I thought he could, I’d consider voting for him. But the thing conservative Republicans criticize him for - his propensity to go along to get along - could be exploited by a hard-line Republican Congress to block their part of the tough choices. E.g., they could completely end Social Security and Medicare and/or push for even more tax cuts for high incomes. Depending on the details, this could really screw lower-income working people who’d paid into the system, and/or neutralize deficit reduction efforts. We could end up with a poorer population, and still have a banana-republic national debt. And in case you think I’m painting the Republican stance in an unfair light with this speculation, check out Paul Ryan’s proposed budgets.

To summarize the debate, I propose it’s not just the political system (or the people in charge of it) that’s the problem: it’s the American people, the majority of whom are ignorant of how federal dollars are spent. And too selfish to give up their entitlements, or pay more taxes.

2

I guess it depends on what you mean by ‘substantive’, but the Democrats are willing to make substantive cuts to Medicare and SS. Weren’t the Supercomittee rules, which slash Defense and also Medicare and Social Security if an agreement isn’t reached, written by Democrats?

Democrats are insisting on cuts only in combination with increasing taxes, which the Republicans will not do under any circumstances.

So no, the electorate isn’t (mostly) the problem. Mostly it is Republicans.

3

Well, ultimately, it’s almost always electorate’s fault, isn’t it? I mean, on a long-term, big-picture scale, anyway.

As far as ignorance about how federal dollars are spent, this seems like a difficult assertion to defend. Do you think this has changed over the past 40 years or so, despite cheap and easy access to Google and Wikipedia? How many people in 1971 could give you a ballpark estimate on how much of the budget went to defense vs entitlements? How would they even come by this information, short of killing an hour at the library? (I’m assuming you feel the current crisis is among the worst in the past 40 years)

IMO, the problem is that most politicians’ primary concern is retaining their hold on power, coupled with indifference on the part of the electorate. Well, that and a growing disparity between the classes, in which even the “have-nots” are still reasonably comfortable and content.

4

Try2B, it remains to be seen whether the voters will punish those Democrats, by voting in people (either Republicans, or other Democrats) who promise easy solutions.

GrapeSage, it does seem the case that politicians today are less willing to give up their power than they used to be. LBJ deciding not to run in 1968 seems quaint today.

I’ll grant that people in the past probably were no more aware of how the spending was divided.

One thing that’s different today (compared to, say in the Great Depression): people then hadn’t been receiving government services and payments. There wasn’t a whole lot the government could quit giving the Joad family. People today have been paying for social security and Medicare all their lives, and can understandably feel screwed at the prospect of not receiving them.

Another thing different today: people are less willing to trust government (and experts of all stripes).

So, an untrusting, uninformed electorate won’t accept decisions that violate their misconceptions (even if they’re the right decisions). Especially when there’s no shortage of candidates promising pain-free solutions.

It may be that the system is being tested in ways it never was since the New Deal - the electorate’s ignorance wasn’t a problem, and the system worked OK, until a crisis of this magnitude and type.

5

There was a press conference in which Cain defended his 9-9-9 plan by saying “If you have no capital gains or corporation, then the tax is effectively 9-0-0!” 9-0-0 isn’t any less of a tax burden than 9-9-9 if you have $0 in the last two slots. I remember worrying about whether people really were stupid enough to fall for that. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure most people are. Why? Because people are innumerate. They don’t like facts and they don’t like thinking. This is why we keep getting shitty candidates.

Another reason, though, is that we changed to a primary system of nomination. It’s been slowly downhill since 1910. Today, we get the Republicans nominating a moderate republican and the Democrats picking a moderate Democrat, so there’s no way to get a “moderate to everybody” person elected. That is, you have the choice between a 2 and an 8 on the political spectrum, never a 5. And there’s no way to let the experts choose who they want to run. It’s all about who appeals to the uneducated, ill-informed masses.

No wonder we get shitty candidates.

6

Authoritarianism is perhaps much more efficient. Stalin, for instance, got things done. Mostly very bad things, but still.

Democracy is a secular faith, we hold justice to be more important than efficiency. Perhaps it is more efficient to be ruled by an elite of idjits, but we insist that being ruled by all of the idjits is more just. We can’t prove this, we don’t feel we need to, we hold these truths to be self-evident.

So, yes, the electorate is the problem. The electorate is the backbone, the vessel and the thing itself. Hallelujah, what a great country we are, to be blessed with such a miserably fucked up way of doing things.

7

Congress represents vested interests really pretty well. The little people hardly matter now, they just pay.

8

This includes Big Labour.

9

Only if ‘Big Labor’ shows enough money.

10

Your argument is that people, in the aggregate, are ignorant, selfish, and stupid. That’s not exactly original, fixable, nor uniquely American.

11

To be honest, I was thinking more about Congress than the presidents. It’s hard to draw any meaningful generalizations from the handful of presidents we’ve had in recent history. But the Congress members, for the most part, seem hellbent on pandering to the lowest common denominator of their constituents, lest someone from the other party finds a toehold-type issue to base a campaign upon. And while I’d have to dig up some numbers, it seems like Congress members are increasingly difficult to unseat (sheer, unadulterated economic meltdowns aside). Their priorities seem to be: re-election > party loyalty > status quo maintenance. Which fine for the most part, except in times of crisis, as you note below:

:confused: Who are the experts? Who decides who’s an expert? The Wikipedia article is about presidential candidates. I don’t want to dismiss them completely, but presidents/presidential candidates are sort of a special case. Again, I’m thinking more about Congress–not that you could have read my mind.

12

Safe districts through gerrymandering is a huge contribution to the problems. That is one reason the same guys get in over and over. They have no real threats to their seats.

13

I don’t agree that democrats aren’t willing to make cuts to health care. Slowing the rate of medical inflation will save trillions, and democrats are willing to do that. They generally won’t abolish or privatize the programs themselves though.

But by and large, yeah we are responsible. We are misinformed about what government spends money on (security, pensions, health care and education cost about 4+ trillion a year in public sector spending). We think cutting government waste, aid to the lazy poor and foreign aid will allow us to balance the budget. Nobody wants to give up free public elementary school education or medicare.

Plus we won’t accept tax hikes. The GOP is opposed to tax hikes on everyone (mainly the rich though) while the dems only support tax hikes on the wealthy. We realistically will need tax hikes across the board.

14

I’d say this is exactly backwards. We have an antiquated system of government that encourages irresponsibility at every level including the electorate. Political power is so balkanized that no one has the authority to do anything. What they do have is no lack of others to blame. Since so many things have to go right for anything to be accomplished a politician can always blame this committee or that committee, or the other house of Congress, or the President, or the courts, or the states, or even create a “Super Committee” to pass the buck to. Even during the relatively rare periods where a single party “controls” both houses of Congress and the White House the legislative process is so byzantine that they can’t expect to just force through their agenda. The system was designed to prevent that.

Parliamentary democracies aren’t perfect or anything but they are a lot more transparent to the electorate. You vote people into office with the authority to carry out their platform so they don’t have anyone to blame when things go wrong. American politicians never have to put up or shut up. On the contrary, they can safely yammer away because they are so rarely put on the spot. Washington is famous for gridlock. Things change only slowly and at the edges of policy… and with the assent of the interests.

Given the reality of our situation, I think an informed and engaged electorate is just too much to expect. People have lives and they are a lot more complicated than they were before we had things like televisions. Back when most people voted. It takes a lot of effort to stay on top of even just the most important federal, state, and local issues. I keep up on national politics as a hobby. I don’t expect any “payoff” from my investment in time. I know things will continue to lurch along in the same general directions no matter who is elected. I don’t blame people for not following national politics any more than I blame myself for not keeping up with state and local issues.

15

The American system was set up for checks and balances. Unfortunately the American populous either doesn’t vote, or votes on one issue. This means historically we’ve had a lot of one party controlling one thing (Congress) and the other party controlling the other (Executive)

Add in the fact that despite superficial differences, the Democrats and Republicans aren’t really that far apart.

Basically one party takes a stand, the other opposes it.

Add in 50 state governments and you got a lot of checks that keep things from getting done.

In the Senate it is ludicrous that Wyoming and Vermont have as much power as California and Texas, but this is why you historically have had powerful, Farming and Mining influences in this country way beyond what’s needed.

People vote what’s best for them, not their community. People also tend to vote with their pocketbook. They vote whatever party is in power out.

The presidential system is a mess, now that you have candidates starting there campaigns a year and a half before the general election. aWhy should rinky dinky states like New Hampshire or Iowa get the say on who’s out of the gate.

For instance if John Edwards was not in the race, Hillary Clinton would’ve likely won Iowa and that would’ve most likely resulted in Obama not getting anywhere as she did well in NH. She would’ve been way out front the gate.

So the basic answer is the American system is designed to make gridlock.

If you go hunting for elephants in North America, it should’t be surprising when all you see are bears. So why should it surprise anyone that American politics are gridlocked when it was set up to be

16

Personally I would be willing to take a tax hike. But not if that means I’m paying at a higher rate than brackets above me.

But I suppose even that much is more knowledge than we generally credit the electorate with.

17

Aww, look. Partisan hackery. Isn’t it cute. If Republicans won’t raise revenue, how do you explain Toomey’s plan?

18

Its not slow, and its not fast, sort of half-fast.

He proposes to close loopholes. How does he imagine the loopholes got there in the first place? The people who put them in place, they are going to roll over and play dead? Or will they exert the same power again? And that “110 billion” that will result from the economic growth, how did that number come about? When, exactly, did tax cuts result in economic growth? Is he proposing that we be trickled down upon again?

And did you notice that wording "their party’s anti-tax orthodoxy "? If he is breaking with his party’s orthodoxy, how can that be interpreted to mean that the standard Republican line is somehow different?

19

The claim was that Republicans “will not [raise taxes] under any circumstances”. Clearly, there are circumstances where they will, as demonstrated by the Republicans on the super-committee. There’s nothing claimed about whether they have to like it.

20

Smoke and mirrors. He claims he is not suggesting raising taxes, but raising revenue by closing loopholes, etc. But you know what would happen and so do I.

The same people with the same power that made those loopholes happen are still firmly in place. Each entirely convinced that, yes, indeed, closing loopholes is a good thing, but this particular piece of tax policy, that affords a ten percent reduction for professional goat felchers, that one isn’t really a loophole, but a vital part of the plan to keep job creators out there creatin’ those jobs! Oh, sure, close that loophole for owl stretchers, that one isn’t needed. Just leave mine alone.

And what about this 100 billion dollars in revenue from “economic growth”? Who’s ass did they pull that number from?