Abso-freaking-lutely. True words.
This analysis doesn’t go far enough. Why don’t voters demand good government? People don’t act in a vacuum instead they react to the politics they face. What incentive to individuals have to invest the time to follow the depressing business of politics? If we had a political system that encouraged the public to be engaged instead of one designed to do the exact opposite then more people would see the benefit in being politically engaged. Our constitution was designed to marginalize public participation so as to leave politics in the competent hands of the wise elite. Boy, that’s worked out well!
Our system has become a lot more democratic since that time but significant structural barriers remain. What we need is electoral reform, constitutional reform, and- most of all- educational reform.
If you know your history
Then you would know where you coming from
Then you wouldnt have to ask me
Who the hell do I think I am
Just my ( and Bob Marley’s ) 2sense.
Unfortunately, even the best-educated, best-informed public will be hard pressed to get over the standard temptation of every democracy: to vote themselves the contents of someone else’s pocketbook.
As P.J. O’Rourke says, the whores are us.
Which is not always a bad decision, and not a clear example of what is wrong with our democracy or any other. What’s wrong with our particular democracy is that the pols in power, in effect, consistently vote the contents of any pocketbook they can get control of to their friends/supporters (not to the people in general). E.g., the Social Security “privatization” debacle, the real purpose of which was to give the Wall Street firms a booster shot of investment dollars.
:: shrugs ::
Unfortunately there is no alternative form of government where those in power don’t face such temptation. The best we can hope for is to widely diffuse political power so that the fruits of self-interested policies are widespread as well. The ultimate solution would be to extend to effective political power to every single human being ( or the adults at least ) under a single government so that there is no “them” to exploit but only parts of “us”. But that is wandering far off track.
For America it is enough to realize the folly in blaming the victims. And sadly both the citizens and the politicians can be cast in that role. We are all caught up in the same trap and it will take something extraordinary to shake us out of our rut.
Just my 2sense
Actually, that seems to be a counter-example. That proposal suffered an ignominious death, so it seems that
I’m not knocking you, but I just have to interject, but I’ve got to laugh every time I see this: using one’s username as a catchphrase in a post. It reminds me of Penn Jilette’s old movie club, in which there were a long list of rules, one of which was that every time an onscreen character spoke the title of the movie, the audience was required to go nuts with applause. For example, every time Tom Cruise mentioned the Top Gun school in that movie, everyone would hoot and holler, and every time Daniel Day Lewis or Juliette Binoche mentioned the unbearable lightness of being… well, maybe not. Anyways, every time I see 2sense in a post, I, in my mind, go wild with applause.
But back to the subject at hand: there are certainly pros and cons to having career politicians, but one thing is certain: most people simply aren’t prepared to do the jobs that elected representatives are doing. It’s a tough job. I ask any one of you: how much do you know about Social Security and its insolvency problems? A few of you might say a good bit, and that’s great. Then how much do you know about clean water for rural communities, military procurement rules, national forestry policies, free trade agreements, and cancer research?
Yes, there’s a lot of bad politicians out there who shouldn’t have the job and don’t serve the public well. There’s also a fair number of people in elected positions who do our country a great service and are knowledgable about all these topics and more. I’m glad they are doing what they’re doing, and I think it’s pretty short-sighted to think that we ought to force them out of their jobs every now and then because voters don’t have the brains to vote out the idiots who are serving nobody but themselves. For example, how Jim Traficant – the colorful, half-crazy congressman who was so much fun to watch – can receive a substantial number of votes while he was in jail serving a term for felony corruption charges indicates serious problems with a fairly sizable number of voters around Youngstown, Ohio. I mean, come on!
I have seen the enemy and it is us. When most politicians start out,I naievely believe, they want to do well for the country. But the reality of raising money to campaign changes everything. Look how many days a year they actually work at being politicians. Most of their energies are spent raising money. After a while they are owned. It is rare for a girl to plan on being a whore when she grows up. It is not the plan for a pol to be one. The system is broke and too much money and power like it that way.
My curiosity is piqued by the extremely wealthy who are entering the races nowadays. The owner of Amway ,Devos, is running in Michigan. The richest New Hampshirite is after senator. Kathleen Harris is rich . What motivates them.
That has a lot to do with it. I’m confident that many, if not most, who run for office do so at least at first out of a genuine desire to make things better, a genuine commitment to public service. But the simple, mundane requirements of staying in a position to do so tend to take over.
It is no help at all that so many believe that every government official is automatically corrupt, or a stooge of the capitalists, or that there can never be a genuine interest on anyone’s part in helping anyone but themselves that could make anyone run for office. It’s as if they claim that a motivation that one does not share oneself cannot be real in anyone else. That widespread attitude only helps keep good people out of government.
As the member who wrote the line that sparked this OP, perhaps I should point out that it’s not blaming pols for doing what it takes to stay in office. Electioneering and governing are different games, almost entirely disconnected except that you have to win one before playing the other. The flag-burning amendment that won’t go away is pure electioneering - it was already agreed by the pols that it wasn’t going to pass and thereby intrude on governing; the rest was the sheer theatrics of electioneering as it is every time it gets brought up. I do not believe the vote, or Senators’ statements about it, reflect any of their true feelings on the subject except by coincidence.
We Americans as a people do have a tradition of rising to the occasion and acting as responsible members of our community, when the situation requires it. What I find “scary” isn’t so much that it isn’t happening *this * time but that it doesn’t happen *all * the time. We do correct errors eventually, but it’s “scary” that we keep committing them. We did correct the Alien and Sedition Laws, but we let the Red Scare happen anyway. We corrected that, but now we have torture, wiretaps, and McCarthyite demonization of all members of one of our major parties anyway. We just can’t seem to let lessons stay learned.
“The people get the government they deserve.” - Joseph de Maistre
*so it seems that * I cannot complete my thought about how it appears that is an example of the system actually working.
Mandatory term limits for everyone, from the elected dogcatcher up to the Prez.
Keep a constant flow of fresh ideas through the various halls of government
BTW, John, when has that ever happened? Unless you’re talking about welfare-state policies – and your description does not apply to such – I cannot think of any truly redistributive measure for which the citizens of any democracy have ever voted, in modern times or in ancient Greece or Rome.
No, that would cause more problems than it would solve. See posts #4 and 8. “Citizen legislator” != competent legislator.
I don’t mind that I can give you a good laugh but from my perspective my username isn’t in my posts. It’s my signature.
“encouraged the public to be engaged”? America is one of, if not the most, democratic (in theoretical terms, anyway) nations on the planet. As a British citizen, I can vote for my local MP, my local council, and my Member of the European Parliament- but most Americans get Senatorial, Congressional, Presidential, Gubernatorial and State Legislatorial elections as a matter of course. Then there’s the lower-level stuff, like party primaries, school board and, in some areas, Judge, DA, Mayorial etc. elections. Plus, American schools have compulsory civics classes, right? Nothing like that existed when I was at school. You may think that American democracy is not democratic enough, but you get far more opportunities to choose your leaders than people living in most other democracies.
Problem there is that you can’t build on past experience and social networking as a result. I’d hate to imagine a multinational corporation run in a similar manner, where all employees from the CEO to the janitor are forcibly dismissed after X years of employment.
As others have written, the problem with American politics is the voters. We’re the ones who chose these people run our country. And then we keep sending them back, so we can’t even claim we didn’t know what we were doing.
There is democratic and there is democratic. I’m told that city dwellers in the ancient Athenean democracy often prefered frequent sessions of the assembly made up of all citizens. Was this more democratic than fewer sessions? You might think so but the intent was to dillute the rural vote. Farmers couldn’t make the trip to town every time an assembly was called and thus causes they would support suffered because they were busy farming. So it is with America. We have so many political divisions that people simply do not have time to moniter them all. You have three representives unless your local council holds at-large elections like mine does. You can easily keep an eye on those three. I am personally responsible for monitering 112 elected officials ( though the county is eliminating three or four offices ). Here’s the laundry list:
It is just too much. I have a lot more interest in politics than the average American and I can’t name a dozen of those officials. Now, is it democratic that the people have a hand in electing so many officials. In one sense it is. But since this prevents the people from maintaining a reasonable oversight over those officials in another sense it is not. Instead the maze of confusing maze of authority turns people off and when voters are unhappy about something there are always others for your representative to pass the buck to. “Why, I voted for the bill but it got killed in the conference committee. Sorry.” The House can blame the Senate and the Senate can blame the Executive who can blame the Judiciary who can blame the federal legislature who can blame the federal judiciary and so on. It’s a big clusterfuck. Sure, you don’t have proportional representation or much judicial review but in many ways your system is far in advance of ours. I’d trade you in a second.
As this one has written, we need to stop blaming the victims. In a system biased toward offering up a choice between bad and worse what is the sense in criticizing people for electing bad actors? In a system that retards positive action and encourages endemic corruption what is the sense in blaming the actors? We need to realize that the source of our problems are not the well known foibles of human nature but the little known drawbacks of our backwards constitutional system.
Just my 2sense
I agree as far as the part where you mention 112 elected officials that you have a hand in electing is too many. I agree- there’s just not enough information out there to evaluate many of the positions by. And some of them seem like they’d be better as appointees or just civil service positions.
I even agree with some of the posters that we ourselves are to blame in large part- after all, we voted the bastards into office.
Where I don’t agree is that it’s solely the voters’ fault. Where I get kind of weird about it is the point at which politicians are making decisions in order to further their own agendas (i.e. get re-elected) instead of making the right ones. I’m sure few people think that’s a good thing. And this points directly at my distrust of career politicians- it seems to me that career politicians are the worst of the lot- their job security depends on them getting elected and re-elected to various positions up the political ladder. This strikes me as very suspect when I think about it in terms of “Is this person representing me and/or doing what’s best for the nation or state, or is he pretending to do so in order to keep himself in a cushy job with lots of influence and perks?”. And when you throw in the obvious temptations of corruption, it seems to me that career politicians can be a BIG part of our problem.
By your analogy, the politicians are the victims here. We’re the ones who nominated the candidates, we’re the ones who electing them to office, and we’re the ones who keeping re-electing them. If we keep choosing morally bankrupt people to represent us, why should we complain about being represented by morally bankrupt people? And why should we blame those morally bankrupt people?
There are over 600,000 people in a congessional district. Find one good person in that group (include yourself if you want) and then ask yourself why that person isn’t in office. If he or she can’t be elected it’s because the voters said so.