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Considering the gravity of the risk in Wall Street banks being too big to fail, the financial reform bill passed by the US Senate in 2010 may have been influenced too much by the financial interests. It can thus serve as a good case study for how a republic can be subject to too much influence from the moneyed interests. It could be asked, moreover, whether there is an inevitable trajectory that a polity undergoes from being a republic to becoming a plutocracy (ruled by the wealthy).

Executives and political action committees from Wall Street banks, hedge funds, insurance companies and related financial sectors showered Congressional candidates with more than $1.7 billion in the last decade, with much of it going to the financial committees that oversee the industry’s operations. In the 2010 election cycle before the financial reform bill passed the Senate, members of the financial committees far outpaced those of other committees in fund-raising parties by holding 845 events. The 14 freshmen who serve on the House Financial Services Committee raised 56 percent more in campaign contributions than other freshmen. And most freshmen on the panel, the analysis found, are now in competitive re-election fights. In return, the financial sector has enjoyed virtually front-door access and what critics say is often favorable treatment from many lawmakers. But that relationship, advantageous to both sides for many years, is now being tested in ways rarely seen, as the nation’s major financial firms seek to call in their political chits to stem regulatory changes they believe will hurt their business.

Even after the passage of the Senate’s bill, the financial industry was confident that a provision that would force banks to spin off their derivatives businesses would be stripped out, but in the final rush to pass the bill, that did not happen. The opposition came not just from the financial industry. The chairman of the Federal Reserve and other senior banking regulators opposed the provision, and top Obama administration officials said they would continue to push for it to be removed. Such officials could include Larry Summers, who along with Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin pushed for derivatives to be left unregulated in the late 1990s while Summers and Rubin were in the Clinton Administration.

Not missing a beat, Wall Street lobbyists  began an 11th-hour effort to remove it just as House and Senate conferees were preparing to meet to reconcile their two bills. Lobbyists said they were already considering the possible makeup of the conference panel to focus on office visits and potential fund-raising.  Rep. Barney Franks, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, signaled on May 25th that the prohibition on banks trading in deriviates using their own funds could be dropped. “I don’t see the need for a separate rule regarding derivatives because the restriction on banks engaging in proprietary activities would apply to derivatives as well as everything else,” Mr. Frank said according to The Wall Street Journal (May 22, 2010, p. A6).  However, if this were the case, why would Sen. Dodd, the White House, and the banks be so set against removing the derivative langauge?  Is redundancy really that big of a deal?  Something is rotten here; I can smell it. With Sen. Dodd retiring, I wouldn’t be surprise if he made a deal with Wall Street concerning his financial future–it being so odd how he has mellowed so much on reform. Not surprisingly, the Chamber of Commerce had already spent more than $3 million to lobby against parts of the bill, including the derivative provision, and as the Senate was passing its bill the Chamber was planning to keep fighting for a loosening of the regulatory restrictions — first in the House-Senate conference, then in the implementation phase after final passage of a bill, and “if all else fails,” in court. With all these avenues, it is no wonder that the money of Wall Street banks has such ease in Washington.

There are so many points along the line of a bill becoming a law that a provision with teeth can be targeted by well-funded parties with a vested interest against it, it would appear that no change can happen in the US that is not in an industry’s interest.  Because wealthy firms have presumably done ok under the status quo, it is not clear why they would have an interest is supporting systemic change even if systemic risk warrants it. In the case of financial reform,the financial houses have a rather obvious conflict of interest. Furthermore, the behavior of the big bankers in September of 2008 suggests that they do not view rescuing a financial system in crisis as their job.  There is no reason to suppose that the legislation that they support would be geared to repairing the system when it is in crisis. The real problem is apt to manifest on the crest of the next bubble, as the industry had already gotten much of what it wanted even with the derivatives language in the Senate bill.
According to The New York Times, “Despite the outcry from lobbyists and warnings from conservative Republicans that the legislation will choke economic growth, bankers and many analysts think that the bill approved by the Senate … will reduce Wall Street’s profits but leave its size and power largely intact. Industry officials are also hopeful that several of the most punitive provisions can be softened before it is signed into law.”  This is dangerous because so many bankers, including those at Goldman Sachs, have been in denial as to how they should behave.  According to The Wall Street Journal (May 26, 2010, p. A1), Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and Citigroup have continued their practices of “window-dressing”: temporarily shedding debt just before reporting their finances to the public. This suggests that “the banks are carrying more risk most of the time than their investors or customers can easily see.”   As of 2010, this activity had actually increased since 2008, “when the financial crisis brought actions like these under greater scrutiny.”  For ten quarters ending March 2010, the three banks lowered their net borrowings in the repo market by an average of 41% at the end of the quarters (as compared with during them). This represents a significant misstatement, which the banks’ auditors should have highlighted. The Wall Street Journal reported in April 2010 that 18 large banks, as a group, had routinely reduced their short-term borrowings in this way.

So it appears that Wall Street went on in its old ways even after the crisis, and there was relief that financial reform would not rock the boat. According to The New York Times, “If you talk to anyone privately, there’s a sigh of relief,” said one veteran investment banker who insisted on anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue. “It’ll crimp the profit pool initially by 15 or 20 percent and increase oversight and compliance costs, but there’s no breakup of any institution or onerous new taxes.” In other words, incrementalism rather than systemic change.  Washington, in other words, had been bought–even the “real change” agent himself, Barak Obama.  Mr. Obama is not unaware of the powerful friends he will need in 2012. He received just under a million dollars from Goldman Sachs for his 2008 campaign.  How difficult it is to let go of power, and say that one term will be enough, even better, for that is what seems to be necessary for one to fight against the entrenched culprits of the status quo.  In actuality, Andrew Jackson showed in 1832 that standing up to a large bank (in his case, the Second Bank of the US) can actually be consistent with winning reelection.  But absent such faith in the people to come through, saying to hell with reelection seems to be necessary for a president to be an authentic agent of real change.  If anything called for such change, it was the financial crisis of 2008. Yet as the House and Senate compared notes on their respective bills, Wall Street was actually relieved.  That really says something.  The culprits have an effective veto on what safeguards will be put in place to keep the banks from risking the world economy again. The wolves have to accede to the design of the new chicken coop. To my fellow Americans, I say: this is our system.

Even though the financial crisis far outweighed any health-care crisis, the financial reform is far more incremental–though both are within that rubric. “The health care bill is going to transform the structure of health care exponentially more than this legislation on financial regulation is going to change Wall Street,” said Roger C. Altman, the chairman of Evercore Partners and deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. “It’s not even close.”  It could be that the added incrementalism in the health-care legislation was in the interest of the health insurance companies and hospitals, whereas less was in the interest of Wall Street.

Of course, it could be that regardless of the regulation, financial bubbles are bound to come and go, and the sheer scale of financial deals today requires large banks. Donald B. Marron, the former chief executive of PaineWebber, avers, “Despite these new rules, Wall Street will continue to provide the same important business services because the same needs are still there — creating liquidity; financing governments, corporations and individuals; and providing financial advice and products.” So perhaps the financial leverage of Wall Street in Washington doesn’t keep us from achieving a solution because the financial markets and their players are going along a trajectory that is being defined by the progression of the financial market.  Consider, for example, the pressure on banks from globalization to amass more and more capital for bigger and bigger deals.  In other words, the “too big to fail” phenonomon could be a necessary part of an increasingly globalized financial market.  Of course, this could point to the need for greater international financial regulation.  But with Europe enbroiled with a debt crisis of its own and China wearily watching its own housing bubble, there were at the time of the passage of the Senate’s bill more financial bush-fires in the world than firemen.  The problem is that the fire chiefs are too often paid off (and intimidated) by the profiteering arsonists, so we are left woefully unprotected even if the veneer of regulatory reform has the looks of an effective profilactic.

Sources:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/us/politics/23lobby.html?scp=2&sq=financial%20lobbying&st=cse ; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/business/24reform.html?hp ; WSJ (May 26, 2010).

The UN’s Electoral Complaints Commission recommended in 2009 that Afganistan’s Independent Election Commission invalidate 210 polling stations where the ECC found “clear and convincing evidence of fraud.”  The IEC in turn announced a run-off election because Karzai no longer had over 50% of the vote.  MSNBC reported that “the Karzai-influenced election commission may refuse to call for a runoff.” CNN reported that Karzai and Abdullah were trying to “cut some sort of deal” on a coaliation government that would have obviated, or skirted, a run-off.  Such a compromise would have been woefully inadequate from the standpoint of democratic process.

Even Karzai’s announcement that he would go along with a run-off can be read as presumptuous.  If he didn’t want to go along with it, he need not have taken part.  That one candidate’s feels his refusal to participate would or should cancel an election suggests a rather squalid presumptuousness that ought to be made transparent to the voters.  It is a sad commentary on representative democracy that the Afghan IEC’s decision was probably dependent on Karzai having been under international pressure to agree to the run-off.   Is it too idealist to insist that the candidate should have been informed by the IEC of its decision rather than permitting it?   For one of the candidates to have had a de facto veto on the election commission evinces a lack of democratic infrastructure.  It is like a cart pulling the horse.

In retrospect, we know that Karzai’s victory was fraudulent, even though he continued on in the campaign as a viable candidate.  What does it say when fraud is not punished?  Is having a run-off sufficient punishment?  Were all of the candidates benefitting from the fraud tossed out and a new open election held, would this be so catastrophic? I contend that the protests that occurred in the Middle East in 2011 for greater democracy can be interpreted as having been occassioned by years of frustration stemming from the sort of electoral facade perpetuated by dictators such as Karzai.  If so, the costs of not nipping electoral fraud in the bud far outweight any trouble involved in insisting on electoral accountability.  In the case of the U.S., foreign aid to Afghanistan could have been cut off in 2009 unless or until an open and fair election could be verified. With such a substantive signal given and repeated with regard to other dictators in the Middle East who were using the facade of democracy for legitimacy, some of the mass protests taking place two years later might have been obviated and lives saved that were otherwise lost.

Sources:
http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/10/23/karzai-challenger-prefers-opposition-to-coalition/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33394277/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/

The New York Times Sunday Magazine (11/29/09) ran a feature on Joe Biden as the Vice President of the United States.  Besides his experience and knowledge from having been a seasoned U.S. senator, Joe Biden is a man genuinely content in his own skin, and, it might be said, genuinely happy.  This, perhaps more than anything else, is vital to high level public official because sound judgment is important in those jobs. Ruling is not simply about how much one knows, or even how much experience one has; it is fundamentally about feeling at ease in who one is.  Ultimately, a positive vision springs from one’s state of mind and innate values.  One need only contrast Joe Biden with Richard Nixon, for example. Foreign policy comes up for both, but their tempraments could not be different.

My question is this: to what extent is our “Electoral College as popular election” geared to selecting the best candidate for president?  If the most popular is apt to be a people-pleaser, how comfortable is he (or she) likely to be in his (or her) own skin?  Furthermore, is the most popular necessarily seasoned with experience?  In short, if our current mechanism for selecting the president is oriented to privileging the flavor of the day, is this really the way we want to pick our presidents?    When we see a people-pleasing president cave to the business interests for support because popularity is not a sufficient basis of legitmacy, should we really be surprised?   What I see is a seasoned and knowledgeable vice president who is generally happy and getting along with people at the White House and in Congress, yet he did not do well at all in the popularity contests (i.e., the primaries).   I suggest that we have it backwards if we assume that Joe Biden is best as vice president because he did not fare well in the electoral contest.  As a case in point, he has been urging restraint in acquiescing to the pressure to add troops to Afganistan.  He wants a narrow focus, rather than a sensationalistic “surge.”  I suspect that he would stand up to big business and the military were he president because he wouldn’t need their approval to be content in his own skin.  Were he president, I suspect he wouldn’t need a second term.  Could that be said of a person who relishes popularity?

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/magazine/29Biden-t.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=joe%20biden&st=cse

Popular election presumes meaningful discourse on current issues and political philosophy so the voters can distinguish the candidates.  Too often, however, the media takes its eyes off the ball and orients its coverage to the process rather than the content.  For example, on the eve of the 2010 US Senate election in Massachusetts, the New York Time reported, “Volunteers and campaign workers staffed phone banks for each of the candidates in the Senate race here, as they concentrated on energizing voters to get to the polls on Tuesday.”  Besides being rather obvious, this topic carries with it an opportunity cost—namely, the article that could have been written on the candidates’ political philosophies that go beyond an obsession on the health-care before Congress at the time.   Although it is short-sighted to use a Senate election as a referendum on a current issue, even that would be better than a focus on the campaigns’ mechanics.
Too often in presidential campaigns, media reports are on the process rather than the issues (forget political philosophies).  Because such campaigns are mostly retail rather than grass-roots (after the first few primaries), most voters rely on the media for information on the candidates.   There is a saying that might be pertinent: garbage in, garbage out.  We could do better.

Source: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/get-out-the-vote-pitches-in-massachusetts/

Announced in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, on February 7, 2011, voters in the oil-producing south overwhelming chose to secede from the Arab north. According to the New York Times, 98.83 percent of the more than 3.8 million registered voters in the south chose to separate from the north. The referendum had been agreed to as part of the peace agreement in 2005, after two long and brutal civil wars between the Arab Muslim north and the mostly animist and Christian south. “Today we received these results and we accept and welcome these results because they represent the will of the southern people,” President Bashir said in a statement on state television, according to Reuters. In Washington, the White House released a statement by President Obama congratulating the people of south Sudan and announcing “the intention of the United States to formally recognize southern Sudan as a sovereign, independent state in July 2011.” The New York Times reported that actual independence would be declared on July 9, when the peace agreement that set the stage for the vote expired. In the meantime, issues regarding citizenship, oil-revenue rights and the contested and volatile region of Abyei would be settled.

Analysis:

The referendum is in line with the political principle that popular sovereignty (i.e., of the people) transcends the authority of governments. That is to say, people have the right to establish government (rather than vice versa). In this case, the southern Sudanese decided to form a new and separate state. The result of the vote, being almost unanimous, proffers an excellent snapshot of a will of the people.  Typically, this term is abused, such as when a candidate wins reelection by a margin of fifteen or twenty percentage points.  Receiving 65% of the vote does not represent the will of the people; rather, it is the will of a majority of the people. There is a difference. In the case of south Sudan, we can say with confidence that it was the people's will to separate. That is to say, the people spoke with one voice. How rare it is for there to be a will of the people; hence we treat the view of a bare majority as such--essentially over-generalizing.  Politicians typically do the same with mandates.

What is unclear from the referendum is how the people feel about waiting until July for actual independence.  To be sure, there are outstanding issues that need to be worked out, but is it really necessary for independence to wait for everything to be worked out; President Bashir has already announced that his government would recognize the independence of the south. The acceptance of July by the Obama administration is similar to that administration's decision at the time not to push President Mubarak of Egypt to step down before September when elections would be held even had there not been mass protests.  In short, government officials seem to be oriented to time in slow motion.

The Obama administration's announcement that it would recognize south Sudan as a sovereign and independent state might not seem fitting, as the new state would presumably be a new state in the African Union (AU).  However, that union, unlike the EU and US, is a confederation akin to an alliance wherein the states continue to hold all of the governmental sovereignty. In contrast to confederations such as the AU, modern federations divide governmental sovereignty between two systems of government--that of the federation and that of the state governments.  That the AU had not intervened in the internal discord in the Ivory Coast, Egypt and Sudan suggests that that union is simply a league of friendship, merely able to mediate if invited, as in Zimbabwe during the crisis between the President and prime minister. The feckless condition of the AU can also be seen in the fact that it took so long for south Sudan to even vote on independence in spite of the fact that it was the will of the people in south Sudan. Was it really necessary, for example, to wait until 2011 when the peace treaty was signed in 2005? A union with teeth might have been able to expedite things. Unlike the states of the EU and US, the typical state in the AU is run by a dictator rather than being a republic in fact as well as name. The American Founding Fathers believed that a federal system could only have republics as members; dictators would guard their power too much and thus be too inclined to break off. Unlike a dictator, government officials in a republic are used to sharing power, so ceding some sovereignty to an empire-scale federation is not so hard. However, it can be in the political or economic interest of even a Leviathan dictator to transfer some governmental sovereignty to a federal union. Specifically, a dictator may be expected to benefit from the economic and political gains that come from a united political front and a common market. Twenty percent of 100 is more than 100% of 10. A federation of non-republic states is thus possible.

In terms of south Sudan, the cost of a weak AU was having to suffer a snail's pace on the road to independence. To be sure, such a pace was in the interest of Sudan's government. However, issues are only intractable if they are seen as such, and the people in the south could have voted on a date as well as on whether to secede. The dissolution of the Soviet Union attests to how quickly polities can change.Just as it was not clear in Febrauary, 2011 that President Mubarak had to stay in office in Egypt for seven months in order for there to be order, it should not have been presumed that south Sudan had to wait until July. Even if top government officials are typically old people, governments need not move in slow motion. The dragged-out pace evinced by south Sudan's independence even after the overwhelming 99% voting to secede suggests that governmental time is not our time and that we, the people, can move the old clocks an hour ahead in keeping with the increasing daylight. Whereas the progress of the twentieth century was largely technoligical, in the twenty-first century the human race may reach a threshold of perception wherein the dogmatic or arbitrary nature of governments is finally seen for what it is, and exercise greater popular sovereignty to make our governments more responsive. As of 2011, a critical mass of perception had not yet occurred; hence it could not yet be said that the human race itself had reached a new sense of its power over its governments.

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/world/africa/08sudan.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

For Game Change, a non-fictional account of the 2008 US Presidential race, the two political reporters conducted hundreds of interviews and had unusually close access to the campaigns.  They perculate some pretty interesting political morsels. For example, on p.43, the authors write that Hillary Clinton considered Bill’s administration to have been ”a tactical and operational disaster.”  ouch! The book’s overall theme calls attention to the magnitude of the difference between the actual candidates and the images of them that they portrayed through the media.  In reading about what the candidates are like in person, I am particularly struck by their foul mouths and what this intimates concerning their characters.  That we, the voters, are not privy to the candidates’ real personalities, characters and values is of great concern to me because we are basing our decisions at least in part on fabricated image.  In short, we are situated too far removed to pull the lever to discover who is behind the curtain.  The public image can differ radically from the actual person. When Hillary was a US senator from NY, she portrayed herself as bipartisan and self-effacing in the Senate when in fact she was anything but (if the authors are correct).  On the evening of her win in New Hampshire, Hillary remarked privately, “I get really tough when people fuck with me” (p. 190).  Although her public persona comes off as rather stiff, I can’t imagine her using such language on a regular basis.  Referring to Obama to her aides after one of the debates, she said “What an asshole” (p. 145).  We would never know this from how chummy she would be with him as his Secretary of State.  Images can be deceiving.  As still another example, consider John Edwards, who said to Brumberger, one of his aides:  “Why didn’t you come to me like a fucking man and tell me to stop fucking her?” (p. 134).  On the republican side, McCain is “still prone to outbursts of profanity,” but we would never know it (p. 274).  On his first visit  to his campaign headquarters, for instance, he remarked, “Waht the fuck are all these people doing here? … I am not fucking authorizing these fucking hires. Who are these fucking Bush people? Where is the fucking money?” (p. 278).  It’s almost pathological with him, though the guy was a POW and therefore deserves a pass.  Still, it is remarkable how different his real personality is from his public one.  In public, he said, “I’m very happy with the campaign” (p. 285).  It is no wonder we don’t know who our politicans are.  My reaction from all the subterranean crassness is that I’m thankful that I’m not in the political arena with them; they don’t seem like the sort of folk that I would want to associate with. Evidently, they hire like-minded staff.  Harold Ickes of Hillary’s campaign, for example, says of Barak Obama after the Rev. Wright fiasco, “This guy has been sitting in the church for twenty fucking years. If you really want to take him down, let’s take him fucking down” (p. 238).  Quite a different articulation of politics and religion than we the public are used to.  I submit that Ickes’ association of church and “fucking” is revealing as to the man’s character. It is no wonder the real personalities are masked for you and me. There are implications for how our system of government is structured and for its electoral processes.  Even though we the voters can’t be blamed for going on fake images if that is all that is available to us, we are to blame for elongating the election season and expanding popular election in larger and larger electoral districts in which there is more distance between the average voter and the candidates.  The harder we make it to get elected, the more fighting-oriented the remaining applicants will be.  Is fighting prowess really the supervening quality in good governing?  Ironically, we would perhaps get better governance were it easier to get into office.   On the matter of the number of electors per candidate, the delegates in the Constitutional Convention warned that in very large electoral districts the people would not know their candidates as well. We could demand more of our intra-state representatives and less of those in the US Government; we have a better chance of person-to-person contact with the former than the latter, and the latter are too good at playing the image game…too fucking good.

See related article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35836844/ns/business-careers/

I  ran across a poll that showed the ranks of the independents growing.  Not coincidentally, movements independent of the two major US parties seem to be springing up.  The Tea Party amd the Coffee Party are just a few.  Remembering back to Ross Perot’s movement in the early 1990’s, I must admit to a tendency to consign the movements of 2010 to a similar “wave” pattern.  However, there might be enough independents relative to the two parties that one or more of them could be around for awhile and make a difference beyond one or two election cycles.  My sense is that they will not, but independents factor could mean that my projection is too pessimistic.

In any case, there are doubtlessly many American citizens annoyed at the office-holders representing the two major parties for being inordinately interested in serving the moneyed interests at the expense of the public good and too interested (relatedly) in getting reelected.

The question is perhaps whether We the People can muster enough power to change the equation.  We are far-flung and each making up our own minds, while the moneyed interests are getting ever more concentrated (and this reflects on their ability to influence our representatives).  The deck, as it were, is stacked against us.  Yet somehow my faith still lies with the little guy—that if enough of us stand up to greed and power we will be able to exercise our own and take back the government for the People.

Of course, there are citizens whose beliefs and values dovetail with the entrenched moneyed interests, so it is not so simple as to claim that the People are alienated from our government.  I think perhaps the US is rather unique in the world for the proportion of its citizens who support the interests of the financial elite.  There was even a book whose thesis was that what was good for GM was good for America.  The citizens whose ideologies match that of the major corporations and banks, the two parties are probably performing just fine.  Even some of the independent movements, such as the Tea Party, might have an agenda that dovetails with the corporate interests (e.g., lower business taxes and less government spending on the People).

So I don’t think I can generalize my position to say that “the People” are frustrated with the influence of the moneyed interests in our government.   Even so, I look back to US Presidents like Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt, the former taking on the banking interests and the latter taking on the giant trusts such as Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, and I wonder where those leaders are today and whether a sufficient number of supporters exist to put such leaders into office again.  It would be presumptuous of me to claim that such a mandate would be that of “the People,” though I do think it would be in line with “We the People.”

So here are some questions for your consideration. Do the entrenched vested interests of the status quo (i.e., those in line with the moneyed interests) have an exaggerated following among citizens in the US?  If so, how real, or deep, is the support?  Are those people simply being manipulated without them realizing it?  If their concurrence is superficial, can it be made transparent?  If we do not awake to the danger of “systemic risk” and “too big to fail” after having experienced the financial crisis of September, 2008 and its after-shocks, will we ever?  Or will the financial consolidation just have to take its course, capturing the US Government as it gains even more power?  We may well have a sizeable “the business of America is business” electorate that is not so because we are being manipulated by ads.  If so, it will be difficult for movements independent of the two major parties to wrestle the government from the grips of the titans.

In the European singing contest/show in which Susan Boyle competed, she lost the top spot to a rap group of teenagers.  The general public could text in to vote.  The choice was not made by the three judges.  That one of the judges explicitly advocated for her after her final performance (just before the voting) was not sufficient to sway the majority of the votes cast by the public.  To be sure, there were non-music-related reasons to vote against her. For instance, the suggestive comments she made on stage just before her first performance, including, “I’m 48, and that’s not my other half” (accompanied by swinging her hips), were downright emetic, if not strange.  So it is possible that the voters put her personality above her excellent singing.  It is also possible that most of the callers (or most of votes, as people could text more than once) could have preferred rap music.

What I am getting to is this: a tension or outright contradiction can exist between meritocracy and democracy.  Plato and Aristotle both claim that there is a dark side to each system.  Meritocracy can slide into aristocracy and democracy into government by selfish and uninformed mob.  What struck me about the results of the singing contest was that the rap singing wasn’t good singing. The teenagers seemed to be playing around, their performance being more about dancing than singing.   It was not a dancing contest.  The voters could use any reason (or none) in deciding who to vote for.  Furthermore, it can be safely assumed that most voters were not experts on what makes good singing.  They were not trained to separate their own tastes from a critical perspective focusing on the voice.  The judges presumably could do that, but they were relegated to making their views known—views that the voters could ignore without any imprecation.
In a representative democracy, popular election is held to be the best political decision-making device regarding choosing representatives because the government is supposed to be for the people.  It is not that the people will necessarily make the best decisions, even where their own interest is concerned.  The US and EU relish popular election, yet both governmental systems contain safeguards, or checks, on it by having various lengths of terms and some officials appointed rather than elected.  Yet popular election is generally regarded as sacred in both Unions and in their respective states.    But not so fast.  This is not absolute.
In the case of Susan Boyle, a good case could be made that the three judges should have decided who won because they had greater expertise concerning singing.  Or take movies: I would wager that the Oscars, whose awards are determined by members (i.e., people who have expertise in the various fields of filmmaking), is more esteemed than are the People’s Choice Awards.  I would argue that the results of the Oscars are more credible and accurate because expertise is not chucked for a flavor of the month.  For instance, in the 2010 Oscars, Hurt Locker beat Avitar for Best Director and Best Picture.  Hurt Locker was largely an Indie (i.e., on the fringes) film, whereas Avitar broke box office records and was no doubt more popular with the general public.  The Academy members were able to weight improved 3D effects, story and direction without allowing the technical dazzle to overshadow the latter two, which are very important to an excellent picture.  The most popular film is not necessarily the best.  Of course, Academy voting is not perfect.  The 5000 plus membership may be sufficiently small that cronyism or, its opposite, grudges, may play a role.  Avitar’s Cameron is apparently not the most-liked man in Hollywood, but on the other hand so many techies worked on his movie that he had his own voting bloc.  I suspect that both of these were factors, but were not determinative.  I must admit that I saw a television clip a few months before the 2010 Oscars showing Cameron being very rude to a fan who simply wanted an autograph at LAX. So I was rooting for his ex-wife and her movie.  No selection process, or person for that matter, is perfect.

My point is that in watching Susan Boyle as well as the Oscars, I would not be surprised if there were not a general recognition in society that there are drawbacks to popular election, such that it is not necessarily the best method in every case (even in terms of selecting government officials).  I am not arguing for a society ruled by philsopher kings or judges, or, moreover, by an elite (even though I suspect this is already the case).  Rather, I am arguing that maybe we don’t esteem popular election as much as we think. Ignoring our reservations has caused problems in the past.

Most notably, we have eviscerated the check that was to have been made by the Electoral College in the selection of a US President.  A charismatic, though vastly inferior, candidate can be elected if he appeals to the passions of the moment being enjoyed by the general public.  We can’t even be sure that winner was elected on the basis of one of his positions.  For example, we can’t assume that Barak Obama was elected US President because he was advocating government subsidies on the uninsured (health).   The President of the EU is selected by a body comparable to what the US Senate was until 1913 (i.e., before its members were popularly elected).  When the first EU President was appointed (or elected) in 2009, some Europeans criticized the lack of democracy in the process.  “The people had no voice!” one person claimed.  Well, the people did have a voice because they elected all of the people who made the decision.  In fact, electing a state-level official is closer to the people because the electorate is smaller.   The cases of Susan Boyle losing at the European “Idol” show and Avitar losing at the Oscars suggests that having a buffer on a popular election is perhaps not a bad idea.  Too much democracy by popular election in a system of government has its downside.  To be sure, popular election does have value. It can be used to hold officials accountable when unelected officials would let them remain in office.

Perhaps a good solution would be  to look back at the Electoral College and understand why the Founders wanted a such a buffer.  It wasn’t until after the 1860s that in every state the people elected their respective state’s electors.  Andrew Jackson has urged that the people choose the US President back in 1828, and the contagion spread so much that the people of the American republics felt entitled to directly determine the President of the Union.   In 1913, a constitutional amendment was ratified whereby US Senators had to be directly elected by the people (at the cost of directly representing their state governments in the General Government). Today, the US Supreme Court is the only branch of the US Government not directly choosen by the American people. Originally, the US House was the only body in the US Government designed for popular election because it was supposed to reflect the immediate passions of the people (hence the short term of two years).   The US Senate was meant to be a buffer on the passions of the moment, as well as to protect the turf of the state governments against usurption by the General Government of the Union.  The US President was meant to protect the long-term viability of the Union (which hardly best served by polls).
It is perhaps no accident, kein Zufall, that the long-term viability of the Union gets short-changed for what is expedient—and that this game is now played mostly in Washington.  Blinded by the allure of popular election, we can’t have enough of it and we have adjusted our institutions accordingly.  Yet at the same time, we take the Oscars as the default and hardly pay attention to the People’s Choice Awards.  In short, we have one hell of a blindspot going on here.

So I suggest that we have annual elections for the US House (as had been suggested in the convention, but for the hardships of travel in 1786).  Further, as the appointment of US Senators was rift with corruption when the state governments did it, why not fashion the Senate on the example of the European Council?  The sitting governors themselves would periodically meet (regular summits, as they do represent semi-sovereign governments…just like the US Government itself is semi-sovereign).   That leaves the US President and the people’s entitlement.  A continent-wide election puts the candidates very far from their electors, which means a very imperfect selection (more of a popularity contest, actually).  We must bite the bullet and buffer ourselves from ourselves.  This is perhaps the hardest thing for the American people to do—we are really so arrogant concerning ourselves.  We think we can’t be wrong.  How squalid that is!  How ugly!   I would rather see Susan Boyle fully displayed in Playboy than gaze upon this attitude.  Yes, I am a native (American)—no, not an Indian. I was born and bread in the heartland, yet I can smell the air and look around me—the human pollution being palpable.   Concerning selecting a President for the Union, the trouble in creating a buffer from excessive democracy is in avoiding corruption.  I was going to suggest having both the state governments vote in one body and the people in another and where the same candidate is not chosen through the election to the US House (each state having one vote).  But this is too complicated.   As we are  Union of States and the latter have been marginalized, perhaps the US President ought to be selected by the state governments.   Perhaps the governors could nominate a candidate and the senates confirm.  The states’ executives would begin the process whereby the Union’s executive is selected, and the confirmation would be a check against corruption between a candidate and a governor.   It would give the people an added reason to pay attention to their senate races. That the people elect their governor and state senators means there would be a link to democracy.   Contrary to a continental popular election, the governors and even the state senators could have a greater opportunity to meet the candidates and thus make a better judgment, at least in removing any real losers whose marketing could nonetheless say the people.   Considering that some candidates come out of nowhere, getting to know them is important.  Consider Carter in 1976 (virtually unknown nationwide before the primaries), or Obama in 2008.  It is risky to elect people we have just met on the basis of televised debates and commercials.

If we ignore the problem of excess democracy in the presumption that we can’t be wrong, we will risk repeating on a grander scale the sort of election outcome that went against Susan Boyle.   She may not be the best looking woman, but is that really relevant to listening to her voice?  The most votes is not necessarily indicative of the best.  Ironically, in proffering an alternative that moderates the popular election element, I am asking us to rise to our best.

For the drawbacks in the Oscars voting, pls see: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1970502-1,00.html

In March, 2010, leaders of the US House Appropriations Committee (chaired by Rep. David Obey (D-WI)), banned ear-marks to for-profit companies. Had the ban on for-profit earmarks been in place in 2009, it would have meant the elimination of about 1,000 awards worth a total of about $1.7 billion. Many of those earmarks went to military contractors for projects in lawmakers’ home districts. The decision ends a practice that has steered billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to companies and set off corruption scandals. So far, though, the Senate is not joining in. House Democrats had tried to reach an agreement with their counterparts to ban for-profit earmarks, but the senators balked, Congressional officials said. With the Senate including for-profit earmarks in its budget bills and the House excluding them, negotiators from each body will have to determine which earmarks, if any, would make it into a final bill sent to the White House for approval. So it is possible that businesses could continue to get no-bid government contracts. According to the Office of Congressional Ethics, there is a “widespread perception” among the private-sector recipients of earmarks that giving political contributions to lawmakers on the panel helped secure the grants. It is possible that this assumption could survive from future ear-marks (via conference committee negotiations)  even as the House leaders are percieved as having solved the problem.  In other words, the corporate political contributions continue even as the House incumbants campaign on having solved the problem in the House.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/us/politics/11earmark.html?ref=us

In a NYT article, the results of a focus group of independent American voters are described. These voters did not hate politicians. They simply saw both parties, along with the media and big business, as symptoms of a larger societal ailment. The dominant theme of the focus group’s discussion, in which jobs and taxes came up only in passing, was the larger breakdown of civil society — the disappearance of common courtesy, the relentless stream of data from digital devices, the proliferation of lawsuits and the insidious influence of media on their children. For instance, a man complained about drivers who had grown increasingly hostile and inconsiderate on the roads, which drew nods of assent all around. The members of the focus group believed that politicians in Washington conduct themselves just as childishly and with the same lack of accountability as kids throwing chicken casserole in a school lunchroom.

While the results of this focus group may explain why Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both suffered party losses in their mid-term elections, what is left unexplained is why 98% of members of Congress are re-elected on average.  However, the results can explain why so many U.S. Presidents become unpopular during their term.  The obvious answer is that governing involves making choices that inevitably piss off one side, and these sides add up.  Yet there may be a deeper reason: the Presidents may not understand the nature of the office. Modern presidents win elections by promising to reform Washington, to make it more ennobling and more responsive to Americans overwhelmed by the speed of change. But once they are elected, they find themselves sucked into the capital’s partisan culture, caught up in familiar debates while the people who supported them struggle with a growing sense of chaos. For example, Bill Clinton’s rhetorical emphasis on personal responsibility resonated with many independent voters. However, once in office, Clinton immediately found himself pulled into polarizing debates (gays in the military, “Hillarycare,” and so on). The same thing ultimately happened to George W. Bush, who promised a return to civility and core values and ended up running a White House in which every issue, from wars to welfare, was heavily politicized. We can contrast these examples with the understanding of  earlier Presidents who understood their office as standing for the nation and protecting its system of governance, rather than as being primarily oriented to partisanship while governing. Washington, for example, had both Thomas Jefferson and James Hamilton in his cabinet.  The President presided, acting in what he thought to be the best interests of the United States and their general government. Being partisan in office undercuts the presiding role, and thus the credibility of the President.  The results of the focus group indicate that Americans want a President who resists the temptation to engage in partisan fighting in order to stand for things on which most of us agree, such as that American society should be more civil. The modern presidency is simply too cluttered—too busy on the little things at the expense of looking out for the viability of the common good.  Joe Hagin, George W. Bush’s deputy chief of staff, observed there “was much less time [under the second Bush] to catch your breath during the day.” A constant juggling of issues—from wars to the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, often all at the same time, exhausted the White House staff. “There’s only so much bandwidth in the organization,” Hagin avers.  He further asks, “Can any single person fully meet the demands of the 21st century presidency?”  Doris Goodwin claims the growth in the number of things expected of the president has expanded expodentially since WWII. “The President’s inner circle can become stretched by the constant number of things labeled ‘crises’ that land on his desk.” Surely, the Presidency was not designed to micromanage every issue that hits the political radar screen. The proliferation of news sources has increased the pressure on the President to weigh in on more things.  President Obama delivered 57 speeches in October, 2010, alone; he had seven speechwriters at the time. Hagin notes that in the case of George W’s Presidency, struggles “over education and agriculture that had mired [his] first year in office were replaced with just one big expectation: to keep America safe.” Although occasioned by an attack and resulting in an expansion of bureaucracy in national security, this prioritizing to keeping America safe dovetails, I contend, with the nature of the office. Hagin advocates a power-shift from the White House staff to the cabinet agencies, but this would sidestep the possibility that we have been trying to fit the oval office into a square peg.  That is, the modern Presidency may well be thought of in ways contrary to how the office was designed, and thus in ways ill-suited to its nature.  The key may well be to get back to the meaning of “to preside.”  Literally, this means to sit before or in front of (from the Latin). In effect, we have cluttered it at its own expense. On June 2 in the constitutional convention, Ben Franklin referred to the proposed office as sitting “in peaceful Council … merely to preside over our civil concerns, and [to] see that our laws are duly executed.” (Madison, Notes, p. 55) Governeur Morris stated on July 19 that the President should be “a firm guardian of the people and of the public interest.” (Madison, Notes, p. 324) The office of the U.S. President is thus geared to looking over the viability of the whole, leaving the partisanship and legislating to the legislative branch. Partisanship, which is to say, taking sides on virtually every controversy that is taken up by the Congress, detracts from the credibility that the President would need to preside over the whole (as well as to see that the laws passed are executed with due process). Presiding here means standing before. It implies acting in the long-term interests of the whole rather than being partisan and oriented to every issue that comes up on the media’s radar screens.  Looking to the viability of the American economy and the US Government, a President would utilize the veto only when legislation could be expected to destroy the United States. This would involve resisting the slippery slope wherein every Congressional debate invokes the very survival of the union.

In short, a President acting in line with the office would have his or her eye on the big picture rather than getting into arguments with the leaders of the other party over every policy that is being debated in Congress. By doing less, such a President will have done more because what he or she will have done would be more in sync with the office of President. Having resisted immediate political or ideological gain from partisanship, such a President would have more credibility throughout his or her term of office.

Sources:
Daniel Stone, “Hail to the Chiefs,” Newsweek, November 22, 2010, pp. 30-33.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/us/politics/07bai.html
James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987.

Republican outside groups are outspending democrats by eight to one in the 2010 election cycle.  Citizens United, the court case allowing unlimited (and anonymous) corporate political spending (as if spending were speech!), is benefiting the republicans. The republican party advocates policies that are more in the financial interest of the wealthy (e.g., cutting entitlements and extending the Bush tax cuts for those over $200,000). In my view, the case opens up the dichotomy between a plutocracy (rule by wealth) and a representative democracy (rule by the people through their representatives). Although the latter is not perfect (esp when most of the people are idiots), it is better than rule by the moneyed interests (i.e., the status quo).  It is ironic that after electing real change, the forces of the status quo would gain the upper hand. Since the vast majority of American voters are not wealthy, the question is perhaps whether we can be effectively manipulated by political ads into voting for the interests of the wealthy. For example, one outside group had an ad complaining about the U.S. government’s debt and urging less spending on entitlements.  No mention is made of the roughly $1 trillion spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  As another example, extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy is put in terms of the latter using the savings to hire workers, even though studies show that such tax savings are typically saved. An educated electorate seems to me the best means of resisting such manipulation. Essentially, the distinction can be said to be between the vested interests of the status quo and those of real change.  Too much power going to the wealthy can stultify the political system, such that we do not adapt.  An organism that does not adapt to a changing environment does not tend to survive.

On October 13, 2010, Fox News reported a poll that found that women are turning on Obama.  The reason cited was that they feel there has been too much change—that it has been “jarring.”  This reminded me of when I was sampling a food item in a grocery store and the old woman who gave me the sample, said, “We have lots of devils here.”  She was referring to the array of food samples in the store that day.  My reaction, which I did not act on, was to ask her what century she was from. I wondered why some people can’t seem to let go of what is so antiquated—why they are so resistant to any change. In terms of the jarring change being reported on Fox News, the journalist pointed to the health-insurance reform law as a case in point.  In spite of its purported “socialism,” the law relies on private health-insurance companies, whose lobby pressured Obama into dropping his “public option” requirement and adding a mandate that requires Americans to become customers of those companies.  If relying on extant private companies—giving them a guaranteed and vastly enlarged customer base—represents “jarring” change, I have to start wondering about whether those Americans have some sort of pathological issue with change itself.  I have to wonder whether there isn’t in the American culture—and I am an American—some sort of pathology in which any change is felt to be traumatic.  If so, we could add this pathology to that which involves denial in relying on companies (both insurance companies and banks too big to fail) that we know have been culpable. The extreme aversion to change and the tacit willingness to rely on problematic institutions can be expected to result in stagnation and continued systemic failures.  The source of the problem is in us.

Not surprisingly, much of the campaigning in the 2010 midterm elections has been oriented to incremental change on given issues, rather than to real change. Even in states bordering on bankruptcy, like California, Florida and Illinois, it is campaigning as usual.  I watched a candidate forum from Illinois and one of the main questions was why a candidate’s business was so successful.  Meanwhile, the last governor had been impeached and removed from office by a nearly-unanimous vote in the legislature, and the government was borrowing $18 billion in 2010 alone.  The forum made “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” look like an everyday phenomenon.  Lest one blame the candidates alone, it is important to note that it was a citizen who asked about the candidate’s business. In the California Governor’s race, Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman had a chance in their debates to persuade a statewide audience they could turn around the economically troubled state. Instead, they resorted—at least in their third debate—“to many of the personal attacks that have dominated the last few weeks of the campaign,” according to MSNBC. “Neither candidate presented any new ideas.” A poll released two weeks before the third debate found about half the respondents were dissatisfied with both candidates. No wonder.

In contrast to status quo campaigning amid major systemic governmental problems, my inclination regarding either republic would have been to discuss drastic tax increases and non-sustenance budget cuts in that state, as well as to suggest that the two states both adopt a federal system—their respective regions becoming states.  Germany is the size of Montana and is a federal state with 15 regions. As soon as it is realized that Germany as a EU state is federal, federalism can be recognized to be applicable to any large US state.  Comparing apples to apples enables new insights!  However, if we are afraid of “jarring” change, we will be apt to resist adjusting our comparisons for any errors; we will continue to see the world just as it has been seen, and this will make it difficult for us to envision change.

A commentator on Fox News said that the banks should not stop the foreclosure process because that would not be good for the free market. He said that people who cannot afford their houses should lose them. He was apparently unaware that putting a large number of houses on the market would cause home values to decline further, and that the market mechanism itself had been part of the problem in the financial crisis of 2008.  Protecting the free market is not our goal, yet he took it as the assumed telos, or final end. Lest it not be obvious he was also displaying a blatant disregard for the suffering of others. The possibility of people going homeless is apparently not of concern to the market advocates whose only concern is the market itself—a mechanism that Alan Greenspan has admitted contains structural flaws.

On another day, I heard another commentator on Fox News say that too much government in the financial sector is “the problem,” I was dumbfounded because one of the lessons of the financial crisis…wherein the global financial system almost collapsed…has been that the market and its firms can actually increase volatility from unregulated bubbles (and fraud).  To say that too much government caused the crisis has is completely opposite!  To be sure, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae contributed to the problem, but the source was that the private-sector bankers wrote unsustainable sub-prime mortgages and sold them to private investment bankers who turned them into securities (which were then rated by private rating companies…some as AAA!).  To say that “too much government” in the economy was the cause is to warp reality to one’s own ideology.  That is to say, ideology can be amazingly resistant to change in the face of the facts on the ground. That the Republicans are doing well at all in the wake of the crisis, given their deregulation platform (and that government is the problem, not business), is remarkable except for the fact that we averted crisis.  Had Democrats on the Hill refused to save the banks (though they should have been just as interested in saving troubled home-owners!), the financial system would have collapsed.  The commercial paper market had already frozen. To be sure, the aid should come with the requirement that exec compensation would be limited (the banks should have been deemed legally bankrupt but for the government bailout and thus their exec comp contracts declared null and void), and strict anti-foreclosure rules set.  That these things didn’t happen attests to the power of even a complicit industry’s lobby in Washington. Had the financial system tanked, I bet the pro-business republicans would be facing a 1932-like Democratic landslide.  Ironically, the Democrats’ averting a disaster in which banks were complicit has benefited the Republican party, which is avidly pro-business and anti-government even in the wake of what Alan Greenspan admitted to be a flaw in the market mechanism itself (concerning volatility and bubbles—irrational exuberance). What amazes me is that such an admission is lost on an ideology that remarkably still have staying power.  That the Republicans are able to avert losing seats in Congress suggests to me how strong that party is. Ultimately, the lessons from the financial crisis of 2008 would…one would think…seep into the Republican platform to moderate it, just as Alan Greenspan (former Federal Reserve Chair) has recognized that his paradigm contains a fatal flaw.  In other words, I would expect that how we would look at the market mechanism itself (including private enterprise and commodities) would change following the crisis.  Perhaps one of the lessons from the midterm elections of 2010 is that this might not happen, at least for awhile.

A republic is characterized by the citizenry electing representatives, who in turn legislate (i.e., make law). As an alternative, the citizenry itself could vote directly on legislative proposals. The latter is called direct democracy. Ancient Athens, for example, practiced it. In the United States, the republic form is the prevalent form of government.  In spite of Wilson’s comment made in the constitutional convention that representation “is made necessary only because it is impossible for the people to act collectively,” direct democracy has typically limited to an occasional “referendum” question even though more vital questions could be put to the body politic directly. Typically, referendums have to do with elections (and thus with representative rather than direct democracy) or with general taxing or spending limits for a government. The rationale for putting general taxing or spending limits up for referendum is that they apply to a government as a whole—this perspective being from that of popular sovereignty (i.e., the citizenry, whose electoral power transcends their government). Rarely, an “issue” is put up to be decided directly by the voters. In 2010, for example, Californians decided on whether to legalize pot in California. I contend that many more matters of policy could be decided directly by the voters. Since the elected representatives represent the citizenry, the former should not be presumed as having the definitive right of such decision. Deciding on matters of general policy are primarily value-judgements, rather than requiring expertise.  Issues such as abortion, gay marriage, the Bush tax cuts, and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars could—and I would argue should—be decided by the voters directly. Beyond issues, the voters could decide more general governance questions, such as whether federalism should be continued. Such a question could lead to more specific proposals at the next election. For example, if the majority of American voters want the US to be of federalism, representatives could work on not only constitutional amendments, but also proposals for the voters on which broad areas of power would be transferred back to the states (or the voters could be asked—assuming a majority still want federalism—whether X or Y areas of power should be transferred back to the States). Should elected representatives counter that we should not trust the people to make such decisions, I would argue that it is nonsensical for an agent to contend that his principal is somehow inferior to himself. In a representative democracy, the representatives are the agents of the people; it is not the other way around.

In short, I contend that popular sovereignty ought to be strengthened rather than vitiated. Elected representatives are best suited to working out the technical details rather than deciding broad questions of policy.  An election campaign is a bricollage of factors; it is rare for a victor to be able to claim a mandate on a particular issue. In fact, a representative may be elected for reasons having nothing to do with his or her positions on “the issues.” The midterm election of 2010, for example, could be informed by a mix of factors; it was not even clear whether people voting Republican, for example, were saying yes to that party’s platform or no to the previous two years of legislation (which was informed by both Democratic and Republican law-makers—neither party being able to enact its platform as given).  Even voters blaming the Democratic Party for the resulting legislation is not strictly speaking accurate, as compromises had to be made with Republicans.  So an election of representatives is a broad brush that cannot be divined as a mandate on particular issues.  Regarding particular policies—even foreign policy, such as whether the US Government should continue to support Israel—the only way to know if there is a mandate is to put the matters up for decision by the voters. Political parties could have a say on how the questions are worded so they are objective (or two versions could be provided). Courts would still be able to declare the resulting law unconstitutional, but even here constitutional amendment is possible.  Even in terms of amendments, the voters, rather than their constitutional delegates or state or federal representatives, could decide directly.  For example, the voters could decide whether US Senators should continue to be elected, or whether they should be appointed by the state governments or be the governors themselves (the US Senate being like the European Council of the E.U.). The voters could also decide whether abortion should be decided by the state or US courts, or directly by the voters—by state or US—as an amendment.

At the very least, basic decisions would be made that have been mired in disputes between governmental institutions and/or government officials. We are depending much too much on elected and appointed government officials to “make” policy. Ultimately, the will of the people should be freed up and exercised beyond the confines of simply electing representatives—being subject only to the judiciary protecting individual rights (which can be overruled by constitutional amendment, which can be of the people).  Sadly, those in power—the elected representatives—will naturally and ironically resist efforts to expand the will of the people. Because the election of a representative involves many elements, an elected representative could easily get around interpreting his or her victory as a mandate to expand the will of the people.  This is precisely part of the problem, and it maintains the monopoly of power that our elected representatives enjoy.  I suspect this is no accident. Hence I am not optimistic on any expansion of popular sovereignty any time soon.  Even so, I hope my thoughts here are thought-provoking. Although not the best person to cite, Richard Nixon pointed in one of his books to the need for political development: “In terms of material progress, the twentieth century has been the best in history, but in terms of political progress the record has been disappointing.”  (See Richard Nixon, 1999 Victory Without War, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988, p. 16). What I am suggesting is that our political system is so antiquated that were it to develop as technology has, our use of elections could make quite a leap forward.  In spite of all the technological change, we tend to hold very rigidly to the way things have “always been done” in politics.  It is time for politics to catch up. In fact, the technological progress could facilitate the expansion of popular sovereignty.  For example, voters could surf the internet for information before voting on general policy areas. The challenge may well be in how to enable illiterate voters to be able to take part.  As one possibility, voters could vote at desks (as in a classroom) while a reader reads through the questions on the ballot. My point is that we can begin to think outside the box and shake loose our assumptions.

Source of Wilson quote: James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987, p. 74.

The Republican surge that gave that party control of the US House of Representatives reflects a shift of some moderate independents, even as Republican leaders have portrayed the election as “the American people” having repudiated the policies of the sitting U.S. President, Barak Obama. In other words, that 54% vote for a given Republican and 46% vote for the Democratic opponent does not mean that the 54% constitute “the American People.”

The other notable error associated with that election involves the media, which on multiple occasions ignored the margins of error in polls before the election. If one candidate is at 48% and the other is at 45% and the poll has a three point margin of error, it cannot be concluded that the first candidate is ahead of the second because the three point difference is within the margin of error.  As obvious as this point may seem, journalists of CNN, Fox, and MSNBC regularly ignored the margins of error in reporting polls even though the margins were shown on the poll being displayed. Yet like the Republican claims regarding “the American people,” the errors of the journalists went repeatedly uncorrected.  One is left wondering if there is any feedback loop in American politics or whether anyone is listening.

Talking with a senior citizen about the 2010 midterm election, I was intrigued by her agreement with me; my views are perhaps too unusual for widespread agreement.  We were both just shaking our heads on how the local republican US House candidate won at 63 or 65% even though so many people disapprove of Congress.  I looked at the NYT map of the US House districts and realized that many incumbents won in spite of the fact that only something like 12% of Americans approve of the job Congress has been doing. Strangely, many more Americans are voting for their incumbents.  odd. Perhaps the voters are simply creatures of habit. The senior citizen and I were shaking our heads not only because of this discordance, but also because local unemployment is so high and yet the anti-government (anti-unemployment-compensation) party candidate won the US House seat so handily.  Moreover, we were amazed that people have apparently ignored the need for more or better regulation—a need evinced by the financial crisis of 2008 and the BP explosion of 2010.

Voting for the de-regulation party (presumably because of the “out of control spending”…even as Bush spent $1 tillion of borrowed money on his wars and $800 billion on the bank bailout).  Obama’s only real spending was $800 billion on economic stimulus (which admittedly should have been for a CCC jobs program rather than paid to infrastructure contractor companies). I contend that Obama should have cut checks to the unemployed and to home-owners under water and in foreclosure (preventing foreclosures would have been good not only for the banks’ toxic balance sheets, but also for the supply/demand of the housing market!), rather than to infrastructure contracting companies and banks. Even so, Obama’s weakness does not justify voting for the de-regulation party. Voters should have been primarily oriented to the big picture … the failure of extant government regulation … and thus the need to strengthen regulation rather than to get rid of regulation … as evinced by the financial crisis and the BP explosion. The complicity of private enterprise in these two catastrophies was utterly lost on the voters who supported the Republican surge in 2010.  They may well have had other reasons, including how Obama spent the bailout/stimulus money. However, I contend that those voters missed the big picture: the big banks and big oil companies (as well as the health insurance companies) need to be regulated more, not less.

The fact that we almost lost our financial system and the Gulf of Mexico makes “But I’ve always voted Republican” not good enough.  Not good enough at all.  I suppose it is the politics/election/voting as usual that stands out for me as particularly odious this time around. I am appealing not for the Democratic Party (as its leaders have sold out to the banks, oil companies, and defense contractors), but, rather, to the public good.  To be sure, $13 trillion in US Government debt is itself a systemic risk evincing a severe imbalance in the American system of governance. However, voting to cut spending (after $1.3 trillion has already been spent on the wars—focusing on the unemployed) while urging tax cuts for the rich demonstrates a partial (or inconsistent) approach to taking the deficit seriously.  Given the size of the deficit in 2010, both spending cuts (including the military!) and tax increases are necessary.  The competing desire not to depress the economy mitigates both spending cuts and tax increases.  Even given the need to juggle these competing objectives (i.e., reducing the deficit and not putting a drag on the economy), I contend that the primary concern ought have been what lessons we could and should have drawn from the financial crisis of 2008 and the BP explosion in 2010—in other words, that business is more “the problem” than is government. I submit that the primary lesson should have been that we ought not to rely so much on private companies and the market mechanism—that government regulation is both currently flawed and necessary.  A de-regulation party is not interested in strengthening regulation or its enforcement because business wants less regulation.

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 and the near loss of the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, electoral politics as usual look banal in this context; even the perennial “tax and spend” debate looked small in 2010 relative to the near misses we had experienced in the previous two years.  Obama’s agenda was a mere speck in comparison to the near catastrophies we had witnessed.  The primary lesson I draw from the midterm elections of 2010 is that too many voters were still “voting as usual,” like cows chewing the cud.  The senior citizen with whom I spoke said, “Well, the fact that people have always voted a certain way … well, that’s just not good enough now.” I replied, “I completely agree.”

The Founding Fathers who fashioned the US Constitution believed that a virtuous and educated electorate is vital for a republic to be sustained.  This requirement is perhaps nowhere more salient than in how the voters react to systemic risk occasioned by near-catastrophies. Put another way, had it not been for government, the near-catastrophies would most likely have become full-fledged catastrophies (especially in the case of the financial system in September, 2008).  After that crisis, Alan Greenspan admitted in Congressional testimony that he had realized that his laissez-faire market philosophy contained a fatal flaw (involving volitility).  It is sad indeed that the de-regulation, big-business party surged less than two years after Greenspan’s comment.  Given the crisis of September, 2008, and the ensuring recession, the 2010 midterm elections should have been like the 1932 election rather than the 1994 election. That it was not indicates to me that lessons were not learned.  Sadly, at least in the American context, averting catastrophe is not sufficient for lessons to be learned.  Perhaps it is only human nature to act on minor issues and overlook the big picture; electoral campaigns are certainly oriented this way. Even so, voting for a de-regulation and big-business party simply does not make sense just months after BP and Halliburton cut corners to save time and money at the expense of safety (discounting the destruction of the Gulf) and just over a year after big banks created fraudulent mortgages with hidden ARM rate increases and went on to sell securities and allowing some of them to be rated AAA. I do not believe that memories can be even so short. Perhaps big business has manipulated the American campaigns without us realizing it. If so, we are complicit nonetheless for not recognizing it and just saying no.