Tag: democracy

Constitutional Amendment 17

Post author By David
Post date August 3, 2009
6 Comments on Constitutional Amendment 17

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Following close on the heels of the sixteenth amendment (both in terms of time and impact) comes what may well be the second most fundamental alteration to the public perception and operation of our government through the Seventeenth Amendment.

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislature.

When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.

This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

This amendment might look fairly innocuous on the surface but it fosters a fundamental shift in the way that the people perceive the structure and function of the representation within the federal government.

I have written about this amendment before and I understand from the comments that some real problems had developed with the original setup of having state legislatures choose the senators. We cannot underestimate however the fundamental shift encoded in this amendment. In my state government I need to pay attention to one senator and one representative in the state government representing me. Before this amendment those two individuals were held responsible for how the state was represented in the United States Senate and then I would pay attention to my representative in the House of Representatives (replacing them if I felt poorly represented). Now the common perception (and the true fact sadly) is that the senators from each state are to represent the people of the state (so I have three people to keep my eye on in the federal level legislative branch besides the two I track in the state legislature) rather than representing the interests of the state as a sovereign political entity and being held accountable by the government of the state directly.

It is no wonder, with this amendment, that people today do not recognize that our structure of government was intended to be a representative republic – with the interests of the people balanced against the interests of each of the states – rather than a democracy.

Tags amendments, Constitution, democracy, documents, history, republic, senate

culture

Lippmann vs Dewey

In his final chapter, James Fallows introduces the argument between Walter Lippmann and John Dewey that took place through their writings in the 1920’s regarding what constituted the most desirable form of representative government. I would like to read more of their original writing, but for now let me react to what Fallows has covered.

Lippmann argued that the world was too large and complex to allow for an expectation that the common citizen could be sufficiently informed to make wise decisions on many policy issues. Government, with it’s ability to draw upon the knowledge of experts should therefore have a relatively free hand in creating the policies that would best serve the nation. The extension to this attitude was that the journalist was expected to play the role of expert in explaining the expert government actions to the people.

Dewey argued that without a healthy democratic process no government could be expected to consistently make wise choices for the nation, no matter how much expert information they had available to them. The implications of this would be that the journalist should play the role of examiner and fact finder (as should the elected official), but that the decision should generally play out in the court of public opinion.

The arguments of Lippmann certainly are accurate in describing the complexity of the world – a world that is even more complex when it is not tempered by the moderating influence of broad democratic participation based on broadly disseminated information. However, my own biases have me leaning in favor of the perspective of Dewey that the very process of public democracy has benefits which we cannot afford to set aside.

Journalists have a special role in society in that they have the opportunity to study an issue and dig beneath the surface to examine the realities that escape the surface understanding of that issue. I believe the real problem lies in cases where a journalist, acting as an expert, not only tells their readers what they believe, but fails to report facts contrary to their own beliefs thus preventing the consumers from making an informed choice.

Does anyone else know more about Dewey or Lippmann?

Tags democracy, discourse, media, questions

National

Laboratories of Democracy

I have been thinking about the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution (FF&C) and how that has played out in some areas of public policy. Specifically I have been thinking about how some areas of policy allow for states to pick and choose what faith and credit they apply to the policies of other states and how that contributes to the laboratories of democracy that out states were expected to become within our nation.

Specifically I woke up thinking about gun rights. This is not because I carry a gun for my own protection, although I fully support a broad interpretation to the 2nd Amendment, it is simply because it provided a convenient illustration of the issue.

Full faith and credit might be used to argue that every state should be required to accept a concealed carry permit issued by any other state. In fact they do not. Each state is able to set their own requirements to carry such a permit and also to permit reciprocity of permit recognition with other states on a state-by-state basis. The thing that got me thinking of that is that Utah’s permit is one of the most widely recognized permits in the nation.

This lack of uniformity among the various states allows people to experiment with different approaches to problems and different variations on legislation. Each state is then able to recognize and/or duplicate what they see as successful in other states. This is true of individuals as well as states. For example, gays who wish to marry are free to move to Massachusetts while residents of Massachusetts may choose to leave the state if they find themselves in the minority and do not like the side effects of legalized homosexual marriage.

This kind of legislative experimentation was short circuited in the abortion debate when the Supreme Court stepped in and eliminated a wide range of available positions that had been adopted by many of the states. The Defense of Marriage Act was passed specifically in an effort to ensure that the debate about what constituted legal marriage would be allowed to follow its natural course between states rather than ahving that debate hijacked by the courts or by the argument of FF&C combined with a Massachusetts choosing to be the first to recognize a form of marriage that was prohibited elsewhere.

I don’t think we will be able to solve our national issues in any reasonable time frame unless we quit thinking that we have to solve everything from the top down with one unified solution for each issue. We should allow each state to decided which problems they feel are the most pressing and to push for solutions on those issues. That allows all the issues to be addressed simultaneously and for different approaches to be tested on each issue. If we had ten major issues that were widely considered to be our most pressing we might find that there are four to six states choosing to tackle each issue allowing us to test four to six approaches to each problem simultaneously. The other 44 to 46 states can adopt their favorite approach, or mix and match for a second round of experimentation.

It seems to me that there is only one truly federal problem that we face – that is our overspending habit by the federal government. The solution to that one problem is simple – start spending less by getting out of the business of trying to solve all the problems of the country. Start acting like a coach managing the strategy direction and development of the team (which includes states on defense and private enterprise on offense) rather than trying to be the star player trying to single-handedly carry the team to a championship.

Tags democracy, elevate, experiments, free markets, government, marriage, political philosophy

National

Federalist Nos. 13 – 14

Federalist No. 13 left me with imagining one of two conclusions based on the following statement:

Nothing can be more evident than that the thirteen States will be able to support a national government better than one half, or one third, or any number less than the whole.

The two conclusions that I can draw from this – one of which must be true – are that Hamilton could not conceive (or did not consider) the incredible waste that could be perpetrated by a central government or else we are extremely lucky not to have the amount of waste we are paying for be multiplied by a number of regional confederacies with independent central governments.

Federalist No. 14 attempts to draw a clear distinction which many people today still do not understand. It is a distinction which is vital to having our government function properly.

The error which limits republican government to a narrow district has been unfolded and refuted in preceding papers. I remark here only that it seems to owe its rise and prevalence chiefly to the confounding of a republic with a democracy, applying to the former reasonings drawn from the nature of the latter. The true distinction between these forms . . . is, that in a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents.

The confusion around this issue is evidence of the fact that Americans must be made – being born in this nation is no guarantee of understanding and promoting the ideas of liberty and limited representative government that brought our nation to its greatness.

What I had never realized before was the fact that there was apparently widespread confusion back in the 18th century concerning the difference between a republic and a democracy. Today we suffer from two problems in our country regarding government. One, many people mistakenly believe that we are a democracy and try to treat government function as such. Two, some people properly recognize the republican form of our government and mistake or ignore the fact that some issues should be decided in a democratic manner by the people rather than placing more expansive powers in the hands of their elected representatives. This is especially true on issues such as congressional pay where there is an inherent conflict of interest on the part of those representatives.

Tags democracy, documents, federalist, government, republic

culture

Liberty is the Priority

Much of what has gone wrong in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam is a result of a culture that is very different from ours. As I thought about that recently it occurred to me that Iraq is typical of all (or virtually all) of the fighting that the U.S. has engaged in since the end of World War II in that our goal has been to establish or protect democracy. It would seem that democracy is our standard for measuring the relative liberty found in various nations.

The problem that we generate when we confuse democracy with liberty is that we get so focused on the structure that we forget the fundamental principle. The truth is that I would much rather live under a dictator who enforced law with consistency and equity than vote regularly to determine who would take the lead in telling me what to do and suppressing my freedoms as they deemed appropriate.

I believe that the last half century has offered conclusive proof that we cannot enforce liberty by the installation of democracy. Instead we should be spending out resources of time and energy towards the perfecting and perpetuating of liberty here so that our nation can stand as an example of liberty to the world. Rather than going out and policing other nations we would find that by policing ourselves, other nations would seek our counsel when necessary after they were able to support a free society.

Right now China, which is a fully communist country, seems more prepared to sustain a free society than Iraq even since we toppled their dictator. In fact, Iran might already be more prepared than Iraq is currently. Liberty cannot be imposed from outside. Our nation would not have survived its own founding if the society in the 13 colonies had not already been prepared to maintain the principle of freedom upon which our country was founded.

The question for each succeeding generation will always be – are they still prepared to maintain the freedom they inherited?

It is a question without a pre-determined answer.

Tags democracy, Elevated, Iraq, liberty, thoughts

National

Bowling for Primaries

I have been thinking about the comments by Bradley when I wrote about the primary election power struggle between the states and the parties. Last night the thought occurred to me that the parties could simply pick a new way of awarding delegates. They could set three dates on the primary calendar. Whatever states held primaries or caucuses on or before the first date would have 10% of all delegates allocated among them. States who held their primaries after the first date but before the second date would have 20% of the delegates split among them. States between the second and third dates would would split 30% of the delegates and states holding primaries after the third date would split the remaining 40% of delegates.

The parties could then invite states to participate in a given window based on population and/or a lottery but the states would then be allowed to set their primary dates wherever they chose. If we imagine that the first date for 2008 was February 4th then “Super Duper Tuesday” (or whatever it’s being called now) states would be competing for 20% of the delegates in choosing the party nominees. When states choose when to have their primaries they have to balance the value of being influential in the early stages against the larger pool of delegates to by split by those who come later.

Questions? Comments? Rebuttals?

Tags democracy, elections, parties

National

Power Struggle

This is nothing new in politics (power struggles in general or this one in particular) but it is starting to get more press coverage – the question is, “Who controls the nomination process – the states, or the parties?” The struggle is most public among the Democrats as their candidates have now promised to honor the Party primary calendar. The Republicans are dealing with the very same issue but without the same level of publicity. The struggle between the parties and the states seems to be a direct result of a struggle among the states to gain influence in the candidate selection process. I am left to wonder how the traditional set of early states was initially established? Was that set by the parties, or by the respective states? (Can anyone enlighten me on that?)

In my mind the parties should not control the process. On the other hand, they are choosing representatives for their respective parties so they should have control of how those representatives are chosen. I believe that experience had led the parties to value a process where they largely mimic each other through the primary cycle. (I’m not sure exactly why that is although I have a few guesses) While I believe that states should be able to choose how and when they participate in the primary selection process I’m not convinced that voters win when the primary season is pushed so far in advance of the general election. Imagine if the candidates for the election of 2000 were chosen in mid 1997 and then had 9/11 occur in mid 1998. We could find that the candidates we had chosen were ill suited to our new reality. (I know that’s an extreme example – almost too ridiculous to comprehend, but you can’t miss my point) There’s always a certain amount of risk that changes will occur between the primary selection and the final vote, but the earlier we push the primaries the greater that risk becomes.

What do other people think? Who should control the primary schedule? What would the ideal schedule look like (in general terms)? Is the current reshuffling power-struggle good, bad, or neutral for voters and the country?

Tags candidates, democracy, elections, media, reactions