From 50,000 Feet

We often hear speakers who want to look at the big picture on some issue asking us to pull our thinking up to 50,000 feet because a high-altitude view hides all the details and complications so that we can see the philosophical or conceptual characteristics of the subject under discussion.  I’d like to take a high altitude look at our government dysfunction to see if there is anything profound we could learn from that perspective.

In my book, A Broken Sausage Grinder; Is Our Government Fundamentally Flawed?, I investigated the motivations for writing the Constitution in the first place.  What was wrong with the Articles of Confederation that made the Constitution necessary?  I read lots of material, but when I boiled it all down the real problem was that to do anything collectively between the thirteen States, there would need to be a unanimous vote of all thirteen States.  Thus, in actual practice, pretty much nothing could get done because in the business of interstate arbitration there is always one State that would not agree.  The lesson here is clear in my mind – set the threshold for approval to high and nothing will get approved.

Another important takeaway from my research was that our form of democracy, a republican-democracy, was always intended to be a majority rule format.  This whole concept stems from the colonialist’s strong desire for self-governance.  There was to be no monarch or even the appearance of monarchial powers in the new government.  We see confirmation of this in the Articles of Confederation, Article II which states, “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.”  The colonialist’s displeasure with monarchs was powerful and this aversion shows up again in the ratification of the new Constitution because the Executive Branch of the proposed new government looked a lot like the monarchial institution they were escaping.

The Articles of Confederation had several shortcomings and chief among them were cumbersome governance, lack of a central judicial infrastructure to mitigate interstate squabbles, and the need for consensus to get anything done.  To overcome these shortfalls, the new Constitution implemented three branches of the Federal Government and gave them each powers to allow them to defend against encroachments from either of the other two branches.

One of the important considerations for this discussion is that the Constitution gives control of the election process for their respective members to the Legislature.  States generally conduct the elections, but all under the oversight of the Federal Legislature and part of the Legislative control is to set rules for acceptance of campaign donations.  There are limits established for the many candidates, but the special interest groups (the factions) generally are not restrained.  Campaign costs are high so the candidate will be looking for donations under every rock and anywhere else they can think of to look.  From 50,000 feet up it is not hard to see that the candidate is heavily influenced by the donations they receive.  From 50,000 feet up it is impossible to distinguish between a special interest campaign advertisement and an advertisement paid for by the candidate.  Moreover, from 50,000 feet up it is harder to make the case that the elected official is taking direction from the voters when their votes are so well aligned with the special interest groups that gave support to their campaign for election.  Of course, we see this relationship most clearly when the elected official votes the party line on issues coming before their respective legislative body.  I’ve said it before, but let me repeat myself here – the political parties are the biggest factions of all and that means that the political parties are the biggest part of the problem when it comes to the elected official listening to their constituents.

Why would the members of the legislature vote to restrict the sources of campaign donations they are allowed to accept?  Why would the members of the legislature vote to restrict the advertising from special interest groups to indirect messages only – messages that don’t name names or directly benefit a candidate in any way?  Obviously, the answer to both questions is that they wouldn’t because their number one objective is to get reelected.  Let me repeat, their number one objective is to get reelected.  Here is where we find the most important point of leverage for the voters – the ability to vote for someone else.

Of course it won’t do any good to vote for the other candidate because he or she is already chasing the almighty campaign donations just like the candidate to whom we are showing our displeasure.  So, what if we do a write-in vote for someone in our district that would do a good job of representing our interests?  Since it is a write-in candidate, there are no campaign expenses and no need to take money from any special interests.  If our write-in candidate wins the election, they are beholden only to the voters (their constituents) who elected them.

We should tell the party candidates that we don’t want them to take donations from any source other than a constituent (a registered voter who lives in the jurisdiction).  We should tell the candidate that if they take campaign donations from non-constituent sources, we will show our disapproval with a write-in vote.  We can coordinate our write-in candidate, or not, within the precincts and districts where the election is taking place.  When the votes are counted, the write-in votes won’t be tallied unless there is potentially a majority of votes in that category, but the overall number of votes will be known and the winning candidate will have a clear indication of their constituent support.  This procedure may not win an election, but it sends a message that is unmistakable and it sets the stage for further actions as the next election approaches.

We can’t expect to fix the dysfunction all at once, but if we chip away at it we can get back on a more democratic path.

The Sausage Grinder is Broken – will you help to fix it?

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