Warding Off Political Apathy - Part 2

I guess we're going to have to do more than just vote.

Since the last post I read Lawrence Lessig's new book, Republic, Lost and really liked it. He argues that in the U.S. a virulent new incarnation of an old political disease is threatening our republic. Politicians have recently become unprecedentedly dependent on campaign contributions. Like really unprecedentedly. They also need to spend so much time raising money that they are unprecedentedly ignorant about policy issues. Lobbyists (often politicians who have "graduated" from Congress) step in to solve both of these problems by financing and educating them on behalf of wealthy rent-seeking interests. We the people are left out in the cold.

Oregon's 1st district just chose the poison on the right
...or should I say "left." ugh!

Most of us know this, or at least sense that something like it must be true, and we tune the politics out. But we the people must overcome our cynicism (however justifiable) about federal politics if we want to prevent our government from leading us off a cliff. Simply casting our ballots is no longer enough. Both parties will continue to disappoint us. The financial power of special interests controls too much of the system. The only useful tool that we the people have left is engaged citizenship. That's the first reason why the ward system of voting discussed in my last post would be beneficial.

We can do this too, but with air conditioning and deodorant!

Reason number 1 - It will encourage citizenship. You and I still may not care about every issue, but for the issues we do care about, ward voting would be feasible to sway a large voting bloc to our way of thinking. Don't you think that would make political dialog seem worth the effort? We could meet and discuss policy and ideas with the people in our ward. Delegations could go to other wards to spread ideas and promote productive debate at a grassroots level. That sounds an awful like what those wig-wearing colonial agitators were doing in the 1780s, doesn't it? Old George and the boys didn't crowd into stuffy Independence Hall to create a set of laws so that the rest of us would never have to. They saw dynamic participation in lawmaking as the quintessential civic virtue, the only alternative to subjugation to the establishment. So a ward system would draw each and every citizen back to the founding principals of our democracy. Political virtues like conciliation, compromise, respectful dialog, empathy, deliberation, or initiative might be sorely lacking in our country now because so few of us have to actually use them.

Do not fear the ward. We're not talking about mental
hospitals or Mormon assemblies. A ward is also just "an
electoral district or unit of local government."

Also, in states that allow direct democracy (initiatives, recalls, and referendums) wards could introduce legislation or work with representatives to develop it more thoughtfully. In Oregon, a ward system would have helped us to avoid the Measure 37 debacle. Measure 37 was a citizen initiative (these usually bypass professional lawmakers) and a foolish and damaging over-correction to our admittedly stringent land-use policies. It reminded us of the benefits of a rigorous and synergistic legislative process. (Professional lawmakers are not useless!) Not only would a ward system have developed a more sensible measure, but less impulsive ward-bred voters would never have voted for it.

Reason number 2 - A ward system would reduce the influence of moneyed interests. By magnifying the effect of informed citizenship, fewer people will be swayed by fear mongering, shallow campaign slogans, and spurious arguments that corporations, unions, and wealthy ideologues use so effectively now. Measure 37 appealed to us because it purported to protect individual rights, but the people who were truly in a position to benefit were large-scale developers. These moneyed interests will at least have to make better arguments that appeal to a broader range of people if they are to successfully sway whole groups of citizen-voters.

To flex our political muscles we have to build some!

"But wait," you say, "This sounds like a lot of work." True, there will potentially be more effort involved. Some of us will undoubtedly continue to "phone it in" and engage very little in the process. Sometimes our life circumstances will even require it. That's OK. Those votes will count just as much as anyone else's within a ward, but for those ward-members who have the time and inclination they can profitably put in a lot more effort to influencing the voters in their ward. This may sound scary if you would rather stay at home and not be involved, but remember that your ward's vote still "only" counts for 1000 votes. Even if some whackjob liberal down the street from you is putting in WORK at your ward he will still only have a relatively small influence.

A lone sheep is a dead sheep.
Let's put our heads together!

And that's exactly the point. The people who will really lose are those associated with the big money that is running politics right now. It won't be feasible for them to "infiltrate" each of the 2000-plus wards that would be set up in Oregon in order to influence elections. They are happy to profit from the current system where citizenship is diffuse and money can be poured into your TV screen with great effect. But if you can easily go down to your ward to hear different points of view on a particular issue you are much less likely to default into thinking about issues in the simplistic ways that the super PACs define them. So right now you can influence politics inordinately if you have money, but in a ward system you will be able to influence politics inordinately with your sweat. That seems much more American, don't you think?

It doesn't have to be this way.

Reason number 3 - It will bring our country together politically. Politics is not considered good dinner conversation, but don't you think grown-ups should learn how to talk productively about sensitive issues? I bet we would see that although "tea partiers" and "occupiers" certainly have their differences, they have much more in common than we have been led to believe. In fact, in a ward democracy these movements probably wouldn't exist because the underlying issues would already have been addressed. We should view these movements as symptoms of our society's political dysfunction, rather than viable cures. I'm sure there will be some irritating ideologues in every ward (occasionally I'll probably be one of them), but I imagine a lot more people from the "busy majority" will be represented. In addition, these wards could foster much needed social cohesion at a local level. Rather than driving across town to commiserate with people who think exactly like we do in our clubs, activist groups, and churches, we will learn to relate, really relate, with our neighbors again. We will be able to see that the vast majority of pro-lifers or pro-choicers are rational, lovable people who grasp the thorniness of such issues much better than we would think. On most of these controversial issues we only ever listen to the radically cocksure minority. Then we hastily demonize entire thought categories because of their most vocal representatives. This silly ignorance is best diffused by providing people with the opportunity to confront the "demons" in all of their complexity.

Reason number 4 - Honesty would be better rewarded among those who hope to be leaders. Right now we the people are looking for a political savior. Our desperation is growing palpable and our ears are itching to hear the bold and sweeping promises of someone supremely confident and ostensibly competent who is faster than a speeding earmark, more powerful than a filibuster, and able to leap tall corporations in a single bound. We flit around from charismatic figure to charismatic figure hoping to be swept off our feet by another Abraham Lincoln. (Happy 203rd bro!) But as anyone on the dating scene will tell you, brash confidence looks attractive at first but usually veils a lack of substance. While we are obsessing over the latest Mr. "Political" Universe, all of the more contemplative and reflective (though less telegenic and self-assured) candidates realize that it makes more sense for them to just stay home. And when the veil is lifted we will once again find ourselves on our backs looking up at Lucy, duped again.

Warding Off Political Apathy - Part 1

Would you like to recreate this scene in your neighborhood?

In this election cycle Republicans have to be more conscientious than ever about saying that they will reduce the "size" of government. They might even have to mean it. I heard Mr. Gingrich make such a promise a few primaries ago in Johnston, Iowa. In exchange for reduced government however, he asked something of us: increased citizenship. Whether or not you think government needs to be downsized, most of us can probably agree that citizenship has waned substantially in our country and may be at an all time low. It's hard to imagine how JFK could tell us just 50 years ago not to ask what our country can do for us, but what we can do for our country. Does that sentiment even make sense to us anymore? Our country should be able to take care of itself right?

Is my ballot in there anywhere?

My own lack of engaged citizenship has disturbed me for a long time. The primary problem is motivation. I feel incredibly distant from government power and my vote seems like little more than a token. It is discouraging to think how much hard work would be required to fully grasp the complexity of the many political challenges we face and then watch that hard work swallowed up by giant bins full of other ballots cast by people who think that political discernment is absorbed passively from cable news shows.

I guess he ran for NASCAR president too.

Maybe the enormous population growth in our society has alienated us from our government in ways we need to counteract. Consider the following: John Quincy Adams won* the 1824 presidential election with 113,122 votes. John McCain lost the 2008 election because he only got 60,000,000 votes. For every American that successfully elected JQA there were 530 who couldn't quite get it done for McCain 184 years later. It is astounding to think how small our electorate was in the good old days. There were fewer votes cast in that election than there are voting-age citizens in Multnomah County today! Back then, it seems to me, our efforts to understand the issues would really have paid off. Discussing and debating issues with those around us could really have an influence on an election, even at a national level. Now it just seems like an exercise in futility or pedantry depending on who you are talking with. People who "know" about politics these days are probably much more likely to be lunatic ideologues rather than the conscientious, wise, humble, and creative citizens we need.

So here's my plan to fix all that.

Ready?

It's simple:

Give up your vote. Rather than voting individually we can unite together and vote collectively. We would divide our country into equal sized wards of say 1000 people. These wards would have regular meetings, discussions, and rules of order. Each ward could cast one vote on any issues that we vote on currently: ballot measures, representatives, bonds, levies, as well as mayors, governors, and presidents.

 Who has time to fill out ballots? Can't I just "phone it in"
like I do for DWTS? Text "citizenship is dead" to
20500 to vote for Barack or Sara

This might sound like a radical, anti-democratic ploy by a half-baked, half-educated half-wit. Well…I’ll only deny the first bit of that…because really this is not such a radical idea. These wards would be democratic, so I’m not really asking you to give up your vote. In fact, I hope to amplify it. This is a tactic that states have been using for a long time. For example, in Oregon we expressed a slight preference for Obama in the last election, but we gave him all of our electoral votes so that we could maximize our influence on a federal level. At this point, state populations have grown so large that it would be helpful for us to have more manageable civic units so that politics could be thought of as a social enterprise again rather than a smattering of inchoate private preferences that we’d better not discuss with the in-laws. Take another look at the School of Athens painting by Rafael and imagine they are discussing political issues. It seems like truly democratic people shouldn't just be driving to the library twice a year to drop off their ballot, but should be lounging in some public square now and then to discuss their ideas with friends, acquaintances, and even strangers.

If you don't like my plan then Socrates
thinks you're an idiot.

When I think of the democracies I would most like to have been a part of I think of small polities where political discourse is not limited to a handful of demagogues, talking heads, and television pundits, but truly involves everyone. Perhaps this has never existed in the way that I idealize it, but I think it is much more likely to have existed in smaller sociopolitical assemblages like ancient Athens, some Native American tribes, the Republic of Venice, or a Swiss forest canton. In these smaller civic units I think it must have been much harder to disengage from politics. I believe that a ward system would draw us out from our private delusions and force us to expose them and refine them. Just like a flabby stomach, we are much more likely to tone up our political thinking if we know someone is going to be checking it out. Let's dare to make this "res publica" a truly public thing again. And while we're on word derivations, let me remind you that the word “idiotes” in Greek was originally the word for a private person, someone who didn’t participate in public life.

Anyway, I decided to break this post up. In the second half I will enumerate more specifically what I believe to be the benefits of this "ward system" of democracy...or maybe if I could just find some people to talk to about politics I could stop blogging entirely.

Politics is a Game. Money is How They Keep Score.

Vote for Teddy this year! You won't hear this from anyone else.

It is not my intention that this should be a political blog. This was conceived of as a no-niche blog and hopefully once I get all this political stuff off my chest I can get back writing about what I know best: nothing in particular.
  
Though my last post may have convinced you otherwise, I readily admit that autocracy is not a good idea. It may be more palatable when it is headed by dynastic monarchs rather than upstart demagogues, but either way the ride is going to be bumpy. But in America the ride is getting pretty bumpy right now anyway, don't you think?
  
So, having briefly considered the festering abscess that is Russian politics, I would like to turn briefly to the ingrown hair that is American democracy. Our problems are much fewer, but they may be growing worse. I ventured to argue in my last post that Russian politics is attracting the wrong kind of politician. Any unbiased observer of the current Republican presidential hopefuls would likely agree that we have a similar problem. This is not because Republicans are all complete tools. There are many intelligent conservatives (as well as liberals) who would do our country a lot of good if they were running things. But none of them are foolish enough to join the circus of casuistry (word for the day used here in its pejorative sense) that is bringing shame and international opprobrium to our country.

Good

Bad

As we consider the modern American political game I would like to draw a comparison from sports. You may know that I adore the game known as Ultimate. Many who know me would probably say that my adoration looks a lot like obsession so I risk carrying a good deal of bias into this analogy. Anyway, since its inception in the late 1960s Ultimate has gone through eleven editions of its rulebook to make the game more fun, fair, and safe for players and spectators. As an example, one of those rules is known as the Principle of Verticality. This gives you the right to the airspace directly above you. Anyone in your airspace who makes contact with you is committing a foul. This principle helps both to diminish the likelihood of injury and to prevent tall people from having too many advantages. Sports are much more fun to watch and participate in when skill and effort are rewarded more than size or height. 

"If I had a hammer, I'd open BLM 
lands for my gas fracking buddies 
all over this land." - Dick Cheney

Our political system is in need of a similar rule. It increasingly favors one political virtue above all others: money. You need it to run. You need it to win. Unwillingness or inability to obsess over money means that qualified leaders of every political stripe are less likely than ever to end up on TV answering questions from Brian Williams. Instead, our system is encouraging more and more fame-starved nincompoops to run for office probably because they weren't lucky enough to get on a reality show. More likely it is because they are the only people foolish enough to run our country exactly the way well-financed interests would like it run. These people are "tools" in the traditional sense I suppose, being unwittingly exploited by others to accomplish a task. For example, maybe oil companies don't have a hard enough fist to punch fracking deregulation through Congress, but once they can get a grip on the right hammer they will have no trouble. 

To borrow another sports analogy, it's kind of like the LA Lakers buying the "tool" of Shaquille O'Neal (an enormous man with limited basketball ability) in order to dominate the NBA for a few years. It doesn't really seem right that a man who is a worse free throw shooter than me should be making millions of dollars missing them on national television while winning the NBA finals. Perhaps the rules of the game need to be changed if the highest bidder buying the biggest oaf will win the games. The NBA will not likely make rules that help favor smaller more talented players (I guess because there are plenty of tall talented players), but they definitely need better salary cap rules so that teams can't just buy championships.

This is a visual representation of Senator Ben Nelson (D)
Nebraska trying to develop useful legislation.

Back to politics. The current rules on a variety of money related issues are changing the kind of people that we can elect and the bedfellows they must keep. The LA Lakers in the current scheme are multinational corporations which are now able to wield political influence in ways our Founding Fathers could never have dreamed. The rest of us are the Milwaukee Bucks, unable to win many games as long as the playing field is tilted in favor of larger market cities. We can't get good players (i.e. candidates) because we can't afford them. Instead we have to watch the Lakers, Celtics, Knicks, Heat, and Bulls choose who the winners will be. I don't pretend to understand the shadowy relationships between PACs, 527 groups, and 501 groups, but their combined use by candidates since the Supreme Court's Citizen's United ruling last year (and a subsequent D.C. circuit court ruling) results in a completely new campaign finance structure, which allows corporations to bankroll political candidates to their hearts content without ever sullying their reputation by having to reveal it to the public. Allowing corporations to anonymously fund candidates in this way is already having enormous consequences. 

As Lawrence Lessig pointed out in his recent C-span interview (and, I suppose, in his new book which I am waiting on at the library), fundraising has become so important to political success that it not only determines the outcome of the elections but has become what distinguishes candidates for perks and promotion within their party. Talent, leadership, ideas, and loyalty to voters in your district are far less important to your success than loyalty to those who donate to your campaign. This conflict of interest is now determining the kind of politician who can be successful. Fundraising rather than policy is what a new generation of politician thinks about, talks about, and relies upon. Long-serving Congressman Jim Cooper from Tennessee says that when he sits down with the Democratic Policy Committee in Congress they don't really talk about policy anymore. They mostly talk about fundraising. 

To $$$$$$$$$$ and beyond

I even heard one of the Republican campaign managers (can't remember which one) say that he too was worried about the rising influence of PACs. His concern was that with money being funneled straight to candidates it could altogether bypass political parties making them irrelevant. Although I am no fan of either party, that kind of radical change frightens me. Can you imagine what Ultimate would be like if some players were getting jet packs from an observer with a stake in which team won or lost? Certain players could fly all over the field and the Brodie Smiths of the world could do nothing about it. The Principle of Verticality wouldn't matter anymore because the jet pack gang could catch the disc without any worry of making contact with a player underneath. Similarly, the rules limiting and requiring disclosure about campaign financing are being nullified by Super-PAC jet packs. So this Republican primary debacle we are all watching is only ostensibly about politicians trying to impress us. More truthfully the presidential contenders are trying to impress the jet pack distributers.

Every political system filters out the vast majority of candidates for political office. The way this occurs in Russia, the US, or anywhere else is different and depends on a wide variety of factors. No country's filtration system is perfect and rarely are the traits needed for successful campaigning ideal when it comes to leading. Though I don't advocate aristocracy, monarchy, or the rule of philosopher-kings I do agree with Plato on at least this point: There are a class of people in every society that surely would make great leaders, but have little motivation to run for office.

Coming soon...everywhere!

Unfortunately, those people are currently farther than ever from wanting to join the farcical political sphere and less likely than ever to be allowed in. The problem isn't that Americans are too dumb to elect a good candidate. The problem is that they will never be allowed to elect a good candidate because good (thoughtful, perceptive, principled) candidates can't get the traction required to be admitted onto a ballot. Our political game currently honors fundraising ability above all other qualities. So let me join the new chorus of voices (Lessig, Catherine Crier, and even a reformed "Casino" Jack Abramoff are the ones I have run across purely by chance in the last month.) saying that we must change the rules (specifically campaign finance, corporate personhood, and the revolving door) if we want to avoid trading our democracy in for plutocracy or perhaps something we should call "corporocracy." Hopefully enough focused cheerleading by we the people can convince the players to call a timeout and change the rules.

The King is Dead. Long Live the King

Pick a card!

The end of my last post alluded to the difficulties Americans have had in selecting the best candidates for elected office. Against my better judgement I have since started four different blog posts related to this topic and hope to release them for thee (I don't think my readership is plural yet) to read in the near future. The final one will include a proposal for a new form of democracy that I hope would engage more people in politics and mitigate the influence of money. Bold move, I know. 

Obviously, democracy is far from flawless in producing great leaders. You don't get to vote for an Abraham Lincoln every time you go to the polls. In the West we tend to think of democracy as one of our highest ideals, the culmination of the slow and bloody march of lady freedom against the sons of tyranny. While I admit that I tend to agree with this view, I think it is important to explore democracy's shortcomings. Blind allegiance to some of our most precious institutions is probably what keeps us from tinkering with and improving them. So in this post I would like explore some of the unappreciated qualities of democracy's long-derided wicked step-father: hereditary monarchy.

Still angry after all these years.

Democracy has been around ever since "Occupy the Acropolis" 508BC. Athenian activists only needed three days to overthrow the system and give Isagoras the boot. They established a democracy, which lasted for almost 200 years until Alexander the Great popped in for a visit. However, long before this Athenian luminaries such as Plato were already sour on rule by the people. According to Plato the biggest problem with rule by the people is the people. Perhaps he was just bitter because five hundred of the people (an Athenian jury) condemned his beloved teacher Socrates to death. But after tasting the bitter cup of watching Socrates drink his bitter cup you could excuse Plato for likening the people to a mob, too easily swayed by rhetoric and demagoguery. 

The other problem with democracy is that the people with the desire and ability to get elected aren't the ones most qualified to rule. In Plato's mind the best rulers would have been the philosophers, who were breathing the easy air of Platonic reality. Unfortunately, when these people move out of Plato's "cave" they acquire wisdom enough to avoid the meretricious charms of political power. 

A new way to kill time. An old way to be governed.

The reluctance of qualified leaders to seek office is a problem that is hard to deal with. Old school hereditary monarchy has some benefits in this regard that alternatives like democracy can't often produce, and Plato would probably agree. Democracies are ruled almost exclusively by a class of men and women who are good at rhetoric and persuasion, sophists rather than philosophers. That could be a problem, especially if you have any doubts about the morality or character of that class of men. Monarchies on the other hand have produced a dazzling array of political leaders: sophists, philosophers, and idiots of every imaginable kind. Despite the risk of bad eggs and the potential of power going to one's head, there have also been many benevolent and forward-looking monarchs. Plato thought philosopher-kings should be trained from birth partly because they would never go into politics otherwise. If Plato is right then perhaps the only way an enlightened philosopher has ever been coerced into accepting political power was by the accident of being born to a king. Monarchy is a game of roulette producing a random assortment of leaders because, as Chesterton noted in this essay, you will never find a more dazzling array of personalities than a random sampling of your own blood relatives.

Give me your diabolical, your compromised, your
huddled asses yearning to scheme freely. 

If you still find hereditary monarchy completely odious, it is worth carefully considering the alternatives we have tried since the toppling of the ancien règime 200 years ago. For example, when Russia switched its authoritarianism from a hereditary to an ideological variety almost 100 years ago, they signed a social contract far worse than the one they broke. The last hundred years has proved their error. They have experienced democratization, economic reform, revolution, and the collapse of their communist empire but Russia is still sleeping in the political bed it made during the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Communism in Russia has produced the wrong kind of welfare system, one that provides political jobs for men with impoverished morals. If you aren't up for shady dealing, you'd better find another career. People who really care about Russia, like say a Solzhenitsyn, will never get anywhere near the levers of power. 

There were supposedly three bullets in this gun. Russia
should be so lucky.

If Monarchy is like a roulette table, modern Russian politics might be closer to Russian roulette. There's not much to win, but a lot to lose. In Russian roulette you have a one in six chance of getting a bullet in your brain. Not the worst odds, but it could be worse. In post-revolutionary Russia it is worse. You have more like a three in six chance of having a psycho in charge who will put bullets in many peoples' brains. In Tsarist Russia you were at least as likely to get a "the Great" as you were a "the Terrible." But since going Tsarless Russians have endured Lenin the Terrible, Stalin the Atrocious, Khrushchev the Less Repressive, Brezhnev the Megalomilitant©, Gorbachev the Pretty-good, Yeltsin the In-over-his-head, and Putin the Unscrupulous Macho-Man. Voting is not enough to undo the damage that has been done. The primary problem is that the kind of person you have to be to succeed in Russian politics precludes almost everyone who is actually qualified. Gorbachev seems to me like the best hope of Russia during this period, but his reforms were stymied by the hosts of lower-level apparatchiks, promoted I assume for their willingness to collude with the corrupt establishment.

"Fine," you say, "but that's not really an argument against democracy." I will address that in my next post, but for now I just want to show that political systems can be much worse than hereditary monarchy if they demand and engrain appalling character traits in their leadership structure top to bottom. Monarchies at least introduce a little festive randomness at the top. How much worse off would Russia be now if not just the top job, but every political job was hereditary? It sounds a little medieval, but if this rule was enforced it would stymie the development of entrenched, corrupt political cultures because of all the randomness in successive office-holders. I admit there are many shortcomings to this idea, like potential political disfunction, incompetence, and the establishment of a separate class of citizens, so it won't be reappearing in my fourth post about a new kind of democracy. However, I doubt it would be much worse than many of the "democracies" in the world today.