Not a Good Feeling.
By amba | Related entries in General PoliticsIrrelevance.
But that’s how it feels to be a centrist these days.
Emotion drives politics, as it does so much else in human life, and the old grudge match between Democrats and Republicans has flared up so hot and high and bright that it’s blinding everyone to everything else. This conflict is rooted in some of the oldest ruts in the American brain. There’s not much left of useful substance to it — since each side owns a part of the truth and only by working together, in fruitful friction, could they put it back together — but there is hereditary loyalty, personal hatred, territory, and power at stake. Even if it’s destructive and empty, as idiotic as a tug-of-war in a silent comedy, the conflict is irresistibly riveting.
In America we proceed by extremes. This is as true in our political life as in our sexual life, where we swing all the way from prudery to prurience and back again. It’s frustrating because it’s so reflexive and brainless (or what cortex there is is propagandist for the passions). It’s exciting for the same reason.
Only charisma (as in McCain or, later, Obama) can banish the fatal dullness of good sense. So this political cycle will get interesting for centrists only if someone with both wits and wattage plays the old game well enough to earn the luxury of transcending it.
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September 8th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Talking about American extremes, what about our odd relationship to alcohol: we either shun it, or pour it down our throats. We need competence in American government, not the evanscent bright light in a pink necktie. To push the alcohol metaphor another step, we need to be able to down one or two, then push the glass away to reflect. The brain before the mouth, the republic before the hype.
September 8th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
The enemy of moderates in politics is our election system, particularly the primaries.
1. Voter turnout in primaries is usually very small, and the people who are most likely to vote tend to be the more passionate, extreme voters. Hence in any contested primary, the more extreme candidate has an automatic advantage.
2. Many moderates do not ascribe to a particular party, voting more on issues or personality than party. Hence, they often cannot vote in either primary election, and thus lose their voice in choosing either candidate.
The solution to this is to abolish the primary system and move to open elections, where anyone who is capable of meeting the requirements (petition signatures, age, nationality, etc.) can get on the ballot.
In addition, we need to move to a more sophisticated voting paradigm, of which there are at least a half dozen that better select the true candidate of choice of the majority than the current method. I’m not familiar with the system names, but one I recall allows for instant runoffs, by having the voter to sort candidates in order of preference. Everyone’s #1 vote is tallied, and then the candidate with the least votes is eliminated, and now the #2 vote of everyone who had him/her as #1 is counted in the instant runoff, and so on. This system seriously marginalizes the whackjob candidates, an admirable goal.
Finally, the electoral college needs to be eliminated and the president elected by popular vote. This has the effect of making the presidential election about more than just a half dozen battleground states, and makes the candidates have to appeal to ALL voters, not just swing state voters.
I think these three changes would be sufficient to make a huge shift towards the middle in politics, or at least to ditch the rabid Santorum types.
Of course it doesn’t address the issue of money in politics, which is at least as important as the above changes. The main changes we need there (imo) are:
1. No lobbyist should be allowed to contribute to any political campaign, or be associated with fundraisers for any political campaign. If someone is asking you for something, they shouldn’t be allowed to use the leverage of having earned your campaign several million dollars to influence your decision.
2. Earmarks should either be done away with completely or at the very least changed to be nearly impossible to slip through without review. Last minute late night legislation should not be allowed. Tacking on issues unrelated to the main bill should be much more difficult or impossible to do, or at least easier to reverse.
3. Elections should be publicly funded. I never was a fan of this idea before, but the cost of elections is so high these days that it’s nearly impossible to win an election without selling out. The main difficulty is deciding who gets funded, and with how much money.
4. The government should pass a balanced budget amendment which prevents them from spending beyond their budget. If you need to spend more, say, for Katrina or an unnecessary war, you would HAVE to raise taxes to pay for it rather than mortgaging the country’s future.
So, any comments on this? Flames? Agreement?
September 8th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Just thought of an interesting possible use for a modified primary election – ratification of candidates to go to the general election.
However, instead of being associated with a particular party, there would be a single election, and everyone who wants to be in the main election would be listed.
Candidates who get enough “interest” from voters would be ratified as candidates for the main election. That could be defined as a certain number of votes in a traditional voting system, or could even be a different kind of voting, such as, “Do you want to see this person on the ballot (y/n)?” for each candidate, and everyone could weigh in on every candidate.
This would be a means of getting rid of the “no chance in hell” candidates, and pare down the ballot to make it less complicated for voters in the main election (remember the hundred or so candidates on the CA ballot that elected Schwarzenegger?). In addition, the level of interest candidates receive in the primary could be used to determine public funding levels for their campaign.
September 8th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
Granted that the low turnout in the primaries tends to give the extremes a larger voice than they might get otherwise. But what is to prevent moderates, people who vote on candidates rather than party, from registering for a party and then bestirring themselves and voting?
I routinely end up with a split ticket in the general election, but I get to vote on candidates in the primary because I am willing to register as a “member” of a party. The only down-side to being this kind of party member is . . . a small increase in the amount of fund-raising junk mail. Which, of course, I am free toss straight into the recycling.
If more of us in the center took the trouble to do so, and then voted, the quality (not to mention moderation) of the candidates in the general election would be much improved.
September 8th, 2006 at 11:12 pm
The only trouble with that, wj, is that sometimes you want to weigh in on a primary of one party, sometimes of the other; in which case you have to go to the bureaucratic bother of changing your registration.