Fixing Democracy

It may have been just an opium dream, but I have figured out the way to fix democracy.

Courtesy: photos4travel.com

(CALGARY, Alberta) - There’s a piece going around the internet these days—I received it twice in the last week—allegedly written by Charley Reese who was reportedly a journalist for forty-nine years. It’s called “545 people”.

His argument is simple. The problem with politics is the politicians. He begins by saying: “Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.”

His main point: “One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million who are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.”

Charley Reese can’t have been much of a journalist because he totally misses the reality: none of those people elect themselves! So, it’s the voters themselves who are “directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country”.

On the ground, the problem is not the politicians at all, but the voters. My first inclination is to suggest that democracy needs better informed voters. A couple of centuries ago, only property holders could vote. Today, should the equivalent be that only persons with a certain amount of education or more be given the franchise? It sounds enticing until we recall that William F. Buckley once said: “I'd rather be ruled by the first hundred names in the Cambridge phone book than by the faculty of Harvard University.” What nonsense. On a nationwide scale that’s what Americans have now.

In the war of words between fundamentalist religious folk and secularists who believe in evolution, the religionists have come up with their version of Creationism called Intelligent Design. The secularist response is to point at the world itself, and say, “what’s intelligent about the world around us?”

My friend and colleague Henry Clay Ruark, in extolling the virtues of the American political system refers regularly to the “wisdom of the American people.” With all due respect, and I hope he is not offended, I take the secularist-equivalent position and, pointing to the disarray and dysfunctionalism of American politics, (what Reese decried), I ask a similar question: Looking at what the American people have done with democracy over the last century, I wonder—“Where’s the wisdom, in that?”

The Fix

The problem with politics are the voters on one side—easy prey for pandering; and politicians on the other side—easy prey for corruption. Neither of these human attitudes can be changed or eliminated, so I suggest the solution is to change the dynamic between the two.

Have voters not vote for their own senators and representatives. Here’s how it would work.

The people of Oregon would vote for the politicians to serve in, say, Arizona. Arizona would vote for Louisiana, and so forth.

If the Arizona candidates were campaigning in Oregon, they couldn’t promise Oregonians anything. The Oregonians would vote on the basis of who they thought were the best people to serve Arizonans. And the system would not allow for any reciprocity where Arizonans, for example, would vote for Oregonian politicians so that political back scratching would be eliminated.

Here’s why I think a scheme like this could work: It would harness the fundamental goodwill of the American people. Oregonians would be attempting to place the best possible people in office in Arizona. If any incompetent or corrupt politicians were elected, it would reflect badly on the Oregonians and the Arizonans would rightly resent feel anger towards Oregonians, so Oregonians would be motivated to be the best they can be. (Who said that?)

Some bad apples would slip through, but that would be acceptable as long as the vast majority of those elected did a good or superior job.

When it came time for re-election, the elected representatives for Arizona would have to convince the Oregonians that they had done a good job for Arizona.

A critic can point out any number of logistical problems with this idea but, setting them aside, it’s the idea itself that I think is workable. Or, some variation.

But, this is something that the American people will have to do themselves, because virtually no politician will undertake anything that might endanger or dilute his or her political power.

This could be the basis for the Second American Revolution—a revolution of Americans against their own political straitjackets.

There is an old saying—Insanity is doing the same things over and over but expecting different results. Unless the American people start doing things differently, how are things going to change or ever get better? The rationale for my argument is in the first 29 words of the Constitution.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare…

In 233 years, is there today a “more perfect Union”?

Is there “domestic Tranquillity”?

With manufactured wars in the middle East, is there a provision for “the common defence”?

And, with a demonstrably unfair tax system that allows 400 people to control wealth or assets of $1.5 trillion making the United States the least egalitarian industrial society in the world, is there a promotion for “the general Welfare”.

Thinking Americans need to rise up and cast off the chains of outmoded ideologies. American democracy all those years ago was touted to be an experiment in democracy. It’s time to grow up and realize that the experiment failed, and replace it with another.

As a Canadian, I have a stake in this. America affects every nation in the world, and Canada not least of all.

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Daniel Johnson was born near the midpoint of the twentieth century in Calgary, Alberta. In his teens he knew he was going to be a writer, which explains why he was one of only a handful of boys in his high school typing class—a skill he knew was going to be necessary. He defines himself as a social reformer, not a left winger, the latter being an ideological label which, he says, is why he is not an ideologue, although a lot of his views could be described as left-wing. He understands that who he is, is largely defined by where he came from. The focus for Daniel’s writing came in 1972. After a trip to Europe he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia. Alberta, and Calgary in particular, was extremely conservative Bible Belt country, more like Houston than any other Canadian city (a direct influence of the oil industry). Two successive Premiers of the province, from 1935 to 1971, had been Baptist evangelicals with their own weekly Sunday radio program—Back to the Bible Hour, while in office. In Alberta everything was distorted by religion.

Although he had published a few pieces (unpaid) in the local daily, the Calgary Herald, it was not until 1975 that he could actually make a living from journalism when, from 1975 to 1981 he was reporter, photographer, then editor of the weekly Airdrie Echo. For more than ten years after that he worked with Peter C. Newman (1979-1993), Canada’s top business writer (notably a series of books, The Canadian Establishment). Through this period Daniel also did some national radio and TV broadcasting with the CBC. You can write to Daniel at: Salem-News@gravityshadow.com