Interesting. Only Nixon can go to China; only a Democrat can shrink government?
Here's the answer: between bouts of heavy drinking, which I'll agree are well-warranted, figure out a way to run for office and win without compromising or abandoning your principles, in a climate in which winning depends almost exclusively upon your capacity for mere image construction and pandering. I know some Democrats who are working on that one, too. Until then, it seems likely to me that the nation's leaders will tend to be imagey pander-pants, regardless of which party they're in.
Maybe the answer is a new electorate?
While you're at it, any chance you can have the "party base" redefined in some other than culturally conservative terms? I might be able to rejoin if you did.
One quibble over terms: it wasn't compassion that turned this government "big"; it was 9/11. There's no reason you can't shrink government compassionately. Until that awful day, I had hopes this government would do exactly that. Don't you conservatives still claim, and claim because you believe, that smaller government is better for the poor? Maybe you want "law-and-order world-police conservative" in that slot next to "big." But then, to be fair to Bush, even a Gore government would likely have taken that turn under those same circumstances.
I think we can all share the hope that those dreadful circumstances won't be a factor again, and maybe even agree that any President who wants a mandate to shrink government needs to convince us of his or her compassion, hopefully by having it.
Cheers,
Pervious
Maybe the answer is a new electorate?
I was actually going to write a bit about the electorate, but the post was big enough as is. I tend to agree with Ramesh Ponnuru that the thesis of The Right Nation is completely backwards. It is social rather than economic conservatism that is an easier sell to the populace. People talk a good game, but when it comes to pork, it seems there is something like reverse NIMBY at play, or what I like to call OIMBY - Only in my backyard. That means we're willing to cut spending in the abstract, but not when our own interests are affected.
Then again, I wonder how important pork is really to the electorate. Would Don Young's re-election really be at risk if we were to de-fund those bridges to nowhere? Each Congressional constituency contains roughly 600,000 people, of which somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 will vote. How many of those are really clamoring for these big pork projects and will cast their vote because of these issues? Perhaps this is a study for some nerdy quantitative political scientist - figure out the x-voter who will cast his or her vote due to pork spending. Something tells me that if politicians really wanted to cut into spending, it wouldn't be as destructive to their electoral chances as they lead us to believe.
As to compassionate conservatism - short answer, no, it has little to do with September 11, but I think I will expand on the point in one of my future "American conservatism" posts. (see below)
This post dovetails with "Random Musings..." from a couple of days ago, so I won't go into the gerrymandering argument again. (Sounds like we are in agreement that political gerrymandering is as damaging to the Republic as racial gerrymandering ever was.) As critical as that issue is, I'd like to follow up with some practical things we can actually do.
1) Volunteer to work the polls. I was the campaign manager for a state-house candidate in 2000 and was amazed at how loosely the election rules are enforced. Usually it is a bunch of older folks who have been doing this for a long time. Candidates send pizza to the poll-workers, hand out literature at the door of polling places, staple huge signs on the polling building, and "help" the elderly and incompetent vote with special instructions before they go into the booth. I've even seen false "palmers" substituted by the workers of opposing candidates and outright intimidation by thugs. There is a lot of work to be done here by honest persons and it will only cost you one or two days every two years.
2) Join your local committee. I can't speak for every place, but politics in Southeastern Pennsylvania is run by a couple of local committees that are, in turn, run by old, arrogant, and incompetent hacks. They get together quarterly and then require known politicos to prostate themselves before the committee so that they can get a meaningless endorsement. These old hacks have GOT to go.
3) Convince honest persons to run for local elections. It drives me nuts to see the ballot filled with positions for which a large number of candidates are running unopposed. (I'd say run yourselves, but I would be an hypocrite since I can't do so. I am a Civil Servant.)
4) Volunteer for election watchdog groups. It is amazing how much the rats that actually pull the strings of officials fear the light of day. Watchdog groups NEED lawyers on their staffs since they are horribly outgunned by the two parties.
Finally, lets keep our sense of humor about all this. Fact is, politicians have ever been characterized as criminals and liers. Nonetheless, there are a lot of good ones among their ranks. Our Republic has a lot of residual strength in it and we are nowhere close to a point from which we cannot redeem it.
You mean my obligations as a concerned citizen go beyond sporadic, ill-informed voting and being an internet blow-hard? Crap.
My own engagement is the only solution I'm fairly sure I can deliver, though my ambitions therefrom fall plenty short of the nation's redemption. Thank you for that list, and thank you for your service.
I read the gerrymandering/apathy discussion. I believe the reason politicians didn't show any real leadership, on Katrina, say, was that instead of doing that (maybe believing they were doing that) they met in their respective warrooms to decide how to play this, with the goal of winning the next election, and not of helping the country, except to the extent that they're convinced that their winning will be a help.
You have to engage in such base crap, politicizing and playing everything, to win elections. Speak your mind, address policies in a real way, you tank. Want to pass a real, meaningful piece of legislation? Pray like hell it doesn't get in the papers.
You have to get in the warroom and play everything: Is that a perception or a reality? What are the prospects, really, of changing it, whichever it is?
Pervious- What we know of the lead-up to Katrina seems to support your analysis.
As best I can gather, Mayor Nagel and the Gov. were quite happy with the orderly evacuation of NO. So, when the Bush administration offered to take over the operation, they were not inclined to hand over what was, seemingly, a successful operation.
After Katrina rolled through, and the fact that 1/3 of the city had been left behind (admittedly, many by their own choice) the Administration was less inclined to take over the operation. The "war-room" wanted it when it was a success and fell back on Federalism as the justification for doing nothing when the breadth of the disaster was becoming clear.
Then, a third turn, the Administration began to draw heat for its failure to respond and so, reengaged.
Note, in none of this do I mention race or political affiliation or economics. It was, as you say and I believe, political maneuvering in its most raw form. Much to everyone's discredit, I seriously doubt that anyone even considered the people left behind, their race, their politics, their class... all of these factors were completely irrelevant because claiming or disclaiming the handling was more important.
As to your question as to whether we can change this kind of reasoning, I think that we can. Politics is, first and foremost, a human enterprise and, therefore infinately maleable. Fortunately, our Constitution does not dictate the form or substance of our political life, only the structure and limits of our government.
It does not presume parties, though I would suggest that the readiness with which the Framers formed parties stomps the argument that Washington's warning against them was taken seriously by his compatriates. It (the Constitution) does not necessitate the selection of politicos to run departments, the use of polls to determine policy, the control over the electorate that state assemblies have, or the incestuous road to high office that we permit.
These things are our creation and, therefore, can be demolished by our engagement in the process.
I am suggesting that we need to start local. The root of the problem is that local comittees in both parties determine who will be candidates for positions like County Commissioner, Mayor, District Attorney, State Assemblymen, and a host of other posts. The candidates are typically drawn from the ranks of hacks who pay homage to the party and are, almost always, desparately seeking validation through their membership. You wouldn't hire them, but the local Com. will select them.
By infiltrating these local Com., we can invite competent people who may have never even thought about a political life. Just as companies that don't recruit must fail, our political system must fail without recruitment. So, over time, selecting good candidates for local offices will seed the field of higher office with good candidates.
THIS is revolution. Revolution is not the "taking t
DAMN HALOSCAN...
THIS is revolution. Revolution is not the "taking to the streets" of the far Left or the mountains of literature from the far Right. These things are so much "fruitless energy spent." Revolution is the cutting of the root and institution of something new. In this case, it is a direct assault on the local Com. system.
I'll try to borrow your hope--not that a little thing like lack of hope should affect our determination regarding something so important. But I wonder how any of our little new plants will fare when they grow big enough to draw the strange light of mass media.
The good man who happens to be my father is fixing to run for state office here in Somewhere, Midwest, as a Republican, so it's likely that I'll get to test my will to engagement a lot, soon.
You're back east, I believe you said? Have you been following the Cory Booker story?
I've been there my friend. The State Assemblywoman Candidate of which I have spoken is my mother. A good woman of remarkable passion for the oppressed and disenfranchised. We came within 7 percentage points of a win against a 5 time incumbant with a war-chest and the support of a VERY competent Republican machine. We had him on the ropes and the win slipped through our fingers because of my own inexperience and a complete lack of support from our local party.
Just a post-mortem... My mother would have run again, but the redistricting put her 5 miles outside of the district in which she made so many waves and solidly within a district that made a run virtually impossible. She has no standing in the town that is now at the center of her district and all of our volunteers and support is in the city that is now ignored by the lap-assed incumbant that has ignored it for the last 24 years.
Such is politics.
I can't say it was a bad experience though. A real eye-opener, but not all bad.
Good luck.
As for Cory Booker, I haven't followed it with any care. I'll get back to you after digesting some more internet material.
1) People talk a good game, but when it comes to pork, it seems there is something like reverse NIMBY at play, or what I like to call OIMBY - Only in my backyard. That means we're willing to cut spending in the abstract, but not when our own interests are affected. . . . Then again, I wonder how important pork is really to the electorate.
The rub, as you have all nailed it, is twofold: an electorate that loves low spending in the abstract but wants its district and statewide share of federal dollars, and elected officials' desires to get re-elected. There is no easy solution here, especially when you consider that even the most ardent anti-government spending leaders this country has known, like Ronald Reagan, never advocated for outright spending cuts because they (all too easily) embraced the political reality of popular resistance to spending cuts.
Some things that would help:
a) If there were a president who were willing to use his (or her) leadership skills to take a PR hit by vetoing spending bills, or, even better, shaping congressional legislation in advance with the threat of a veto, spending might actually go down. While I am glad Bush is the president, he has admittedly abdicated on this front, which is unfortunate.
b) Revising the mission of OMB could go a long way toward reshaping and reducing government spending. Make it OMB's core mission to comb through federal appropriations in search of repetitive, obsolete, or excessively expensive programs that need to go, and then deliver on OMB's recommendations (rather than letting them sit in a drawer).
c) This idea is not exactly new, but . . . revive the term limits debate. Part of the problem is that elected officials (like the Congressional Class of 1994) lose their spending-cut zeal after spending too much time in government. It follows that a good way to make sure that zeal is maintained is to limit their time in power (i.e., before their zeal has a chance to wear off).
Whatever the means chosen, I think one thing needs to be grasped (and it has been ignored for years): that our Republic, which was founded as a grand experiment in democratic representation, may yet become a failed experiment if we recklessly spend ourselves into oblivion. We need to reject this idea that the nation is being deprived if expenditures drop from one year to the next. Once we conquer that psychological hurdle, a lot of other solutions may fall into place.
2) DS (and Pervious), I share your enthusiasm for the local electoral process and its potential to reshape things, but the problem is, it can be such slow-going. (You and I also share an inability to volunteer for political activity because my job forbids me from engaging in "partisan" activities . . . which is somewhat amusing, considering I work in a one-party town.)
I think GC has acurately hit upon the causes of the problem, i.e., the bottom line is the public likes government spending and opposes any real changes. Now this is not an irreversible position, but in my opinion, one debate the Republicans have never really won is the spending debate. Sure, they have won a few battles here and there, however, they haven't won the war yet and the last 11 years of a GOP House of Representatives makes it unlikely that they ever will.
While I agree with GC about the cause I do disagree with his proposed solutions.
1) OMB's mission was reshaped to do exactly what GC proposes during the Reagan Administration. You can argue that it hasn't worked or hasn't been backed by the necessary political will, but all regulation is cleared through OMB and is evaluated on a cost-benefit basis. ORIA, as the department is known, is a very powerful entity within the White House, even during the Clinton administration.
2) Federal term limits is, at best, a short term solution for a long term problem. Congress for better or worse is a seniority driven institution and has been since its inception. The GOP by limiting the term limits of its Committee Chairmen has gone about as far as possible with this notion and the results are mixed at best. As the saying goes "rank hath its privileges" and one of those is institutional knowledge. Term limits would destroy any sense of history and tradition from a body that is steeped in both, and for those of us close to the institution, we’ve already seen that happen at the staff level for years, and its not good. Noone knows history anymore, and those that do are few and far between. Now a lack of historical perspective can be a good thing sometimes as it encourages innovation and creative thinking, but it also has a price, which can lead to radical short term solutions instead of long-term strategic thinking about important policies. “ Why should I worry about that, it will just be someone else’s problem,” seems to me to not be what leaders should do under any circumstances. Besides this would take a constitutional amendment, and we all know how likely that is. Even those members that self-impose term limits end up breaking them because they realize how difficult it is to do anything in less than 5 terms.
Ugh... "in less than 5 terms"? Would that we all had 10 years before our employers expected performance.
Personally, I like the IDEA of term limits. 12 years in D.C. should do it. You know, 2 terms as senator or six terms as a representative or 1 term as senator and three as a rep... You get the idea.
Problem is, the Libertarians have been beating that drum for decades and have made no headway in even state assemblies. That tells me that the idea is a non-starter.
As for spending money we don't have, the alternative of living within a budget is no picinic either. In the 1990s, the penchant for saving money while continuing to legislate yielded a host of unfunded mandates. For the average taxpayer, the decrease of Federal taxes with a corresponding increase in State and local taxes is no great benefit.
Without an effort to trim the amount of new legislation coming off of the Hill, living within a budget is of almost no benefit. Of course, as y'all have pointed out, until we the people start doing for ourselves again, we will live with the crops that we sow.
The only way term limits would work is if you basically wiped the slate clean and everyone elected in say 2010 were to start from scratch. No senority, and therefore, no advanatages even for re-elected incumbents.
While this may be desireable in some sense it would likely be impossible on a practical level because even new members of Congress need time to figure out what the heck is going on around them. I don't think its a matter of waiting 10 years before expecting job performance, I think it matters what your criteria is. The standard for a newly elected "green" Rep. or Senator is going to be far lower than say a 4 or 5 term incumbent (2 or 3 in the Senate). Few, if any, rookie members get choice committtee assignments (i.e., appropriations, of Judiciary) thus, they don't have as much political clout or influence and they don't know enough right way to make any big splash. These things take time and with all the time spent raising money and campaigning for re-election there isn't much to dedicate to being good legislators, hence the reliance on staff, which is getting younger, less educated, less paid, and consequently less motivated. It used to be a "capitol hill job" was coveted as an end in itself, now it seems that the same job is merely a means to an end for wanna be lobbiests and elected officials. I don't know what the answer to this is, but term limits to me don't quite get you there. They would arguably only make things worse as you would have less experienced people running the helm and no one who knows what they are doing anywhere to be found. Experience isn't everything, but in Congress it is invaluable.
Mouldfan- I will defer to your experience on the need for experienced people in Washington and, as a Civil Serv. can attest to the challenge of working for a political appointee who can't get his phone-calls answered.
I suppose I DO take issue with the idea that experience and clout derive their home-districts with benefit. It seems to me that, when elected officials get to D.C., they pay only lip-service to local concerns. Shielded from the effects of their failure to produce by the gerrymandered system that we have discussing, there really is no consequence to performance failure.
One would have to be awfully bad for there to be a consequence. (Santorum leaps to mind as one who came damn close to being booted by his own party in the Toomey race.)
You raise a good question though. If we allow 10 years for an elected official to season (say, like a round of cheese), what criteria should we use to assess their performance?
Given that most contested votes are not roll-call, their expense accounts are not open to public scrutiny, they rarely appear in a public forum other than a scripted performance in front of cameras, and the party bears all most all of the reelection production, how is the "common citizen" to know if their representatives are doing a good job or not?
How do YOU tell?
Tough questions all. I think it is safe to say that, while we all have varying prescriptions for solving budgetary ills, we can at least agree that, in the end, restraint in government depends a great deal upon the personal will of those who govern (i.e., the will to keep taxes low; the will to cut spending; the will to resist the temptation to expand government in order to make friends at Smith and Wollensky happy hours).
I have not lost all hope -- yet.
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