Meaningless Elections

It has been said that the key to making democracy - more particularly representative democracy - work, is to make sure that election results are nearly meaningless. After all, if having your side lose the election means that you end up in prison or have to watch your family be killed while your house burns in the background, any rational person will make damned sure that the results of the election are determined well in advance, and will go to great lengths to ensure that the vote is ignored. The alternative is worse.

One of the great strengths of America at its founding, and for its first century, was that elections were nearly always meaningless. The most that would happen is that a few policies or political appointments would go against you, and you'd get another shot at changing the situation 2 or 4 or 6 years later. In fact, probably the only presidential election whose result really mattered prior to the 1930s was the election of Abraham Lincoln. Had the election gone the other way, it's likely that succession would have been allowed, and both sides knew that going into the election. This is why the Southern Democrats made clear in advance that a Republican presidential victory would mean civil war. And Lincoln's victory triggered that war, almost certainly, just as a Democratic victory would have likely resulted in a separation without civil war, and likely would have made America into a continent more like Europe, with armed borders and contending, rival states entering into frequent (if smaller) wars.

But that was the exception, because let's face it: the stakes were small. There was a minimal government, with very limited powers, which basically could undertake foreign policy, regulate actual commerce between the States, and settle inter-state legal or policy disputes. That was about it. The real power - the ability to change people's lives, power over policies and power to achieve - these were to be had at the State and local levels, to the extent they could be had at all. And if you lived in a State and it went to the dogs, you could always move to another State if you couldn't win back power later.

But FDR changed all that. By the end of his time in office, as a result of his policies during the Depression and WWII, and then with the beginning of the Cold War during Truman's presidency, this had all changed. Suddenly, in a span of less than one generation, the Federal government had begun to batter down the powers of the States, arrogating them to itself. The Federal government took direct control of a large proportion of national wealth through direct taxation (thank you the Progressives!), and used it to create large and unkillable programs like welfare, social security, medicare/medicaid, a large standing Army (arguably a good thing, given that we couldn't really step back into isolationism after WWII), increasingly intrusive regulations on business and personal conduct and the like.

By 1955, beyond any shadow of doubt or possibility of reform by changing the party in office, power was concentrated in the Federal government. The loss of political, financial, and Constitutional constraints on Federal power were gone. (Respectively, these were removed by direct popular election of all Senators, the power of direct taxation, and Supreme Court decisions that allowed the Federal government to do almost anything under the names of interstate commerce or national security plus the arrogation of legislative power to the courts.) Now, when an election was lost, it could mean a decade of losing elections because of redistricting. It could mean a loss of billions of dollars - which soon will be trillions of dollars due to the way our government and economy are both growing. It could mean judges who would effectively determine law for decades at least, without the ability to appeal short of Constitutional Amendment. It could mean moving the country towards socialism, or towards corporatism - with virtually no Federal office holders believing that the economy should be a truly free market. For a businessman, it could mean the difference between expansion and bankruptcy. For an individual, it could mean choosing between rights to behave socially as they wish, or economically as they wish.

In other words, elections had by the mid-1950s become important. Deadly important. And when elections become that important, they are important enough that some will choose to violate any rule or principle, to cheat and to steal and to lie, to do anything to win.

I think that this must have fallen hardest on the Democrats, because they had been effectively in nearly-complete control for almost a hundred years in the South, and more than 50 in the North, by the time that the I became interested in politics in the 1980s. With such a legacy of power, it was difficult, I think, for Democrats to give that up.

Yet the country was becoming more conservative. In the aftermath of Viet Nam (which was somehow transformed into a "Republican war") and Watergate, the public was willing to give the Democrats a virtual blank check to run the country. The result was the narrow election of Jimmy Carter, which almost certainly would have gone the other way if not for vote fraud in Chicago, which Gerald Ford (wisely, I think) did not challenge, because it would have been too divisive.

But the Carter presidency was a disaster. People remember the Iran hostage crisis, but forget much of the rest of the state of the US at the time. Interest rates were sky-high, making home ownership all but unaffordable - and moving (if you had a home) impractical. Inflation was equally out of control, and the value of the dollar was dropping like a stone. Abroad, we had given up control of the Panama Canal early, and for little benefit to ourselves, and without ensuring that the Panamanian government could actually operate the canal. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and many analysts thought that the USSR would have a warm water port and control of Persian Gulf oil within a decade. Our military was so undermanned, underequipped and demoralised that we were expected to lose any potential war in Europe, and the transition to a professional military, which was just beginning, had not had time to show its promise. The most common term used to describe the state of the US was "malaise."

In the aftermath of this disaster, Ronald Reagan was able to tap into the fundamentally optimistic nature of Americans. Reagan delivered, too: by the end of his first term, the military buildup that would eventually defeat the USSR without firing a shot was well under way; the economy had recovered and was growing dramatically (despite later Democratic attempts to declare the 1980s as economically disastrous, because of huge layoffs as the economy became more productive - note here the rise of Michael Moore); interest rates and inflation had been tamed; marginal tax rates and stifling regulation had been reduced; a series of minor wars, well and cheaply won, showed that the United States was capable of military victory; environmental quality was improving; standards of living rose dramatically. It was a good time for America.

The Democrats, who had been veering Left ever since the 1972 election, paid for Carter's failure in spades, as the country moved increasingly conservative fiscally and on foreign policy. For 12 years, the Republicans gained increasing control at all levels of government. And then, something close to unbelievable happened: a minor-state governor with unexceptional policies and views, but exceptional drive and political savvy, managed to defeat a sitting president in the wake of one of America's more astonishing military victories and in a growing economy. I think that the real reason for George Bush's loss - the cause of the checking of the country's move to the Right - was that the social conservatives overreached. People like Pat Buchanan and Billy Graham scared the fiscal and foreign-policy conservatives enough that they didn't show up to vote, or more likely they voted for Perot.

Bill Clinton was ruthless, charming, uncompromising, brilliant, nihilistic, passionate, petty, cunning and vindictive. He was able to play on the fear, uncertainty and doubt lingering over the just-ended recession and the overreach of social conservatives, and to convince voters to give him a chance. But Clinton, too, overreached - almost immediately. His policies on gays in the military satisfied no one, while his tax increases and attempt to socialize medical care scared almost everyone. At the same time, the Republicans publicly and visibly began to ostracize the social conservatives, to remove them from the decade of control they had had over the Republican Party's policy decisions. (To a large extent, this came about because of Pat Buchanan's challenge to Bush in the primaries, which likely cost Bush the election - it did far more damage than did Perot's fitful candidacy. The Republican moderates were furious.) The combination of Clinton's too-far-Left policies and the Republican reformation led the Republicans to control of the House and Senate for the first time in some 40 years, and restarted the country's rightwards drift.

I believe that it was in the wake of the Gingrich-led Republican resurgence that the Democrats decided not to lose again, at any cost. In one way, this was good, as it led to, for example, Clinton moderating his policies, and adopting welfare reform and a balanced budget after they were forced upon him. In another way, though, it has led to some terrible consequences.

In gubernatorial elections in Florida, Lawton Chiles' campaign phoned senior citizens on the eve of the election to tell them that the Republican gubernatorial candidate was going to cut their Social Security. While this was impossible for a governor to do, nonetheless the tactic worked. In Oklahoma, the then-Democratic legislature would pass unconstitutional bills just before each election to ban poll watchers, thus facilitating vote fraud. These laws would be thrown out right after the election, but a new law would be ready just in time for the next election anyway. In more recent campaigns, Democrats have substituted candidates after legally-imposed deadlines with the complicity of Democratic State judges. The Democrats have announced who would be appointed to fill a vacant seat if the Democratic candidate - who had died just before the election - were to win, campaigned all out for that outcome, and chided the Republican candidate to stop campaigning against a dead man. (Bet they wish they could take the Carnahan election back now, eh?) The Democrats attempted to rig the 2000 election in Florida, again with the complicity of Democratic State judges, against all law and precedent, then screamed that the Supreme Court selected George Bush to be President, because the Supreme Court ruled that the Florida State Supreme Court was not the Florida Legislature and could not arbitrarily determine the rules of the election after the election had been held. In Texas, the Democratic legislators have twice walked out to prevent a proper redistricting, which they had initially prevented (in the aftermath of the 2000 election) by forcing the issue into a court of their choosing.

These are just the most visible examples, among many. The thing is, though, that Republicans shouldn't get too smug. The only reason that I can see that Republicans have not done the same, is that the Republicans are the ones who are winning. But even during the Clinton presidency, the Republicans were making gains in Congress and in State governments. As high as the stakes are now, as much as the government controls and decides, it wouldn't take many years of declining influence for the Republicans to fight just as dirty. If you don't believe me, consider the extremist social conservative elements (almost exclusively Republican) and their battles over abortion (up to and including the murder of OB/GYNs who perform abortions) and putting Christian monuments in public courts.

By taking power away from the people, and away from the States, and concentrating it in the Federal government, the stakes have been raised too high to allow for a gentle loss and a peaceful handover of power, too high for there to ever be a time where the next election isn't being fought. But I think that all of this came about because of a lack of faith in the people. If we don't trust people to make their own fiscal and personal decisions wisely, or States to make regulatory decisions wisely, and instead insist on government control of every aspect of life, then we reasonbly conclude that power must be concentrated as much as possible. And this is the foundation of the policies of both major parties. The Democrats want to control our fiscal behavior, and the Republicans want to control our social behavior. With all of the power of unlimited government behind them, how could they pass up the opportunity to rule?

But that's the thing, really. We Americans shouldn't be electing rulers. We should be electing representatives and governors and presidents. And the very first and most important duty of those people should not be to accumulate control, but to shed it. The purpose of government is to protect the citizens so that they can create the economy and society they want, not to mandate the economy and society they must accept. To do otherwise is very, very un-American.

And in the end, this is why I have stated that there should be a Constitutional Convention. A country with faith in its people, with a government that has the powers the people want it to have - no more and no less - would have meaningless elections. And that's a good thing.

Posted by Jeff at August 27, 2003 11:46 PM | Link Cosmos