14 ms·

The Roots of the Government Shutdown

96 points by wallflower 13y ago

ams6110 13y ago
I liked this. The summary verion is that prior to about 1970, federal office candidates were selected largly by party conventions, which were controlled by party bosses. The bosses were generally corrupt, but not highly ideological, being more concerned with appeasing broad constituencies so that they could get their candidates elected and then reap the rewards. In an effort to end the corruption, most states went to a primary system for selecting candidates. What the reformers didn't anticipate, though, is that most ordinary citizens don't really care that much about federal politics. So the majority of the people who participate in primary elections are ideologues and thus we now have a much more polarized government, with less and less ability to reach consensus and compromise. Seems to explain a lot.
- LetBinding 13y ago
  The solution is a non-partisan blanket primary. It keeps decisions in the hands of the voters, and also insulates against extremists being nominated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary [wikipedia]
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    No, non-partisan blanket primaries make things worse; you end up with the same bias toward the hypercommitted ideologues in general election candidate selection (primary voting) as with the normal primary system, with the added issue that if closely-related factions are overrepresented enough in the pool of hypercommitted ideologues in a region, only candidates from those factions (which are often indistinguishable to anyone other than hypercommitted ideologues) end up available for voting in the general election. The real solution isn't to change how we select candidates for what amounts to a "choose one of two options" general election, the solution is abandoning election methods which make the general election into a "choose one of two options" elections. For legislative elections, replacing single-member districts with 3-5 member multimember districts and using a candidate-centered (not party list) election method using preference ballots that tends to produce proportional results (Single Transferrable Vote or something like it would be the obvious choice) would be ideal. For state-level executive elections where there is a constitutional designated successor (e.g., Governor and Lt. Governor), electing both from the same ballot, using a preference voting system -- pretty much any sane single-winner preference voting system, including Instant Runoff, though a Condorcet method would probably be preferable -- where the normal winner is elected to the top slot and the winner from the same ballots with the first winner eliminated is elected to the second spot would be an improvement (preference voting minimizes the incentive to vote tactically among parties, having two offices to fill from the same ballot encourages each party to provide more than one candidate.) For elections that must be single winner without a designated successor (such as, I dunno, State Insurance Commissioner), using the same single-winner preference-ballot system as for executive with designated successor -- in its straight, one winner form -- is probably the best available choice. OTOH, as these are often executive officers, it may be better (with a decent election system for chief executives) to eliminate separately-elected executive officers so as to minimize split attention and focus accountability. For all elections, using partisan primaries but using a preference ballot system that selects the appropriate number of candidates for the election (rather than FPTP) would be the best choice. While you'll inevitably always have a bias toward the more engaged in non-general election, preference ballots minimize the influence of the most pure faction within the most engaged subgroup that votes in primaries, and fixing choice problems in the general election mean that there are more parties whose primaries matter. Presidential elections, assuming that the electoral college is retained -- and that's the hardest change to make since it requires a Constitutional change, while most of the others do not -- are the hardest fix. Changing to preference ballots with a sane single winner system for primaries would help choice issues, but would probably end up turning actual candidate selection back over to party insiders at conventions, since it would make it much harder for a single candidate to get a majority of delegates through the primary process. Changing primaries to preference ballots and using a system that outputs a complete preference ranking of candidates by state -- such as iterating a single-winner system eliminating the winner after each round until a complete preference ordering is achieved -- and having convention delegates vote preference ballots (that are, in the initial ballot, required, for regular state delegates, to be cast in accordance with the outcome of the state primary on the first ballot) would be one alternative which would both mitigate the power of extremist factions and preserve popular rather than insider selection.
  - tshile 13y ago
    If the premiss is that only the ideologues care enough to vote then I don't see how open primaries fixes that. This goes back to the changes that moved the senate elections to public vote as well. I don't see how anything could be passed that goes away from the current system; it would be attacked as curtailing freedom in one way or another (remember who we're dealing with here...) The only solution I see is encouraging the non ideological portion of the general public to start participating in elections. I fear that's a tall order though.
    - roc 13y ago
      And a somewhat taller order, year after year, with the ideologues pushing so hard to disenfranchise voters.
      - tshile 13y ago
        Combined with SCOTUS rulings regarding campaign contributions, PACs, and Super PACs. There's a lot of money behind these ideologies.
  - specialist 13y ago
    Absolutely not. Anything that weakens the parties strengthens the money. "Nonpartisan" is anything but. In Washington State, there are now fewer choices and the cost of races have sky rocketed. The Top Two primary has become another form of incumbency protection. If you had proposed actual election reform, like approval voting or proportional representation, sign me up. Ditto campaign finance reform, like restoring the Fairness Doctrine or public financing of campaigns.
cdoxsey 13y ago
Politics in America have always been ideological, bitter and partisan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLj6yY4P_Rg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLj6yY4P_Rg). 150 years ago this country split in two over ideological issues and then we fought a horrendous war to figure out who was the winner. And everyone keeps talking about default, but failing to raise the debt ceiling does not cause us to default. There's plenty of revenue, and plenty of other spending to cut before we get there.
- czr80 13y ago
  How casually you throw away the institutions you were very fortunate to inherit, with no understanding of what you're doing. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/10/14/the-default-has-already-begun/ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/10/14/the-default...
- at-fates-hands 13y ago
  >>> There's plenty of revenue, and plenty of other spending to cut before we get there. The sequester should take care of some those spending cuts. Getting a Democratically controlled government to cut spending is pretty hard considering they believe the way to stimulate growth is to spend and increase taxes. EDIT: Not saying Democrats are the only ones who like to spend - Bush pushed the debt up quite a bit while he was in office so Republicans are not blameless either. However, most Republicans believe in smaller government, less taxes, and being fiscally responsible.
  - count 13y ago
    Who considers defaulting to be fiscally responsible?
  - gnaritas 13y ago
    Republicans only pay lip service to those ideals, once in office they're far bigger and more irresponsible spenders than democrats. Democrats reduce deficits, republicans increase them, that's the reality.
    - 13y ago
triplesec 13y ago
One solution never considered in the USA for some reason is what most other Western democracies do, which is public funding for candidates, and limits. Candidates may spend no more than X on their campaigns under penalty of serving penal time. In the UK it was about the equivalent of about $10,000 last time I looked a while back. Accounting must be done. This limits the role of money. The parties can raise their own extra money but only for national-scale media advertising. However, there are conditions in the US that conspire against this: the Supreme Court's interpretation of the 1st amendment being one of them (e.g. corporations are people); the size of the US and its federal structure being another. Yet I agree with the author: there is a hack to make the system more representative without breaking it much more. We just have to find one and somehow get it implemented!
- tocomment 13y ago
  But if you limit spending by too much you give the media additional power over elections.
  - jpadkins 13y ago
    Couldn't agree more. There is a reason corps like GE and Comcast buy up media companies, and it's not for direct profits. It's to sway public opinion.
  - triplesec 13y ago
    Good point ... and which is why the BBC exists, and why Italian politics (all big media owned by Berlusconi) is generally worse than other Western democracies in transparency. Germany, France, Scandinavian countries all have state broadcasters which at least attempt some kind of balance, even if with a hegemonic (incumbent) slant. And the private sector still has a health left wing media, which is more cultural.
- bcoates 13y ago
  "Corporations are people" has nothing to do with campaign spending limits being unconstitutional. Congress can and does legally limit donations from anyone (people, corporations, whatever) to politicians. It can't ban any communication mentioning a candidate for federal office without permission, which is what the McCain–Feingold Act attempted to do. The Constitution says "shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" and doesn't say it's a particular right of individuals, just a blanket ban on legislation on the topic. Protecting the freedom of the press as an exclusively individual right doesn't even make sense.
tankenmate 13y ago
Personally I think there are two things that could be done to limit the influence of overly vocal minorities of any ilk; be it business, ideologues, etc. 1) Proportional representation - Each district should be bigger and elect a number of representatives, in a similar fashion to the senate but based on equal divisions of the population. This will also have the effect of breaking the two party system. 2) Capped government provided funding for campaigning - This should limit the effect of money on the ability to disseminate the candidates platform for election, and steer the issues more towards their merit than audio volume.
- talmand 13y ago
  Yep, let's shut down any minority that chooses to speak out against the status quo. That never causes problems. 1. How is this any different than what we have now? How does this break the two-party system since the Senate you hold up as the example engages in the two-party system just as much as the House? Why is the House the sole problem and no other branches of government are involved in the problems? 2. Government provided funds is not the problem with campaign funds. This would likely increase the amount of money from the private sector which is often the problem. Obama took the ultimate cap on government funds in his first election, he refused all of it. He won handily with a rather large war chest.
websitescenes 13y ago
Good article but I think the issue has deeper roots stemming back to the formation of this country. It's all about the state vs federal issue. If you think about it, conservatives got exactly what they wanted with the shutdown. A small government with no ability to pay its social debts. They are going to keep doing this until there is civil war, again, or until states have all the power, again.
- talmand 13y ago
  Wait, where was this small government with no ability to pay its social debts? Because I sure as heck didn't see that outcome. Just because a bunch of people on the TV kept talking about this supposed default doesn't mean the government wasn't willing and able to pay on the debt. Your biased one-sided complaint completely sidesteps the issues at hand. The article that sparked this discussion quite correctly points out the problems that led us here when two sets, TWO mind you, of ideologies refuse to back down and compromise. You say conservatives got what they wanted with the shutdown? I say both groups got what they wanted out of this in their own way and we'll go through it all again in February. You need to get out of this "us-vs-them" attitude and realize that two different people who strongly disagree with each other may still have a point on the topic at hand. The only way the states will restore their former power is not through civil war, but through the total collapse of the federal government. Things have gone too far in terms of centralizing power for anything other than total failure to reverse the trend. It's just that no one knows when or if this would be.
  - humanrebar 13y ago
    Though he may not mean it this way, he has a point about federal power causing this inability to compromise. As a voter in Kentucky, if you get fed up with Kentucky politics, you can move to Oregon or Tennessee. But when all laws are federal, the stakes are higher for everyone, so drastic measures will be taken.
    - talmand 13y ago
      That is an excellent point. You can still vote with your feet on the federal level, but unfortunately that involves leaving the country which in the end solves nothing.
ihsw 13y ago
I have repeated it numerous times to a variety of people across the political spectrum -- cooperation is not capitulation. Few people (especially elected representatives) realize this. Our elected representatives are supposed to be pragmatists, and what does a pragmatist do when faced with a difficult problem? Compromise. Instead we're left with ideologues that shout from the highest mountaintops about "bipartisanship" however it's just bluster and posturing.
- jes 13y ago
  With respect, I wonder if pragmatists are really what we want. A pragmatist is someone who, as you say, seeks to compromise on principles in order to achieve some outcome. I want politicians who will refuse to compromise on principles, and I want those principles to be about protecting the rights of the individual. Just my two cents. Thanks for an interesting comment.
  - BillyMaize 13y ago
    I think it depends on the issue. When it comes to something like abortion or the death penalty I would rather see a politician hold their ground and never compromise on it. If it is about spending some money on health insurance then it should be compromised on.
    - jes 13y ago
      I wonder even about the seemingly simple case you mention, that of spending some money on health insurance. In this case, it seems like the principle has already been compromised, and now the two parties are simply haggling over the price, so to speak. The principle that I think has been compromised is whether the government should take by force from some individuals in order to give an unearned benefit to some others.
  - snowwrestler 13y ago
    > I want those principles to be about protecting the rights of the individual. Seems like a concept that most Americans can get behind, but the rubber doesn't meet the road until you ask which rights of which individuals need protecting. Is abortion law about the rights of the mother or the rights of the fetus? Is campaign finance law about the rights of the rich person or the poor person? Is business regulation about the rights of the employer or the employee? Etc. Different people will answer these questions in different ways, so if everyone just sticks to their principles, nothing will ever change or get done.
uptown 13y ago
“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.” ― George Washington, George Washington's Farewell Address Even George Washington saw political parties as a great threat to the nation. Politicians seek to remain in office - either out of a drive for personal ambition, the need for public validation, or through bright-eyed idealism to 'change the world'. The best way to stay in office is to align yourself with support - and most get this from their political party. But in order to keep the support of a party, you've got to go along with all of the things your party supports. This leads to group-think ... compromising your personal values for the sake of supporting your fellow politicians. There's no way that the members of the House and Senate agree on all of the issues they vote together on, but their party needs support, so they vote along ... abdicating their responsibility for the sake of party unity. And since their party has an opponent, part of their job as a good party member is to demonize those opponents. Now the media has set themselves up to promote this conflict. One network slants one way ... another slants the other way ... and they'll split their screen down the middle to make sure the yelling from both sides is captured. Lobbyists like career-politicians. It means their campaign contributions can be redeemed over more than one term, and they don't need to start over each election. What's the solution? I'm not exactly sure, but the list includes term limits, changing gerrymandering, reducing the influence of money in politics, making politics less of a "contact sport" than its being presented as by the media, and probably all sorts of things I haven't mentioned or thought of. The problem is, much of this change cannot happen without the support of either the Supreme Court, or the very people whose careers will be impacted (likely negatively from their perspective) by such a change - and there's the rub. Democracy allows voters to remove a Cancer - but lately the replacement organs are metastasizing upon implantation.
- talmand 13y ago
  Many of the founding fathers feared such things. That's why they attempted to design a government that avoided centralized power. Granted, there were many of the founders that liked the idea of centralized power, it was sometimes a bitter dispute. In the end, many of their intentions have been ignored or corrupted, even demonized, and many of their decisions have been reversed over the years. It's a matter of debate over whether these changes from the original vision made things better or worse.
vinceguidry 13y ago
> In the 20th century, the boss system selected such presidents as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy. I was struck at how a self-evidently corrupt and undemocratic system would have selected such impressive candidates (albeit along with Warren Harding and other less impressive ones). That's very curious. My guess is that the boss system and the petty ambitions that fuel it is easier to game for those with real ambition. I don't think FDR would have been able to do what he did in today's political climate. The best we can hope for is Obama.
- protomyth 13y ago
  If you are appalled by abuses of government power under Bush / Obama then Theodore Roosevelt's record will terrify you. Woodrow Wilson was very friendly and supportive of the Ku Klux Klan and rumored to have been a member. These men should have never been near the Presidency. Much of the problems we face with an over-powered President started with them. Party bosses are no better pickers of candidates and their influence continues to be a true pain for this country.
  - vinceguidry 13y ago
    I find it hard to get suitably appalled by any amount of power abuse in the USA knowing that at it's very worst it's still not Soviet Russia and the ongoing, depressing culture of corruption its created. Not saying we shouldn't fight it, but power abuse is inevitable so long as we have human beings running things. I'm reading "Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss", and I'm almost underwhelmed. Bulger managed to capture the Boston FBI and had informants in all the other police services and a brother in the state legislature and all it was good for was a handful of murders and control of some very profitable local rackets. That seems like small peanuts compared to the developing world and even much of the developed world. Someone with Whitey's skillset could have become the richest man in a very large number of countries and wound up running the whole country.
- saryant 13y ago
  Theodore Roosevelt was made VP because a certain NY senator couldn't stand his political stance and wanted to make him irrelevant. Party boss Mark Hanna wasn't against his selection as VP but TR's overwhelming popularity due to his military actions in Cuba prevented him from inhibiting Roosevelt's momentum at the Republican convention. "Don't any of you realize that there's only one life between that madman and the Presidency?" Prophetic. Less than a year after the election, McKinley was killed by an anarchist and Roosevelt ascended to the presidency. Hanna considered challenging him in the 1904 election (he really hated Roosevelt) but failing health prevented him from doing so—he died of typhoid fever before the campaign was under way, much to the disappointment of business interests (especially J.P. Morgan) who were fearful of Roosevelt's anti-trust tendencies. Morgan supported Hanna partially as retribution for Roosevelt's targeting of his rail combination.
peterwwillis 13y ago
Man this guy is verbose. Here's what he was getting at: -- From where I sit, there was a massive shift in the 1970s in how the American political system operates. [..] Political bosses controlled the selection of state convention delegates, and therefore the bosses controlled the delegates to the national convention [..] The reformers wanted to break the hold of the party bosses over the system and open it to dissent, something party bosses disliked. [..] This severely limited the power of state and county chairmen, who could no longer handpick candidates. Money, not the bosses' power, became the center of gravity of the political system, and those who could raise money became the power brokers. More important, those who were willing to donate became candidates' main constituency. [..] Money has always been central to American politics. [..] But with the decline of political bosses, factors other than money were eliminated. A candidate in either party [..] needs the votes of the majority of voters who will show up. In the past model, voters showed up because, say, they got their job on the highway crew from the county boss, and they had to appear at the polls if they wanted to keep it. [..] Now, people show up because of their passionate belief in a particular ideology, and money is spent convincing them that a candidate shares their passionate commitment. But it is the senators and particularly the congressmen -- who run in districts where perhaps 20 percent of eligible voters vote in primaries, most of them ideologues -- who are forced away from principle and toward ideology. [..] I would argue that the problem is that the current system magnifies the importance of the ideologues such that current political outcomes increasingly do not reflect the public will, and that this is happening at an accelerated pace.
- teh_klev 13y ago
  Maybe if you're deeply familiar with the US political system, I'm not, but still interested all the same, and so liked the "explain it to me like I'm a five year old" verbosity.
duwease 13y ago
I don't know that the conclusion that pre-reform candidates were more moderate and/or effective is as self-evident as he seems to believe. It's hard to brush off the fact that our opinions of them are not only colored through the lens of history books, but also through a vastly different culture. In addition to the distortion of perception through second-hand accounts versus perception through actively participating in the modern scene, I'd argue that no small part of the perception of modern presidents is affected by the proliferation of media sources and the formation of specialized media outlets with a particular ideological audience that didn't exist as widely in the past.
joshuahedlund 13y ago
My "narrative fallacy" flags went off, as it's always convenient to look for a tidy explanation of complex events, although this post makes a good case that candidate selection changes are at least a very interesting factor that's generally overlooked. I wonder, though, if the common thread between the Presidents listed is that they all pretty much oversaw a century of growth in both government power and within that a growth in consolidated power under the executive branch, and I wonder how that effects the ideological interests of different groups who increasingly have more at stake (or at least think they have more at stake) in what the government does. It's also interesting to compare, say, European countries which often have the appearance of similar levels of "big government," but they are generally done at smaller scales more equivalent to US states. The US may be more unique in trying to increasingly manage the interests of 300 million people through one centralized and increasingly powerful yet also democratic government. (then again, there may be holes in that tidy narrative as well...)
wavesounds 13y ago
Good article. Why does he conclude with "I have no idea what I could do to help change matters" after writing a whole blog post about how not enough average people vote in primaries? Go vote in primaries, get your friends to go vote in primaries and maybe even reach out to particularly ideological districts to make sure the moderates there go vote (this might be a good idea for a web app 'Passionate centrist - email a centrist encourage them to vote').
- mhb 13y ago
  Because the point of the article is that we have a system in which ideologues vote. In order to get average people to vote, either the system has to change to reward non-ideologues for voting (e.g., previous system with party bosses) or people have to become ideologues. He rightly concludes that these are both unlikely and he doesn't have another answer.
  - wavesounds 13y ago
    Isn't the reward for voting getting the government you want? That's why the ideologues do it and it seems to be working for them.
the_watcher 13y ago
>> the American people did not care nearly as much about politics as the reformers thought they ought to This is something that the politically active simply cannot grasp. Most Americans really do not care at all about politics unless it is currently impacting their life. They can talk all they want about how important it is, but most Americans have jobs, kids, a mortgage, friends, and sports teams to pay attention to, all of which are more urgent concerns than what goes on in politics, especially given that we only get a chance to participate so sparingly.
- the_watcher 13y ago
  >> Citizens frequently don't know or care who their congressman is, let alone who their state senator is. I know who my hometown congresswoman is, mainly because he is well known in the community. Same with my hometown state senator, who is a family friend. I have no idea who any of those people are for the 3 other Congressional districts I have lived in, except knowing that Henry Waxman was my representative in college, since he was an alum.
the_watcher 13y ago
>> But in the country our founders bequeathed us, it was expected that most people would concern themselves with private things. Good to see someone acknowledge that what many look at as unique American problems are there by design. If you see them as a problem, that's a totally valid view, but please, acknowledge that things like the ease of obstruction, difficulty of substantial, long-lasting, transformative chance, and the public disinterest in government are all by design. The founders considered them features, not bugs.
the_watcher 13y ago
Overall, this is a fascinating look at how what originally was intended as breaking down corruption and opening up participation to the masses had some unintended consequences. I found the following paragraph particularly salient: >> In the 20th century, the boss system selected such presidents as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy. I was struck at how a self-evidently corrupt and undemocratic system would have selected such impressive candidates (albeit along with Warren Harding and other less impressive ones). The system should not have worked, but on the whole, it worked better than we might have imagined. I leave to others to judge how these compare to post-reform candidates like Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama. Kennedy and Roosevelt were the epitome of boss driven politicians, and while many argue over how effective they actually were, no one can argue that were not highly influential. I'm personally a fan of Coolidge as well. In the modern system, only Reagan and Clinton seem likely to be remembered by history as peers of the Presidents on the first list, and both of them are regarded as some of the most historically charismatic politicians of all time. Very interesting.
cantankerous 13y ago
Why didn't the author didn't just suggest mandatory voting? It seems like he was building up to it but never got there. Not like it's politically feasible to implement, but it appears to be a solution to wash out ideological extremes all the same.
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  Isn't Australia a good counterexample? Going by their struggle to keep their government's hands off the Internet, they seem to have as many loons in government as we do, if not more.

96 points by wallflower 13y ago

I liked this. The summary verion is that prior to about 1970, federal office candidates were selected largly by party conventions, which were controlled by party bosses. The bosses were generally corrupt, but not highly ideological, being more concerned with appeasing broad constituencies so that they could get their candidates elected and then reap the rewards. In an effort to end the corruption, most states went to a primary system for selecting candidates. What the reformers didn't anticipate, though, is that most ordinary citizens don't really care that much about federal politics. So the majority of the people who participate in primary elections are ideologues and thus we now have a much more polarized government, with less and less ability to reach consensus and compromise. Seems to explain a lot.

LetBinding 13y ago
The solution is a non-partisan blanket primary. It keeps decisions in the hands of the voters, and also insulates against extremists being nominated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary [wikipedia]
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  No, non-partisan blanket primaries make things worse; you end up with the same bias toward the hypercommitted ideologues in general election candidate selection (primary voting) as with the normal primary system, with the added issue that if closely-related factions are overrepresented enough in the pool of hypercommitted ideologues in a region, only candidates from those factions (which are often indistinguishable to anyone other than hypercommitted ideologues) end up available for voting in the general election. The real solution isn't to change how we select candidates for what amounts to a "choose one of two options" general election, the solution is abandoning election methods which make the general election into a "choose one of two options" elections. For legislative elections, replacing single-member districts with 3-5 member multimember districts and using a candidate-centered (not party list) election method using preference ballots that tends to produce proportional results (Single Transferrable Vote or something like it would be the obvious choice) would be ideal. For state-level executive elections where there is a constitutional designated successor (e.g., Governor and Lt. Governor), electing both from the same ballot, using a preference voting system -- pretty much any sane single-winner preference voting system, including Instant Runoff, though a Condorcet method would probably be preferable -- where the normal winner is elected to the top slot and the winner from the same ballots with the first winner eliminated is elected to the second spot would be an improvement (preference voting minimizes the incentive to vote tactically among parties, having two offices to fill from the same ballot encourages each party to provide more than one candidate.) For elections that must be single winner without a designated successor (such as, I dunno, State Insurance Commissioner), using the same single-winner preference-ballot system as for executive with designated successor -- in its straight, one winner form -- is probably the best available choice. OTOH, as these are often executive officers, it may be better (with a decent election system for chief executives) to eliminate separately-elected executive officers so as to minimize split attention and focus accountability. For all elections, using partisan primaries but using a preference ballot system that selects the appropriate number of candidates for the election (rather than FPTP) would be the best choice. While you'll inevitably always have a bias toward the more engaged in non-general election, preference ballots minimize the influence of the most pure faction within the most engaged subgroup that votes in primaries, and fixing choice problems in the general election mean that there are more parties whose primaries matter. Presidential elections, assuming that the electoral college is retained -- and that's the hardest change to make since it requires a Constitutional change, while most of the others do not -- are the hardest fix. Changing to preference ballots with a sane single winner system for primaries would help choice issues, but would probably end up turning actual candidate selection back over to party insiders at conventions, since it would make it much harder for a single candidate to get a majority of delegates through the primary process. Changing primaries to preference ballots and using a system that outputs a complete preference ranking of candidates by state -- such as iterating a single-winner system eliminating the winner after each round until a complete preference ordering is achieved -- and having convention delegates vote preference ballots (that are, in the initial ballot, required, for regular state delegates, to be cast in accordance with the outcome of the state primary on the first ballot) would be one alternative which would both mitigate the power of extremist factions and preserve popular rather than insider selection.
- tshile 13y ago
  If the premiss is that only the ideologues care enough to vote then I don't see how open primaries fixes that. This goes back to the changes that moved the senate elections to public vote as well. I don't see how anything could be passed that goes away from the current system; it would be attacked as curtailing freedom in one way or another (remember who we're dealing with here...) The only solution I see is encouraging the non ideological portion of the general public to start participating in elections. I fear that's a tall order though.
  - roc 13y ago
    And a somewhat taller order, year after year, with the ideologues pushing so hard to disenfranchise voters.
    - tshile 13y ago
      Combined with SCOTUS rulings regarding campaign contributions, PACs, and Super PACs. There's a lot of money behind these ideologies.
- specialist 13y ago
  Absolutely not. Anything that weakens the parties strengthens the money. "Nonpartisan" is anything but. In Washington State, there are now fewer choices and the cost of races have sky rocketed. The Top Two primary has become another form of incumbency protection. If you had proposed actual election reform, like approval voting or proportional representation, sign me up. Ditto campaign finance reform, like restoring the Fairness Doctrine or public financing of campaigns.

cdoxsey 13y ago

Politics in America have always been ideological, bitter and partisan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLj6yY4P_Rg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLj6yY4P_Rg). 150 years ago this country split in two over ideological issues and then we fought a horrendous war to figure out who was the winner. And everyone keeps talking about default, but failing to raise the debt ceiling does not cause us to default. There's plenty of revenue, and plenty of other spending to cut before we get there.

czr80 13y ago
How casually you throw away the institutions you were very fortunate to inherit, with no understanding of what you're doing. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/10/14/the-default-has-already-begun/ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/10/14/the-default...
at-fates-hands 13y ago
>>> There's plenty of revenue, and plenty of other spending to cut before we get there. The sequester should take care of some those spending cuts. Getting a Democratically controlled government to cut spending is pretty hard considering they believe the way to stimulate growth is to spend and increase taxes. EDIT: Not saying Democrats are the only ones who like to spend - Bush pushed the debt up quite a bit while he was in office so Republicans are not blameless either. However, most Republicans believe in smaller government, less taxes, and being fiscally responsible.
- count 13y ago
  Who considers defaulting to be fiscally responsible?
- gnaritas 13y ago
  Republicans only pay lip service to those ideals, once in office they're far bigger and more irresponsible spenders than democrats. Democrats reduce deficits, republicans increase them, that's the reality.
  - 13y ago

triplesec 13y ago

One solution never considered in the USA for some reason is what most other Western democracies do, which is public funding for candidates, and limits. Candidates may spend no more than X on their campaigns under penalty of serving penal time. In the UK it was about the equivalent of about $10,000 last time I looked a while back. Accounting must be done. This limits the role of money. The parties can raise their own extra money but only for national-scale media advertising. However, there are conditions in the US that conspire against this: the Supreme Court's interpretation of the 1st amendment being one of them (e.g. corporations are people); the size of the US and its federal structure being another. Yet I agree with the author: there is a hack to make the system more representative without breaking it much more. We just have to find one and somehow get it implemented!

tocomment 13y ago
But if you limit spending by too much you give the media additional power over elections.
- jpadkins 13y ago
  Couldn't agree more. There is a reason corps like GE and Comcast buy up media companies, and it's not for direct profits. It's to sway public opinion.
- triplesec 13y ago
  Good point ... and which is why the BBC exists, and why Italian politics (all big media owned by Berlusconi) is generally worse than other Western democracies in transparency. Germany, France, Scandinavian countries all have state broadcasters which at least attempt some kind of balance, even if with a hegemonic (incumbent) slant. And the private sector still has a health left wing media, which is more cultural.
bcoates 13y ago
"Corporations are people" has nothing to do with campaign spending limits being unconstitutional. Congress can and does legally limit donations from anyone (people, corporations, whatever) to politicians. It can't ban any communication mentioning a candidate for federal office without permission, which is what the McCain–Feingold Act attempted to do. The Constitution says "shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" and doesn't say it's a particular right of individuals, just a blanket ban on legislation on the topic. Protecting the freedom of the press as an exclusively individual right doesn't even make sense.

tankenmate 13y ago

Personally I think there are two things that could be done to limit the influence of overly vocal minorities of any ilk; be it business, ideologues, etc. 1) Proportional representation - Each district should be bigger and elect a number of representatives, in a similar fashion to the senate but based on equal divisions of the population. This will also have the effect of breaking the two party system. 2) Capped government provided funding for campaigning - This should limit the effect of money on the ability to disseminate the candidates platform for election, and steer the issues more towards their merit than audio volume.

talmand 13y ago
Yep, let's shut down any minority that chooses to speak out against the status quo. That never causes problems. 1. How is this any different than what we have now? How does this break the two-party system since the Senate you hold up as the example engages in the two-party system just as much as the House? Why is the House the sole problem and no other branches of government are involved in the problems? 2. Government provided funds is not the problem with campaign funds. This would likely increase the amount of money from the private sector which is often the problem. Obama took the ultimate cap on government funds in his first election, he refused all of it. He won handily with a rather large war chest.

websitescenes 13y ago

Good article but I think the issue has deeper roots stemming back to the formation of this country. It's all about the state vs federal issue. If you think about it, conservatives got exactly what they wanted with the shutdown. A small government with no ability to pay its social debts. They are going to keep doing this until there is civil war, again, or until states have all the power, again.

talmand 13y ago
Wait, where was this small government with no ability to pay its social debts? Because I sure as heck didn't see that outcome. Just because a bunch of people on the TV kept talking about this supposed default doesn't mean the government wasn't willing and able to pay on the debt. Your biased one-sided complaint completely sidesteps the issues at hand. The article that sparked this discussion quite correctly points out the problems that led us here when two sets, TWO mind you, of ideologies refuse to back down and compromise. You say conservatives got what they wanted with the shutdown? I say both groups got what they wanted out of this in their own way and we'll go through it all again in February. You need to get out of this "us-vs-them" attitude and realize that two different people who strongly disagree with each other may still have a point on the topic at hand. The only way the states will restore their former power is not through civil war, but through the total collapse of the federal government. Things have gone too far in terms of centralizing power for anything other than total failure to reverse the trend. It's just that no one knows when or if this would be.
- humanrebar 13y ago
  Though he may not mean it this way, he has a point about federal power causing this inability to compromise. As a voter in Kentucky, if you get fed up with Kentucky politics, you can move to Oregon or Tennessee. But when all laws are federal, the stakes are higher for everyone, so drastic measures will be taken.
  - talmand 13y ago
    That is an excellent point. You can still vote with your feet on the federal level, but unfortunately that involves leaving the country which in the end solves nothing.

ihsw 13y ago

I have repeated it numerous times to a variety of people across the political spectrum -- cooperation is not capitulation. Few people (especially elected representatives) realize this. Our elected representatives are supposed to be pragmatists, and what does a pragmatist do when faced with a difficult problem? Compromise. Instead we're left with ideologues that shout from the highest mountaintops about "bipartisanship" however it's just bluster and posturing.

jes 13y ago
With respect, I wonder if pragmatists are really what we want. A pragmatist is someone who, as you say, seeks to compromise on principles in order to achieve some outcome. I want politicians who will refuse to compromise on principles, and I want those principles to be about protecting the rights of the individual. Just my two cents. Thanks for an interesting comment.
- BillyMaize 13y ago
  I think it depends on the issue. When it comes to something like abortion or the death penalty I would rather see a politician hold their ground and never compromise on it. If it is about spending some money on health insurance then it should be compromised on.
  - jes 13y ago
    I wonder even about the seemingly simple case you mention, that of spending some money on health insurance. In this case, it seems like the principle has already been compromised, and now the two parties are simply haggling over the price, so to speak. The principle that I think has been compromised is whether the government should take by force from some individuals in order to give an unearned benefit to some others.
- snowwrestler 13y ago
  > I want those principles to be about protecting the rights of the individual. Seems like a concept that most Americans can get behind, but the rubber doesn't meet the road until you ask which rights of which individuals need protecting. Is abortion law about the rights of the mother or the rights of the fetus? Is campaign finance law about the rights of the rich person or the poor person? Is business regulation about the rights of the employer or the employee? Etc. Different people will answer these questions in different ways, so if everyone just sticks to their principles, nothing will ever change or get done.

uptown 13y ago

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.” ― George Washington, George Washington's Farewell Address Even George Washington saw political parties as a great threat to the nation. Politicians seek to remain in office - either out of a drive for personal ambition, the need for public validation, or through bright-eyed idealism to 'change the world'. The best way to stay in office is to align yourself with support - and most get this from their political party. But in order to keep the support of a party, you've got to go along with all of the things your party supports. This leads to group-think ... compromising your personal values for the sake of supporting your fellow politicians. There's no way that the members of the House and Senate agree on all of the issues they vote together on, but their party needs support, so they vote along ... abdicating their responsibility for the sake of party unity. And since their party has an opponent, part of their job as a good party member is to demonize those opponents. Now the media has set themselves up to promote this conflict. One network slants one way ... another slants the other way ... and they'll split their screen down the middle to make sure the yelling from both sides is captured. Lobbyists like career-politicians. It means their campaign contributions can be redeemed over more than one term, and they don't need to start over each election. What's the solution? I'm not exactly sure, but the list includes term limits, changing gerrymandering, reducing the influence of money in politics, making politics less of a "contact sport" than its being presented as by the media, and probably all sorts of things I haven't mentioned or thought of. The problem is, much of this change cannot happen without the support of either the Supreme Court, or the very people whose careers will be impacted (likely negatively from their perspective) by such a change - and there's the rub. Democracy allows voters to remove a Cancer - but lately the replacement organs are metastasizing upon implantation.

talmand 13y ago
Many of the founding fathers feared such things. That's why they attempted to design a government that avoided centralized power. Granted, there were many of the founders that liked the idea of centralized power, it was sometimes a bitter dispute. In the end, many of their intentions have been ignored or corrupted, even demonized, and many of their decisions have been reversed over the years. It's a matter of debate over whether these changes from the original vision made things better or worse.

vinceguidry 13y ago

> In the 20th century, the boss system selected such presidents as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy. I was struck at how a self-evidently corrupt and undemocratic system would have selected such impressive candidates (albeit along with Warren Harding and other less impressive ones). That's very curious. My guess is that the boss system and the petty ambitions that fuel it is easier to game for those with real ambition. I don't think FDR would have been able to do what he did in today's political climate. The best we can hope for is Obama.

protomyth 13y ago
If you are appalled by abuses of government power under Bush / Obama then Theodore Roosevelt's record will terrify you. Woodrow Wilson was very friendly and supportive of the Ku Klux Klan and rumored to have been a member. These men should have never been near the Presidency. Much of the problems we face with an over-powered President started with them. Party bosses are no better pickers of candidates and their influence continues to be a true pain for this country.
- vinceguidry 13y ago
  I find it hard to get suitably appalled by any amount of power abuse in the USA knowing that at it's very worst it's still not Soviet Russia and the ongoing, depressing culture of corruption its created. Not saying we shouldn't fight it, but power abuse is inevitable so long as we have human beings running things. I'm reading "Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss", and I'm almost underwhelmed. Bulger managed to capture the Boston FBI and had informants in all the other police services and a brother in the state legislature and all it was good for was a handful of murders and control of some very profitable local rackets. That seems like small peanuts compared to the developing world and even much of the developed world. Someone with Whitey's skillset could have become the richest man in a very large number of countries and wound up running the whole country.
saryant 13y ago
Theodore Roosevelt was made VP because a certain NY senator couldn't stand his political stance and wanted to make him irrelevant. Party boss Mark Hanna wasn't against his selection as VP but TR's overwhelming popularity due to his military actions in Cuba prevented him from inhibiting Roosevelt's momentum at the Republican convention. "Don't any of you realize that there's only one life between that madman and the Presidency?" Prophetic. Less than a year after the election, McKinley was killed by an anarchist and Roosevelt ascended to the presidency. Hanna considered challenging him in the 1904 election (he really hated Roosevelt) but failing health prevented him from doing so—he died of typhoid fever before the campaign was under way, much to the disappointment of business interests (especially J.P. Morgan) who were fearful of Roosevelt's anti-trust tendencies. Morgan supported Hanna partially as retribution for Roosevelt's targeting of his rail combination.

peterwwillis 13y ago

Man this guy is verbose. Here's what he was getting at: -- From where I sit, there was a massive shift in the 1970s in how the American political system operates. [..] Political bosses controlled the selection of state convention delegates, and therefore the bosses controlled the delegates to the national convention [..] The reformers wanted to break the hold of the party bosses over the system and open it to dissent, something party bosses disliked. [..] This severely limited the power of state and county chairmen, who could no longer handpick candidates. Money, not the bosses' power, became the center of gravity of the political system, and those who could raise money became the power brokers. More important, those who were willing to donate became candidates' main constituency. [..] Money has always been central to American politics. [..] But with the decline of political bosses, factors other than money were eliminated. A candidate in either party [..] needs the votes of the majority of voters who will show up. In the past model, voters showed up because, say, they got their job on the highway crew from the county boss, and they had to appear at the polls if they wanted to keep it. [..] Now, people show up because of their passionate belief in a particular ideology, and money is spent convincing them that a candidate shares their passionate commitment. But it is the senators and particularly the congressmen -- who run in districts where perhaps 20 percent of eligible voters vote in primaries, most of them ideologues -- who are forced away from principle and toward ideology. [..] I would argue that the problem is that the current system magnifies the importance of the ideologues such that current political outcomes increasingly do not reflect the public will, and that this is happening at an accelerated pace.

teh_klev 13y ago
Maybe if you're deeply familiar with the US political system, I'm not, but still interested all the same, and so liked the "explain it to me like I'm a five year old" verbosity.

duwease 13y ago

I don't know that the conclusion that pre-reform candidates were more moderate and/or effective is as self-evident as he seems to believe. It's hard to brush off the fact that our opinions of them are not only colored through the lens of history books, but also through a vastly different culture. In addition to the distortion of perception through second-hand accounts versus perception through actively participating in the modern scene, I'd argue that no small part of the perception of modern presidents is affected by the proliferation of media sources and the formation of specialized media outlets with a particular ideological audience that didn't exist as widely in the past.

joshuahedlund 13y ago

My "narrative fallacy" flags went off, as it's always convenient to look for a tidy explanation of complex events, although this post makes a good case that candidate selection changes are at least a very interesting factor that's generally overlooked. I wonder, though, if the common thread between the Presidents listed is that they all pretty much oversaw a century of growth in both government power and within that a growth in consolidated power under the executive branch, and I wonder how that effects the ideological interests of different groups who increasingly have more at stake (or at least think they have more at stake) in what the government does. It's also interesting to compare, say, European countries which often have the appearance of similar levels of "big government," but they are generally done at smaller scales more equivalent to US states. The US may be more unique in trying to increasingly manage the interests of 300 million people through one centralized and increasingly powerful yet also democratic government. (then again, there may be holes in that tidy narrative as well...)

wavesounds 13y ago

Good article. Why does he conclude with "I have no idea what I could do to help change matters" after writing a whole blog post about how not enough average people vote in primaries? Go vote in primaries, get your friends to go vote in primaries and maybe even reach out to particularly ideological districts to make sure the moderates there go vote (this might be a good idea for a web app 'Passionate centrist - email a centrist encourage them to vote').

mhb 13y ago
Because the point of the article is that we have a system in which ideologues vote. In order to get average people to vote, either the system has to change to reward non-ideologues for voting (e.g., previous system with party bosses) or people have to become ideologues. He rightly concludes that these are both unlikely and he doesn't have another answer.
- wavesounds 13y ago
  Isn't the reward for voting getting the government you want? That's why the ideologues do it and it seems to be working for them.

the_watcher 13y ago

>> the American people did not care nearly as much about politics as the reformers thought they ought to This is something that the politically active simply cannot grasp. Most Americans really do not care at all about politics unless it is currently impacting their life. They can talk all they want about how important it is, but most Americans have jobs, kids, a mortgage, friends, and sports teams to pay attention to, all of which are more urgent concerns than what goes on in politics, especially given that we only get a chance to participate so sparingly.

the_watcher 13y ago
>> Citizens frequently don't know or care who their congressman is, let alone who their state senator is. I know who my hometown congresswoman is, mainly because he is well known in the community. Same with my hometown state senator, who is a family friend. I have no idea who any of those people are for the 3 other Congressional districts I have lived in, except knowing that Henry Waxman was my representative in college, since he was an alum.

the_watcher 13y ago

>> But in the country our founders bequeathed us, it was expected that most people would concern themselves with private things. Good to see someone acknowledge that what many look at as unique American problems are there by design. If you see them as a problem, that's a totally valid view, but please, acknowledge that things like the ease of obstruction, difficulty of substantial, long-lasting, transformative chance, and the public disinterest in government are all by design. The founders considered them features, not bugs.

the_watcher 13y ago

Overall, this is a fascinating look at how what originally was intended as breaking down corruption and opening up participation to the masses had some unintended consequences. I found the following paragraph particularly salient: >> In the 20th century, the boss system selected such presidents as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy. I was struck at how a self-evidently corrupt and undemocratic system would have selected such impressive candidates (albeit along with Warren Harding and other less impressive ones). The system should not have worked, but on the whole, it worked better than we might have imagined. I leave to others to judge how these compare to post-reform candidates like Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama. Kennedy and Roosevelt were the epitome of boss driven politicians, and while many argue over how effective they actually were, no one can argue that were not highly influential. I'm personally a fan of Coolidge as well. In the modern system, only Reagan and Clinton seem likely to be remembered by history as peers of the Presidents on the first list, and both of them are regarded as some of the most historically charismatic politicians of all time. Very interesting.

cantankerous 13y ago

Why didn't the author didn't just suggest mandatory voting? It seems like he was building up to it but never got there. Not like it's politically feasible to implement, but it appears to be a solution to wash out ideological extremes all the same.

CamperBob2 13y ago
Isn't Australia a good counterexample? Going by their struggle to keep their government's hands off the Internet, they seem to have as many loons in government as we do, if not more.