Paul Jacob had plenty of reason to celebrate a unanimous appellate court ruling yesterday that struck down an Oklahoma residency requirement for participation in political campaigns. The 3-0 decision declaring such laws unconstitutional knocks out the struts of a peculiar prosecution of Jacob and two others who face long prison sentences for the crime of assisting those collecting signatures for a taxpayer bill of rights referendum. Eric Dondero has Jacob’s reaction to the ruling:
Paul Jacob had plenty of reason to celebrate a unanimous appellate court ruling yesterday that struck down an Oklahoma residency requirement for participation in political campaigns. The 3-0 decision declaring such laws unconstitutional knocks out the struts of a peculiar prosecution of Jacob and two others who face long prison sentences for the crime of assisting those collecting signatures for a taxpayer bill of rights referendum. Eric Dondero has Jacob’s reaction to the ruling:
Just got word that the federal 10th Circuit struck down Oklahoma’s residency law 3-0! That’s the third federal circuit court this year to UNANIMOUSLY overturn residency laws as unconstitutional.
This is very good news. It puts another nail in the coffin of these residency bans that thwart the people’s right to petition, and it “should” mean that the outrageous prosecution of the Oklahoma-3 will come to an end.
As I’ve always contended, whether the residency law is struck down or not, we will be acquitted. We did not willfully violate any law in the course of the 2005 Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights petition drive. However, the fact that this statute has now been invalidated should stop our persecution in its tracks.
Jacob notes that the case will likely get appealed to the Supreme Court, but that he expects to prevail there as well. Dondero himself participated in a lawsuit to get the residency requirement thrown out.
For those unfamiliar with the case, Jacob explained it last year:
Unlike most initiative states, Oklahoma has a residency requirement allowing only Oklahoma residents to circulate a petition. But when the petition company checked with state officials to determine what constituted a resident, those officials said that a person could move to Oklahoma and immediately declare residency — and begin petitioning.
Just to be safe, since sometimes simple law can be made amazingly complicated, I asked for any relevant legal precedent. The ruling in a recent challenge to an Oklahoma petition to ban cock-fighting seemed clear: residency was determined by an individual’s intention to be a resident.
A number of petitioners moved to Oklahoma, declared residency, and proceeded to gather signatures on the various petitions. Ultimately, both the spending cap and the property rights measure garnered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.
Then, the various forces of big government that had worked so hard to block the vote, joined by a who’s who of corporate CEOs and the heads of energy companies and banks (can you say “daddy welfare”?), challenged the petition. And the Oklahoma Supreme Court came to their aid, providing a much different standard for residency than in the past. The judges now equated residency with a “permanent home.”
How permanent was “permanent”? One petition circulator, who moved to Oklahoma in September of 2005 and was still living there in July of the following year, was ruled not to be a resident.
Jacob’s case got even stranger than this. Jacob and the other two defendants didn’t circulate the petitions themselves; they only consulted with the initiative’s leadership on petition circulation. The state Attorney General charged them with a single count of conspiracy to break the residency-requirement law, but never charged anyone with actually breaking that law. The AG never filed charges against any signature gatherer. In other words, the state of Oklahoma wants to prosecute Jacob for conspiring to commit supposed crimes for which they cannot and/or will not prosecute the actual alleged criminals. It’s absurd.
Hopefully, this puts an end to the strange jeremiad of the state AG against the Oklahoma 3. If it doesn’t, it will clearly demonstrate the political motives of the Democratic AG behind his pursuit of felony charges against tax activists for simply giving advice to people wanting to use direct democracy to keep government in check.
THE ongoing farce at Westminster can only remind us that our national Government possesses too much power with a diminishing sense of responsibility.
No-one today argues that what this country really needs is more power in the hands of the few at the centre, even if that’s how actual policy often plays out. The question is how to bring power closer to the public.
THE ongoing farce at Westminster can only remind us that our national Government possesses too much power with a diminishing sense of responsibility.
No-one today argues that what this country really needs is more power in the hands of the few at the centre, even if that’s how actual policy often plays out. The question is how to bring power closer to the public.
John Prescott gave devolution in Northern England a shot in 2003, pushing for regional assemblies. But in a referendum the North-East utterly rejected his plan. People there were perhaps thinking along the lines of John Major’s dictum that, "If the answer is more politicians, you are asking the wrong question".
It doesn’t help that the public’s experience of local politics can be even worse than the national soap opera. Some councillors treat their position as an audition for a Westminster job, and are generally much more likely to vote with party loyalties in mind than MPs, who at least sum up the courage for rebellion now and then. This means the media and the public treat local elections as little more than a nationwide opinion poll on the parties in Westminster. This top-heavy structure is bad at producing policy adapted to local needs, but the answer is certainly not more layers of government. We need a more radical solution.
This is where direct democracy comes in. It has barely reached Britain yet, but we’ve seen it work in Switzerland and many US states. It means devolving power not to new governing bodies, but to the people themselves; the public get to vote on individual issues and laws.
Referendums up until now in Britain have had to be triggered by Parliament, so the Government can pick and choose when to hold one. But a popular referendum mechanism would allow a petition of citizens to demand a ballot on any law passed by Parliament, giving the people the final say on it. I suggest we borrow the mechanism used in California, since it’s the most populous American state but still manages to get several measures on referendum ballots. A petition of five per cent of votes cast at the last General Election would be necessary to challenge parliamentary legislation, a large but hardly insurmountable number judging by the popularity of petitions on the 10 Downing Street website.
Take ID card legislation. Consistently touted by the Civil Service and whoever happens to be Home Secretary as the answer to everything from benefit fraud to international terrorism, ID cards and their associated national database are increasingly understood by the public to be another case of the bureaucracy expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy. This makes them a potential candidate for the people’s veto.
Similarly, there is no reason new legislation has to be drawn up behind closed doors in Whitehall. An initiative process allows individual citizens or groups to draw up new laws and, with a large enough petition, put them to the people on a referendum ballot, whether Parliament likes the idea or not.
Politicians are welcome to debate the merits of citizen-led legislation and offer their own expertise in drawing it up but the final decision would lie with the people rather than the ruling party whip. And while elected MPs can do a U-turn on a sixpence, initiatives always do what they say on the ballot paper.
When introduced last century in the US, initiatives were instrumental in introducing the women’s vote and the directly elected US Senate. Compare that with our still unelected House of Lords. Some US states also introduced the recall, a petition mechanism for removing politicians and forcing a by-election when they have lost the support of the people. That could help keep constituency MPs on their toes.
These procedures could be particularly usefully combined with a fresh commitment to local government. It is an unfortunate irony that Government strategies for introducing localism have so far involved drawing up plans centrally, before wrapping them up in one package which local people can only take or leave.
Essentially, the Government is saying that people can have reform but only the reform the Government likes, or they get nothing. Occasionally this has produced some reasonable results. Several non-party candidates have become directly elected mayors, for example, which would be impossible under more traditional systems. But more often, it’s a recipe for devolving discussion without power.
US-style home-rule shows us the alternative. Local citizens suggest preferred local government structures, including what executive and representative offices there are, how they are selected or elected, then vote on their introduction.
The winning structure is enshrined in a charter, a local constitution. It can be amended or reformed, but only with the people’s permission or initiative. This would represent a citizen trump card to play when party hierarchies get entrenched.
Nick Cowen is the author of In Total Recall: how direct democracy can improve Britain, a report by think tank Civitas
With Prop 8 passing in California and various other civil rights-restricting ballot initiatives passing elsewhere, direct democracy has been receiving a strong rejection by the gay community nationwide this year. But someone who could potentially be one of their greatest allies in all of politics not only accepts direct democracy, but is urging its expansion to the rest of the nation (currently, some form of direct democracy, whether it is initiative and referenda or something similar, exists in about half of the states in the US).
The man I am talking about is Jared Polis, the Democratic Congressman-elect from Boulder, Colorado. Voted into office this November 4th, he is the first openly homosexual man non-incumbent elected to Congress. And yet he still believes that expanding ballot initiatives to the national level would make American government better.
With Prop 8 passing in California and various other civil rights-restricting ballot initiatives passing elsewhere, direct democracy (or more accurately, a hybrid of direct democracy and representative government called "codetermination") has been receiving a strong rejection by the gay community nationwide this year. But someone who could potentially be one of their greatest allies in all of politics not only accepts ballot initiatives, but is pushing for their expansion to the rest of the nation (currently in the United States, initiative voting exists in 24 states and Washington, DC).
The man I am talking about is Jared Polis, the Democratic Congressman-elect from Boulder, Colorado. Voted into office this November 4th, he is the first openly homosexual non-incumbent elected to Congress. And yet he still believes that expanding ballot initiatives to the national level would make American government better. He will, therefore, be introducing a bill into Congress next year that would actually establish a process through which any qualified citizen – most likely that will simply mean a registered voter – will be able to propose a law and then (if it gains enough support beforehand) have the entire voting public vote on it.
Why would a gay man – a man whose community has been injured and insulted at the ballot box for a number of years – support an increased use of initiatives on a scale that is larger than they have ever been used on? Listen to the man:
I’ve been involved with many ballot initiatives here in Colorado…our system of ballot initiatives not only in Colorado, but in other states doesn’t work perfectly – and that’s important to acknowledge – I believe it’s far better that we have one than we don’t have one…
There are some policies, that by their very nature, are unlikely to be implemented by an elected legislature. These are things like campaign finance reform, term limits, types of issues where it affects the members personally…
We passed here in Colorado a very strong ethics law that banned lobbyists from giving gifts to legislators, we passed campaign finance reform, we passed sunshine laws, which, again, the legislature is not likely to pass. They require open meetings – the US Congress doesn’t have that.
Polis brings up a few good points. First, governmental reform would be more likely to occur with a national initiative process supplementing our current legislative process than simply having Congress by itself. That is, the people who have power (Congress) are less likely to reform themselves and curb their power than the people who are being hurt by their corruption (the general populous). And Jared Polis is no novice when it comes to reform through initiatives – he was the main sponsor of Colorado’s "Ethics in Government" amendment, a law passed by voters in 2006 which severely limited the power of lobbyists in Colorado state government.
Something that fewer people may have noticed him saying, but something that is equally important, is that "our system of ballot initiatives not only in Colorado, but in other states doesn’t work perfectly." As seen from the infamous Proposition 8, there is much wrong with the current state and local initiative systems. Just think about this – approximately 30% of voters voted yes on Prop 8, because there was around 60% turnout and the vote was close to 50-50. That means that much less than 30% of adults, let alone the entire population, of California voted yes on a constitutional amendment, and yet it still passed. Clearly, there is something wrong with California’s initiative and referenda process (and this is just one example of that).
A national initiative process would be an amazing opportunity for reform of state initiative processes. It would bring a new form of direct democracy onto the world stage and offer solutions to the problems posed by our current direct democracies. Also, the most credible current proposal for a direct democratic process in the United States – the National Initiative for Democracy, which can be read at http://www.vote.org – would give states a choice to either keep their current process or adopt a new one based on the National Initiative for Democracy. In fact, the National Initiative proposes that half of all registered voters would need to vote "yes" for a constitutional amendment on the ballot to pass. If that rule were in place in California, over 80% of the people who showed up at the polls would have had to cast a "yes" vote on Prop 8 for it to have passed. And this is just one of several safeguards that would be put in place by the National Initiative.
Jared Polis was actually involved in the creation of the National Initiative for Democracy, even though he currently objects to a few aspects, and therefore will not be introducing that exact bill into Congress next year. The bill he will be introducing will probably resemble the National Initiative, though, and if you would like to read up on it, I have a few suggestions.
An annotated version of the Democracy Act and Democracy Amendment, which include explanations and dialogue from the 2002 Democracy Symposium (a conference which was held to work out the kinks in the two documents)
Books on the topic of direct democracy, ranging from Mike Gravel’s Citizen Power to the simply titled Direct Democracy (which is available online for free) to For the Many or The Few by John Matsusaka, a law expert who teaches at the University of Southern California.
As you can see, ballot initiatives are not something to be easily dismissed as a tool of special interests or the bigoted majority. They are more complex than that and, according to someone who is both a gay man and a direct democracy expert, much more useful.
The Initiative Reform Task Force met during the Democratic Party’s November E-Board meeting in Anaheim to propose changes in California’s initiative process. Chief among them is the immediate creation of a statewide "watch network" to analyze proposed initiatives as soon as they appear– BEFORE they are released for signatures.
Findings will then be published widely on the internet through both websites and e-mail networks. This requires no action by the legislature. It requires grassroots activists to join together and become researchers and bloggers who assemble and disseminate information about the propositions that are about to enter the pipeline.
First introduced at the beginning of the last century in response to railroad domination of the state legislature, the California initiative process was conceived as a form of direct democracy through which regular citizens could influence the political process. In recent years, however, it increasingly has been taken over by corporations, wealthy business interests, billionaires, and in this last election, tax-exempt religious organizations. The outrage following this election cycle provides a unique opportunity to reform this process at last.
Some of the identified problems within the current system include:
1. Confusing language and headlines. Summaries that omit key consequences. Dumbed down slogans used to sell the measures to voters.
2. Media that does not reach enough of an audience and lack of background knowledge resulting in no evaluation or opinion.
3. Two-thirds vote needed to amend a constitutional initiative once passed, yet only a majority needed to pass it (even in a low-voter primary).
4. Too many complex initiatives making it overwhelming for voters to make informed decisions.
5. Repeating subject matter initiatives, e.g., this year’s Prop 4 defeated for the third time.
6. Huge contributions from interest groups that will benefit financially from passage of the measure. Disclosure insufficient to tell voters of these connections. Greater detail needed in filing statements. Secretary of State’s website alone is not enough.
7. Policy agenda driven by initiatives rather than the elected state legislature. Budget hamstrung by initiatives that impede the budgetary process. Voters told that bonds are "not taxes," when, in fact, they take money directly off the top of the general fund used to pay for other state services.
8. Signature gathering by paid gatherers who do not know or care about what the measure would do and often lie about the content (currently illegal, but still done).
The Constitution of the state of California now is more than 110 pages long–longer than all other states except for Louisiana. The state’s current financial crisis is exacerbated by the ballot-box budgeting promoted by ill-conceived measures sold to voters who often do not receive adequate information to understand the consequences of the initiative. Enough! It is time for reform to begin.
The list of problems is by no means complete. Nor is the following list of possible changes that would require action by the state legislature. This is to be considered an opening conversation to be joined and expanded upon by all interested citizens.
Initial recommendations of this Initiative Reform Task Force include:
1. All initiatives be voted on only in general elections and NOT in low turnout primaries. There was some discussion that there be a required percentage of participating eligible voters, but no consensus was reached on what this level should be.
2. All constitutional amendments to be submitted to the voters in two successive general elections and require 2/3 passage in each election.
3. No initiative that allows subversion of the state budget by ballot-box budgeting.
4. Limit the number of initiatives on each ballot.
5. After the signature gathering is concluded and the Secretary of State has qualified the initiative to appear, institute a waiting period during which the state legislature may act. The proposed period was three months, however, it was noted that in some areas the period is one year.
6. Citizens’ commission to evaluate proposition labels and summaries done by the Attorney General’s office.
7. Prohibit independent expenditure committees and require that supporters have to spend money directly with the name of the corporation or person on all disclosure forms.
8. Paid signature gatherers must wear a large button or sign that discloses who is paying them. Prohibiting payment for signature gathering was also proposed.
9. Require that the entire language of the measure be on each signature page, or that to each citizen be given a copy that must be read PRIOR to signing the petition.
10. History of all previous bond issues with dates and recipients to be prominently disclosed on an initiative involving a bond for the same entity.
The Initiative Reform Task Force currently includes members from the Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles and the Santa Monica Mountains, the Courage Campaign, the Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica Democratic Clubs, Valley Democrats United, and Westside Progressives. It is anticipated that it will grow into a statewide network of citizen activists to proactively monitor and analyze ballot initiatives BEFORE the signature gathering is completed to provide an early alarm.
Linda Sutton is a writer, photographer, and educator based in Los Angeles. She was the press coordinator for Gov. Jimmy Carter in ’76 and did political media locally thereafter. Recently, she produced the public access television show "We Say/They Say" with host Marcy Winograd and the "Gore Vidal on Education" Truth Now radio interview. She writes on various progressive blogs and comments way too often. Political photos are on the progressivecaucuscdp.org website; others at lindasuttonphoto.com. She was the co-producer of the 40th AD candidate forums and has produced the "HAiR" and "Body of War" fundraisers for Progressive Democrats of America. She is an elected delegate in CA’s 41st AD, is on the Human Rights Committee of UTLA’s House of Reps, and is a member of several Democratic clubs.
Posted on December 01, 2008
Comments
Group home page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ca_initiativereformtaskforce
Group email address: ca_initiativereformtaskforce@yahoogroups.com
also bio update:
PDLA, Co-Chair
UTLA, PACE committee
Posted by: LindaSutton at December 1, 2008 05:59 AM
I recently was contacted by someone that asked me to check out Whitehouse2.com. I was thoroughly impressed with the site because of the simplicity of the premise that it incorporated in its design. It was a simple, straightforward way to make your priorities known to the incoming administration.
I recently was contacted by someone that asked me to check out Whitehouse2.com. I was thoroughly impressed with the site because of the simplicity of the premise that it incorporated in its design. It was a simple, straightforward way to make your priorities known to the incoming administration. The beauty of the concept was that if you had a concern that was not listed, it is possible to add it to the list of hundreds of actions the Obama Administration could take to make sure it is following the wishes of the people. Of course, it is very doubtful that the administration will follow the intentions and precepts of the website, but if enough people were to participate in this unique way to further the concept of direct democracy. This is something that is within our reach with the advent of instant communication along with broad access to almost everyone, courtesy of the internet which has become a virtual necessity in this new century.
While the National Initiative 4 Democracy is my desired outcome in the quest for a direct democracy that operates on laws proposed and enacted by the people, and for the people, as our forefathers intended, the Whitehouse2.com is a good step forward. I discovered that there was a particular issue that was not included in the hundreds of other goals that people had submitted. I was going to write an article on the subject anyway, but on the site, I found a perfect opportunity to make my opinion known.
I want to preface this with the fact that I am not a religious man, I subscribe to no particular view in regard as to whether or not there is a God, and if there is indeed a power responsible for everything, which most major religions profess to believe. I reject all of the precepts of most of them except maybe the Buddhist philosophy which is actually more of a self awareness than a religion in the Judeo-Christian tradition. In my view, I compare the belief in Moses, Abraham, Jesus and Mohammed to be no more or less credible than the ancient beliefs in Ra, Zeus, Jupiter and Odin among many other supreme beings. I believe that there is no human on Earth that can state with certainty who or what God is, or what God wishes. I realize that any belief in a God or a religion is in my opinion usually predicated on what society someone is born into. Unless one is a convert later in life, faith in any particular philosophy is usually a product of nurture, not nature. A belief system in some kind of supernatural being is the result of indoctrination based on blind faith rather than logic.
I imagine that I am probably ruffling a few feathers when I admit that I don’t subscribe to any particular belief, and that there are those that actually believe that I am destined to go straight to hell. Well so be it, if that’s what some believe, they are entitled to their opinion, which brings me to the actual point I am trying to get to in this particular essay, and that is the bias and hostility some self proclaimed “true believers” feel about someone or some group with beliefs that are different than their own. There are of course, many who maintain a “live and let live” approach to those that do not think the same as they do. There are however, many diverse religions that look at religions outside of their own as blasphemous or heretical, and actually consider a different point of view as worthy of death. This, in the history of our planet, is more the rule than the exception. So many wars and deaths can be attributed to differences in believing what or who the Supreme Being is, and what that being does or does not condone. If one considers what I expressed about my own particular view on religion, I have a basic outlook of neutrality no matter what any particular sect or religion espouses. To me, they are all based on wishful thinking more than anything else.
So therefore, I am amazed at the current paradigm that exists between the Muslim and Christian and Jewish religions. This is more amazing when you consider how far up the hierarchy these hateful prejudices actually are. I see governments that subscribe to them in such deep-seeded beliefs that they influence an entire nation or an entire regions behavior as can be seen with such clarity in the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent. The most disturbing thing about this is how this nation, the United States, is also so involved in, part and parcel, in this atmosphere of hate and prejudice, to where actual national policy is set. The period since 9/11 has seen ever-growing hate and distrust, not only directed toward fundamentalist militant Islamic groups and governments, but has spread to include all Islamic sects that have no interest in violence or Jihad or violence directed towards infidels. What many people are failing to realize is that with most Muslims, like with most Christians, that their religious beliefs may be part of their lives, it doesn’t control their lives. Religion may add to their belief in how the world should be, but religion doesn’t dictate how the world should operate.
I see the differences between Jews, Muslims and Christian fundamentalists, but I also see many similarities that I believe are lost on those who have a strong religious value system. Unlike people who have a specific belief system ingrained in their emotional and mental preconceptions, I have no such beliefs. I see human beings that have the same physical traits, the same intellect, and the same needs and desires to procreate and to care for their families and loved ones with the basic necessities of life, and to enable them to live happy and healthy lives. They begin hating another group of people, not just because they believe differently about God, but because of things that neighbors, friends, relatives and even their governments have been indoctrinating them with. Sometimes, the manipulation of prejudice and distrust toward a different society or religion is presented as fact by those in positions of authority. They don’t actually come out and tell you to hate another culture; they instead focus on differences that are foreign, or things that seem repugnant to those that are being cultivated. A good example of this is the way women are treated in some Islamic cultures. It would seem that most women are treated as slaves by Muslim men and they are regularly stoned to death for adultery or not being chaperoned with another male that is not their husband. The perception then becomes that all Islamic countries abuse women. Cutting off the hand of a thief is another example of this same hate cultivating rhetoric. It happens but it’s not commonplace as the government would have you believe.
The truth is that most religious wars and clashes don’t happen because of different beliefs in a supreme being, but because of border disputes, economics or war for resources as in the Iraq War. It is totally shameful to impugn an entire religion and culture because of the actions of radical fundamentalists that represent such a slight percentage of Muslims. To think that the United States of America in the 21st century could hold the same basic perceptions that led to the crusades in medieval times is almost unbelievable. It’s relatively easy to understand that since the Communists in Russia were taken from power and the Chinese were so obliging towards buying up U.S. debt, we had to find a common enemy to justify our defense expenditures to keep the military industrial complex in business. The Islamic world just happened to fit the bill and Bush threw them all into his definition of “evildoers”. The Muslims were also the natural target for the Christian fundamentalists like Reverend Hagee, who needs to support the Jews return to Israel (along with their own vendetta against the Palestinians and along with confrontation with Islam) to keep on script as in the Bible’s Revelations. The pay-off for those that truly believe is “Rapture”, when the true believers are called back to Supreme Being. Meanwhile, while we wait, Gaza is again cut off from the basic needs of life, like food and electricity, and the world doesn’t seem to notice, after all… they’re Muslims.
American must not believe the fear and hate mongers. Americans must realize that there should be a separation of church and state, not only in domestic matters but in our foreign policy. We cannot exterminate the entire Islamic culture in order to serve the right wing reactionary government in Israel and their minions that run AIPAC. Our politicians should put America first, not Christianity, not the bible, not Israel. Muslims are not all bad and Christians all good. It is really unbelievable that in this day and age, that I should feel the need to remind people that there are no absolutes in human nature. No religion is all bad; no religion is all knowing and good either, no matter how you were raised or what you believe. Intellectually most of us know that, however emotionally we’re not evaluating what we feel and why. I believe that it is time the Americans embraced some of our better selves. It’s not only the moral thing to do; it’s also the practical thing. We’re in a quagmire and its time we pulled ourselves out using some moral principles and a little common sense. Its not about left and right, its about what is right and wrong.
Here are some things you should know about ballot initiatives in California.
In all of the 1960s, there were only nine statewide initiatives placed on the ballot. In the 1970s, that number rose to 22. In the 1980s, Californians were asked to vote on 46; then, in the 1990s, it climbed to 61. So far in this decade, there already have been 63 — and there’s still a year to go, with a possible special election in June.
That’s a record every decade — and a sevenfold increase over 50 years.
Here are some things you should know about ballot initiatives in California.
In all of the 1960s, there were only nine statewide initiatives placed on the ballot. In the 1970s, that number rose to 22. In the 1980s, Californians were asked to vote on 46; then, in the 1990s, it climbed to 61. So far in this decade, there already have been 63 — and there’s still a year to go, with a possible special election in June.
That’s a record every decade — and a sevenfold increase over 50 years.
Here’s something else: Supporters and opponents of these initiatives are spending more and more money to ensure that their side wins: $9 million in 1976, $127 million in 1978 (the year of Proposition 13), $140 million in 1996, $280 million in 2004 and $330 million in 2006 — a 37-fold increase in 30 years.
This money comes from individuals, corporations and unions, but increasingly it comes in large chunks — very large chunks. In the 1990 elections, for example, one-third of all contributions for initiatives were given in amounts of $1 million or more. In 2006, it jumped from one-third to two-thirds. One person — real estate heir and Hollywood producer Stephen Bing — gave more than $46 million of his own money to support the (unsuccessful) 2006 initiative to impose oil depletion taxes.
Last week, Californians voted on 10 statewide initiatives (five of them placed on the ballot by billionaires) plus two measures put on the ballot by the Legislature. This is more initiatives than usual, although not the most. The record was set in November 1990, when 18 initiatives plus 10 legislative measures were on the ballot.
What all this suggests is that California’s policy agenda today is increasingly driven by ballot initiatives rather than by the elected members of the Legislature. Prompted in many cases by legislative deadlock or legislative inaction, these initiatives effectively shift the policymaking burden to voters, and often leave them overwhelmed and bewildered by poor drafting, misleading campaigns, look-alike counter-initiatives and highly technical policy details.
The ballot initiatives that voters are being asked to decide are too often lengthy, rigid, inflexible and error-prone. The initiative process is badly outdated and needs to be reformed.
What can be done? The most important reforms would reduce the number of initiatives on the ballot, improve the quality of those that do make it on the ballot and strengthen voter information.
For instance, if an initiative is on the ballot, but at the last minute the Legislature adopts its language (or an acceptable compromise) into law, then the proponent of the initiative should have the option of withdrawing the initiative from the ballot. This would help solve the problem of poor drafting and mistakes.
Currently, initiatives must remain on the ballot even if the Legislature adopts the same measure into law. This leads to ridiculous situations like the one this year over Proposition 91, a measure dealing with the use of gas-tax money, which had already qualified for the ballot when the Legislature passed a law addressing the issue. Unfortunately, it was too late to remove it from the ballot, and as a result, the measure’s original supporters urged Californians to vote no on it.
Voters also should be given more and better information on ballot initiatives. The secretary of state should update and improve its website to include video statements from proponents and opponents. In addition, the ballot pamphlets that go out to each voter should contain a full page listing the supporters and opponents of each measure. Voters, particularly when considering confusing propositions, often take cues about what to support from those who have endorsed or opposed the measure.
Another useful reform would be to extend the circulation period for initiatives to one year (rather than the current 150 days, which is among the shortest in the nation) in order to allow more grass-roots circulation of initiatives. This would put citizen proponents, who must rely on volunteers to circulate signature petitions, on a somewhat more level playing field with well-financed proponents.
Initiatives should not impose supermajority requirements on future legislative or voter actions unless they pass by the same supermajority. In other words, a measure passing by 51% could not require a 67% vote in the future, say, to raise or lower taxes. Simple majorities should not be permitted to disenfranchise larger future majorities.
Direct democracy is an extremely important and valuable part of California’s political process. Ballot initiatives have been used to write, debate and adopt many of the state’s most important laws. And California voters remain committed to the process, which many see as a rare and precious flowering of democracy, a remedy of last resort for a public often frustrated by an unresponsive government.
Improving the flexibility of the process by reducing the number of initiatives that appear on the ballot, reducing the influence of money over the process and enhancing voter information — these reforms can address the public’s concerns while preserving the essence of the initiative process.
By Robert M. Stern and Tracy Westen
Robert M. Stern is president and Tracy Westen is chief executive of the Center for Governmental Studies, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization in Los Angeles that recently published “Democracy by Initiative: Shaping California’s Fourth Branch of Government.”
This article was originally published on November 10, 2008 in the Los Angeles Times
The former senator and one-time Democratic presidential candidate explains why both Obama and McCain are cut from the same imperialist cloth, and what he thinks of fellow Alaskan Sarah Palin’s rise.
The former senator and one-time Democratic presidential candidate explains why both Obama and McCain are cut from the same imperialist cloth, and what he thinks of fellow Alaskan Sarah Palin’s rise.
You might remember Mike Gravel as the cantankerous 78-year-old who shook up the early Democratic debates with his fiery denunciations of the other candidates—“Some of these people frighten me, they frighten me!” he said at the first debate. Maybe you saw his many YouTube videos or read his blogs—an effective and cheap way of talking about policy for a candidate who often took the bus to get to his campaign events. But Gravel also has a long record of public service: Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives for two years, and a U.S. Senator for Alaska from 1969-1981. He famously released the Pentagon Papers, official government plans and memoranda concerning the Vietnam War, and filibustered to end the draft after President Nixon proposed a two-year extension in 1971. Since founding the Democracy Foundation in 1989, Gravel has worked to promote the National Initiative, which would allow for voter-initiated legislation at the national level. I talked to Sen. Gravel this week by phone.
SPLICE TODAY: What are some of your thoughts on your 2008 presidential campaign? Do you think anyone else was saying the things you were saying?
MIKE GRAVEL: Well, obviously Dennis Kucinich was anti-war, but I didn’t think on balance that he was all that effective on the issue. He’s run for president now for, what, six years? And I must say that I’m not that effective on the issue either. The difference is that I have a solution other than just making a speech. That applies to not only Kucinich but to Ron Paul and others who were anti-war. I brought into the campaign the issue of American Imperialism and the Military Industrial Complex and said, look, representative government is broken. Well, Kucinich and others tell us representative government is the solution, but they’re wrong. The Democratic Party is a war party just like the Republican Party.
If Obama gets elected you’re going to see the same approach—you know, you talk about moving some troops out of Iraq and into Afghanistan, this is American Imperialism. You’re going to see continued support for NATO, which is a device to continue the arms race with Russia. This is more of the same.
Now with George Bush you saw the extreme of this; we’re gonna move away from the extreme, but it’s going to be the same American imperialist policies, and that is not a solution to the problem of war. The solution of course is to change the American way of thinking, which is founded on fear—fear that’s been induced for the last 50 years. The only way to change the American way of thinking is to empower the American people to become lawmakers, so that they can vote on the issues that affect their lives and in that way reset political priorities.
Now will the American people do this? I think so. I think that if they had the power, they would rise to a level of maturity that would allow them to break away from the skewed priorities brought about by the Military Industrial Complex. Now they’ll make mistakes as they do this, but those mistakes would be corrected rapidly.
ST: You’re talking about the National Initiative for Direct Democracy that you founded?
MG: Yeah, that’s the solution. Like I said, these other people don’t offer a solution. They talk about representative government. They say we’ve got to elect good people to office. Well, hell, we’ve been electing good people to office for over 200 years and it hasn’t done anything, we’re still same old, same old.
ST: Can you tell us about the National Initiative? How would that work exactly?
MG: It’s legislation that I’ve written to directly involve the people in the affairs of government. I was informed by similar initiative procedures in 24 states, all enacted at the turn of the 20th century, before World War I, and also by similar initiative procedures in Switzerland and Uruguay at the local level. It took me 10 years to come up with the National Initiative. It’s made up of a Constitutional Amendment and a Federal statute and sets up legislative procedures that are copied from the Congress and based on my experiences as Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives and as a United States Senator. It equips the people to be able to enact law and to participate in their own self-governance in partnership with their elected officials at all levels of government. An Electoral Trust is set up to oversee the initiatives. The people need a procedure to be able to function as a government and that procedure is the National Initiative.
It’s interesting: the Swiss were the first to develop the Federal system back in the middle ages. We copied their system here in American with our Constitution. And then the Swiss copied us with their 1848 Constitution by bringing the people in. But, you see, they never really brought the people in in an actionable fashion until the turn of the 20th century. And at the same time we were doing it here, and so was Uruguay. So you’ve got Switzerland, Uruguay, and the United States all working in procedures for direct initiative within a generation of each other. All I’ve done is build on that. We all stand on what those before us have done.
ST: Have you received much support for the National Initiative?
MG: Well, I ran for president because I wanted to make the American people aware of the National Initiative and it worked, it brought a lot of attention to it. But you’ve got to appreciate that the body politic, that is, the representatives in public office all over the country, they don’t understand the National Initiative and when they do understand it they don’t support it. They don’t believe that the citizens who they themselves represent are knowledgeable enough. There’s no reason for this. They’re looking at it wrong. We’re talking about a majority decision made by a national constituency of 130 million voters. The constituency of most states is roughly several million. But the constituency of the congress is 535. The constituency of the Supreme Court is nine. If you agree that democracy works then you agree that the larger the constituency the better the decision you’ll get on any issue. So it’s that simple.
The representatives who understand the National Initiative don’t support it because they know it takes away some of their power. It’s the same with the media. They know it takes away some of their power too, because the media is the intermediary between the representative and the citizen. And since we don’t have a lot of money to go out and advertise it we have a tough battle. Especially since this would require the majority of the people who voted in the last presidential election to support what we’re doing.
But let’s keep in mind the definition of freedom by Cicero, which is, freedom is the participation in power. If you don’t participate in power you’re not free. Well, power is the exercise of lawmaking. We don’t make the laws, the our elected representatives make the laws, so all we can do is obey them or go to jail.
ST: Your campaign was noted for its well-managed Internet strategy. You were very smart in your use of YouTube videos, for example, to gain support and get your message out. Who managed this part of your campaign and came up with the ideas for the videos?
MG: I’m glad you said we were very smart. We weren’t very smart. We just deferred to the younger voters who identified with what I was saying, and they took over. The person who was doing most of that work within our conversation was Skyler McKinley. At the time he was 15 or 16 years old. The "Rock" video was done by a couple of guys, both 24 years old. They did it. We didn’t initiate any of this. But we were lucky to get all that support. We didn’t have the financial resources to wage a traditional presidential campaign. I started running for president with $3000 and ended up in debt. I’m still fighting to receive my matching campaign funds. I’m the only presidential candidate to not receive matching campaign funds. And believe it or not I’ve just been sanctioned by the FEC for $10,000 for not reporting my filings on time. Can you believe that? They were on leave from business until late August and one of the first things they do when they get back is sanction me.
ST: Was the Alternative Debate your idea? [When Gravel was barred in November, 2007 from participating in any further Democratic debates for lack of proper fundraising, he held his own "Alternative Debate"]
MG: Oh, yeah. That was my idea. Sure. But here too, it only came about because we had a young 23-year-old supporter and I told him about my idea and I said could we TiVo this and he said, "Yeah sure, and it wouldn’t cost hardly anything either," so we did and he did all the tech work. But I’ll tell you, we made a big mistake because we rented this big hall to TiVo it in and have an audience, and it was wrong. We didn’t need a hall or an audience. Hell, we could have TiVoed this in my living room and filmed it and put it on the website. Instead we spent $10-15,000 and wiped out our savings. We didn’t need to do that.
ST: I think your most popular YouTube videos is you trying to win over Obama Girl. How did that come about?
MG: That’s right. The Obama Girl video was set up by the Obama Girl producer, who is making a lot of money. They approached us, and my criteria for anything we put up on YouTube was very simple: It had to be either dignified, humorous, or deal with an issue.
ST: Do you still talk to her?
MG: [Laughs] No. No, I don’t. You know, she didn’t even vote in the primary election.
ST: Oh, really? Is that true?
MG: Yeah. Her name is Amber. She was very sweet but as far as any kind of political acumen I didn’t detect any. Nice sweet kid though.
ST: What do you make of Sarah Palin?
MG: Look, she is clearly a very sharp politician. She can market herself very well. But from an ideological point of view she is really a Neanderthal: her religious views are terrible, her political ideology is terrible, and her experience is really nonexistent. She was mayor of Wasilla. I know Wasilla, I’ve campaigned there door-to-door, and that’s a very narrow—narrow religiously, narrow politically—community, probably one of the two most conservative communities in the state. She’s not well read, she’s not well informed, and she doesn’t know a lot about energy. Just being governor of Alaska doesn’t make you know a lot about energy.
She has demonstrated one thing: she is very tough and has a good political mind. She knows the direction she wants to go in to satisfy her ambitions and there’s nothing wrong with that in itself, however what is wrong is that she’s totally imbued with the militarism which has existed in this country for the past 50 years—all the more so in Alaska, because it’s such a military culture.
ST: I was really struck by the difference between the Sarah Palin from the Katie Couric interviews and the Sarah Palin at vice presidential debate.
MG: Oh sure. Like I said, she’s a natural. But that has to be informed by intellect and she’s not informed by any intellect. She doesn’t read anything. I think she’s really being controlled by the narrow-minded people around McCain—that is, the Neocons. It’s unfortunate.
ST: Have you seen that Larry Flynt is putting out a Sarah Palin look-a-like sex-tape? Think you’ll check it out?
MG: [Laughs] I haven’t seen but I’d like to. Is it out? I haven’t had the time. If you send me a link to it, I’ll watch it. You know, I’ve met Larry Flynt.
ST: Have you?
MG: Oh, yeah. Sure. He’s great, but you know he’s a little over the hill at this point. But send me a link to that video if you can. I’d like to see it. A little porn never hurt anyone.
ST: [Laughs] Sure. And I won’t tell your wife.
MG: That’s okay, I’ll probably show it to her. It’s not her kind of stuff but she’ll probably watch it once.
ST: Fair enough. I also wanted to ask, what do you make of Joe Biden?
MG: Well, Joe I know very well. He’s a nice guy, but he’s not a heavyweight. When it comes to foreign policy he’s all wrong. He follows the typical imperialist attitude that Americans are the greatest and that America should be leading the world. Well, we’re not the greatest and we shouldn’t be leading the world. The world should lead itself. We need to reform the United Nations, let them lead the world. We’re not qualified to be the world’s policemen: we’re disliked around the world today by pretty much everyone because we only do good things for the world when it serves our own selfish interest.
ST: Do you have any hope that Obama will significantly alter American foreign policy?
MG: No. He’ll reconstitute it in a more acceptable form. And that’s really the danger. During the campaign sometimes I’d give this comparison: it’s like trying to boil a frog. With the Republicans, you throw it in the boiling water and it hops out so you’ve got to put it back in and hold the lid. With the Democrats, you have to put the frog in tepid water and turn up the heat and cook it slowly.
ST: So you don’t think Obama will end the war?
MG: Oh sure, he’ll end the war, but he’ll keep the bases there, he’ll keep an American military presence there. We have military presence in over 130 countries. We have over, what, more than 700 military bases around the world. It’s ridiculous. We don’t need that. We spend more on defense than all the other countries in the world combined. Russia is 10 percent of our military budget; China is less than 10 percent. They’re not a threat to us. There’s no one on earth who’s ever going to think of attacking us. Sure, Al Qaeda, a bunch of guys in caves with box cutters. So we spend a fortune on Homeland Security for no real reason. It’s just to train people to act like 1984, so we have a total invasion of government into our daily lives.
ST: What are the biggest challenges that the next president will have to deal with?
MG: The biggest challenges are threefold: one is going to be dealing with the economic meltdown, which I don’t think they’re going to be able to do. You can’t use the same people that caused it to deal with it. So it’ll continue with band-aids until it really brings the whole crushing defeat of capitalism. Even before the meltdown we were in a catastrophic economic situation where all the things that they were promising could not be met and they still promise tax cuts and all the rest of it. It’s unbelievable.
Second has to do with the decline of American economic and political hegemony: how are we going to handle that psychologically as a populus? When you’re going downhill it begins to affect your ego. The American people think they’re the greatest people in the world; well they’re not. How are they going to handle our decline with Obama as our president? We’re going to admire ourselves because it’s all about identity politics. So Hillary [Clinton] has proven that a woman can rise. Obama has proven that—not a black person but a biracial person can rise—but so what? It’s the success of an individual and tells us something about the maturity of the American people, but what about the maturity of the policies that affect the American people? We’ve proven nothing on that score.
Third, is the cleaning up the environment and the ability to redirect the economy of the nation to that end. If we buy into American imperialism we can’t redirect the economy to solve our domestic needs, which are education, health care, building infrastructure, and cleaning up the environment. What we should be doing is turning around and building five million windmills and solar power plants in a five-year crash program. That will create an unbelievable amount of jobs. We don’t have to worry about bailing out the banks. Screw the banks. Just set up a process where people can finance building windmills and solar power plants across this country and let the ordinary citizen hold these windmills, not the wealthy people. It could be done. It’s a simple process of letting the profits of capital pay for the cost of capital and then the end product is letting the people be the owners of capital. The way it is right now with our system it’s the wealthy owning the capital and the people have nothing but wages. When the crunch comes, they’re left unemployed.
ST: During one of the early debates, the question was asked: If elected, what would be your priorities during your first 100 days in office. They didn’t really let you or some of the other candidates answer. So what would your priorities be?
MG: The first thing I would do is sign an executive order to end torture. Obama has to do that. It’s really the bellwether as to whether or not we’re going to turn the moral corner. We’ve got to signal to the world that we’re going to change morally. Now maybe Obama will do that but I don’t know that he will. But if I were president, then in my first 100 days I would not only sign that executive order but I would blow up the prison at Guantanamo, I would give Guantanamo back to Cuba, I would recognize Cuba, I would recognize Iran. I would blow up Abu Ghraib and I would withdraw our troops from Iraq. Then I would start to withdraw our troops from other countries around the world and I would pull out of NATO. That’s just for starters.
MG: Yeah, I spoke at the university in Grenoble. This is a university of 50,000 students—probably the largest university in France. It’s unbelievably beautiful. It was advertised that day that I’d be speaking in English so I assumed that I’d be speaking to 50-100 students. I walked into the room, this huge auditorium, and it was completely full of people—standing room early. They were sitting in the stairwell, the aisles, standing in the hallway, sitting in front of me on the floor. It was unbelievable. I was so taken aback when I walked into the auditorium that I threw my hands in the air and they started cheering. I spoke about American imperialism, about NATO, the National Initiative, how we’ve got to empower the people because representative government is broken. And it sold like hot cakes.
ST: What are you working on now?
MG: I’m trying to organize a TV program called Global Perspectives. There’s no American network to do it but I’ve got to find investors. It would be cutting edge political analysis. It wouldn’t be a news program but analysis of issues like the war, nuclear proliferation, and so on. It would be very international in scope and very controversial and so therefore I think very interesting.
EDITOR: Our country’s elected representatives and system are inept and totally controlled by two political parties, special interests and large corporations. Mainstream media, including this paper, now being owned and controlled by a few, have become nothing more than another very powerful, manipulative special interest group.
EDITOR: Our country’s elected representatives and system are inept and totally controlled by two political parties, special interests and large corporations. Mainstream media, including this paper, now being owned and controlled by a few, have become nothing more than another very powerful, manipulative special interest group.
As a result, the American people are not in charge of this country, and the country is in a "death spiral." The near trillion-dollar bailout is an atrocity. For this country to survive and regain greatness, there must be a significant change in the balance of power between our elected representatives and the people. The technology exists to do this.
Subject to a direct vote by the American people, would the bailout have passed? Armed with the power to directly formulate and vote on bills, legislation and referendums, how long do you think it would take for the American people to reverse the flow of illegal aliens, fix public education, mandate English as the national language, downsize the military/industrial complex, win the drug war or solve any other major issue facing this country?
The National Initiative for Democracy (www.ni4d.us) is an organization attempting to implement this concept — they are trying to get enough voters to register and vote "yes" to directly making an amendment to our constitution and implement a more direct democracy. This is real change that offers real hope for this country. Get involved. We can do it!
David C. Finkbiner
Mosinee
Name: David Finkbiner
Age: 60
Occupation: CPA/financial analyst
Hometown: Mosinee
What inspired him to write:
If we’re talking about a democracy — in my own opinion, democracy means people voting and having some control over their government. We’ve never had a pure, direct democracy. It’s always been a representative kind of democracy. But for the people to have power offers enormous benefits for all of us. Take the bailout that just happened. If people had an opportunity to vote, the outcome would have been very different and you’d have a happier population.
We talk about apathy in this country. If we had a situation where people’s votes meant more, and people were more able to get involved, a byproduct of that would be better-educated people (who are more engaged).
What I’ve seen is the corporate interest groups, special interest groups and the two-party system is taking full control of this country. The balance of power has gotten to the point where the people do not have that much power.
The concept is not to eliminate the Senate or the Supreme Court or anything else. But it’s to shift the balance of power back to the people.
What kind of president will the winner of November’s national popularity contest be? If history is any judge, the nation’s next chief executive, whether Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain, will be something of a monster.
What kind of president will the winner of November’s national popularity contest be? If history is any judge, the nation’s next chief executive, whether Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain, will be something of a monster.
It’s not because either of these men are overtly evil. I very much doubt that Obama or McCain is secretly plotting to create the American Reich after Inauguration Day, no matter what dire warnings are floating around the Internet about the supposed dictatorship to come. But both men are likely to leave the government more powerful and intrusive than they found it, and to do some measure of damage to our liberty.
Why?
Well, it’s not so much the president as the presidency. In the nation’s chief executive, we’ve created an office of vast powers — but powers still insufficient to satisfy the even vaster demands we put upon whoever holds that position. From a station of what were once really very limited powers and few defined responsibilities, the presidency has taken on the roles, as Gene Healy describes in his excellent book, The Cult of the Presidency, of "Chief Legislator, Manager of Prosperity, Protector of the Peace, World Leader — and more."
These are impossible responsibilities for any person to fulfill. They are in fact, impossible responsibilities for any human institution, no matter how enormous, to fulfill. But we insist that our presidents try, or at least appear to make the effort. The result, says Dana D.Nelson, author of the equally important Bad for Democracy: How the Presidency Undermines the Power of the People, is that "[n]early every president, regardless of party affiliation, has as a candidate denounced the presidential power grabs of the current officeholder. And every president since FDR has attempted to overpower the judicial and legislative branches."
That’s every president — all of them. The dynamics of the office and the demands placed upon it haven’t changed this year, so there’s no reason to assume that President McCain or President Obama will be that singular officeholder who leaves the presidency less powerful than he found it. Indeed, this is the era when some conservative constitutional scholars espouse the idea of the "unitary executive" — an explicit formulation of the increasingly imperial status of the presidency under presidents from both parties. And it’s a year in which Obama’s campaign has evolved the gloss of a cult of personality that promises to gift the candidate with freewheeling power even as it burdens him with superhuman expectations. And let’s not forget pundits like the New York Times‘s David Brooks wheezing that,"What we need in this situation is authority."
No, this is not the year for a modest candidate. This is the year for … Superman.
In fact, "Superman" is exactly what both Healy and Nelson say is expected of the modern president. Coming from very different perspectives — Healy is senior editor at the libertarian Cato Institute, while Nelson would likely describe herself as a progressive and is a professor of English and American studies at Vanderbilt University — these authors have written remarkable parallel analyses of the rise of the imperial presidency. Nelson points to presidential action figures as evidence of the cartoonish superhero attributes we’ve come to expect of presidents. Healy emphasizes a line of movies dating back to the 1930s in which presidents are celebrated for exercising unilateral and even (in the case of 1932’s Gabriel over the White House) supernatural powers to vanquish hardship and evil.
This celebration of the power of one politican wasn’t manufactured in Hollywood or in the offices of a toy company. It came in response to grassroots demands that presidents take on more responsibility than any official of a republic should be permitted to assume, or that any human being could ever shoulder.
"In fact," writes Healy about FDR’s expansion of presidential power, "Well before the war, it had become clear that increasing numbers of Americans looked to the president for personal help in a way that would have seemed peculiar — even dishonorable — to their fathers and grandfathers."
Politicians were all too happy to take advantage of the opportunities provided by cries for presidential intercession. They built up the myth of a special relationship between the people and the "national leader" (a role that was never supposed to adhere to the presidency) despite the clear constitutional role of the House of Representatives in representing the people. Says Nelson, "Significantly, the notion of the mandate suggests that the basis for presidential power comes not through the Constitution but directly through the people. … This idea, combined with the ambiguity of the Constitution itself with regard to the specifics of presidential power, installed a creative new logic that presidents could exploit in defining the office’s scope and reach."
Scholars have been all too happy to drink the imperial Kool Aid. Before ever assuming the office that he would abuse at great cost to American liberty, Woodrow Wilson penned books calling for expanded presidential power. Historians took to celebrating the expansion of the office — and excoriated those who tried to hold to the presidency’s modest scope. "Whether they’re conservative or liberal, writes Healy, "America’s professors prefer presidents who dream big and attempt great things — even when they leave wreckage in their wake."
Healy points to some sickening sentiments voiced in recent years by pundits who regretted the relative peace of the 1990s and seemed excited by the potential offered by the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Two days afterr the world Trade Center’s collapse, Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC’s Hardball and a former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, praised George W. Bush’s good fortune: "Lucky though he was, Bill Clinton never had his shot at greatness. He could lower the jobless rate, balance the budget, and console us after the Oklahoma City bombing. But he never got the opportunity George W. Bush was given: the historic chance to lead. Our American spirit, power and enterprise now stand ready for orders. Only the president can give them."
Oh great. A chance for President Bush to issue orders — we know how well that worked out. But it would have been bad to one degree or another no matter who was in that office. Superhuman responsibility and superhuman power are a terrible combination to hand to or inflict upon any mere mortal.
Unfortunately, but logically, neither Healy nor Nelson has a clear plan for breaking the cycle that has turned every president into an overburdened focus of ridiculous expectations who reaches, in response, for ever greater authority to meet the demands of the office. Nelson asks us all to step "away from the childlike fantasies of complete harmony with each other and the dependencies that presidentialism fosters in us, into a clear-eyed and adult awareness of human limitations and human creativity." To this end she explores several ideas to encourage or require increased citizen participation in democracy, including increased volunteerism, mandatory national service, national initiative and referendum and an extended series of representative councils on the congressional district level. All of them seem intended to make Americans be other than they have been — the fantasists who created the imperial presidency to begin with.
Healy, on the other hand simply concedes that "overweening government and the swollen presidency that inevitably accompanies it are the product of incompatible public demands." He hopes that the skepticism and cynicism toward government of recent years might produce something resembling the Revolutionary-era consensus that the president should not be a stand-in for a king. But today’s skeptics and cynics also handed George W. Bush — however briefly — an approval rating of around 90% after 9/11.
Healy and Nelson shouldn’t be slighted for failing to come up with a solution, though, in their otherwise excellent and timely books. There probably is no solution.
The presidency will continue to grow in power and scope for as long as Americans insist as seeing it as the center of the political universe — or even of the whole universe. It will be a problem so long as the office is loaded with unreasonable power and inhuman expectation. And so long as that is the nature of the office, contenders for White House residency will be politicians who (insanely) think they’re up to the job or else are simply willing to grin and promise everything under the sun.
And that’s why President Barack Obama or President John McCain will certainly be a monster.
In the sense that we, the people, still have the right to remove our government once every few years, Britain is a democracy. But I believe the time has come to acknowledge that our current form of democracy is too crude and inadequate to serve properly a sophisticated 21st-century society.
Let’s be honest: once elected, our MPs, councillors and other holders of public office habitually ignore the wishes of those who voted for them – and there is nothing anyone can do about it. The public will does not prevail in any meaningful sense; there is no continuing “rule of the people”.
This gulf – between promise and reality – angers people far more than it did in the past, and no amount of highfalutin talk from politicians about Britain’s long-established traditions of representative democracy can conceal the fact that there is growing friction between people and power.
People are switching off, not out of apathy but from a conviction that their voice is not being listened to. At the 2005 election only 37% of those aged 18-24 bothered to take part. Compared with the recent past, far fewer people identify with or vote for the main political parties.
“They’re all the same” is a commonly heard lament – and people are increasingly resorting to voting for fringe parties such as the BNP, whose policies and agendas would be disastrous for Britain.
Yet there is a solution: a simple mechanism that, if made an integral part of the democratic process, could both improve the quality of decision-making at national and local levels and restore the public’s faith in politics. That mechanism is the referendum.
One of the growing number of campaigns backing the greater use of referendums – also known as “direct democracy” or “citizens’ initiatives” – has set out how it could work in practice: each year on Referendum Day people would be able to vote on issues of concern, both national and local. To trigger a referendum on a particular topic 2.5% of the electorate would need to sign a petition.
This would mean that for national issues 1m signatures would be required to trigger a ballot. For local issues affecting, say, a district council, this would require about 4,000 people to back the proposition. Referendum Day would be held on the same day as local elections.
The Electoral Commission would need to agree the wording on the ballot paper to ensure that the question was fair and balanced. The commission would also be given new powers to check the validity of the petition and number of signatures. People would need to sign petitions in person and the signatures required to trigger a vote would have to be collected in a one-year period. There would be strict limits on the amount of money that could be spent on referendum campaigns.
No one would dispute that there are some matters that should never be subject to collective decision-making. Certain individual rights are sacrosanct.
The residents of a town cannot vote to evict their neighbour à la Big Brother, for example, but many other decisions are made best through a genuinely democratic process.
One of the most significant benefits would be the greater legitimacy given to controversial decisions. Under the current system, many people believe their view on a particular issue is a majority one but they have been in effect swindled by votes in parliament or the council chamber conducted by politicians who refuse to listen.
Under direct democracy the losers at least would have the important consolation of knowing that they were given the opportunity to make their case to their fellow citizens on a level playing field. A referendum, even one dealing with a complicated subject, would prompt precisely the kind of public engagement that politicians are desperate to encourage.
Knowing their vote would have an impact on the future would bring out the best in people and raise the quality of debate. More than 1m people marched in London against the war in Iraq. Half a million people took to the streets in opposition to the ban on hunting. Legions are involved in community and charity work and in single-issue pressure groups.
The public longs for a greater role in decision-making but has little expectation that this can be achieved. Instead, as a nation, we are becoming ever more sullen and mutinous.
Eventually MPs and councillors will come to understand that only by sharing power with their fellow citizens through a proper system of direct democracy will they recover the goodwill and respect that were once theirs by right.
This is an abridged version of an article taken from The New Blue: Conservative Candidates on New UK Policy Challenges, a collection of 10 essays by Conservative prospective parliamentary candidates, published today by the Social Market Foundation.
By Linda Sutton