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1 W o r l d v i e w s f o r t h e 2 1 s t C e n t u r y A Monograph Series The Parties Versus the People Mickey Edwards Presented by The Global Connections Foundation and the University of Central Florida s Global Perspectives Office and Political Science Department. Fall 2012: Volume 10, Number 4

2 The Parties Versus the People Mickey Edwards Orlando, Florida, U.S.A.

3 Worldviews for the 21st Century: A Monograph Series John C. Bersia, Editor-in-Chief Jessica Gagnon, Marketing and Composition Editor Jocelyn Figueroa, Business Editor Lauren Adair, Editorial Assistant The Global Connections Foundation, which evolved from an international awareness-building program established in 1999, is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-ideological educational partnership. Its initiatives include regional forums, speakers, study/research programs abroad, awards and publications. The Office of the Special Assistant to the President for Global Perspectives (Global Perspectives Office) at the University of Central Florida was established by President John C. Hitt in 2001 to sharpen the University s international focus. The office helps advance UCF s goal of providing international emphasis in curricula and research. In addition, it endeavors to expand the University s efforts to enlarge Central Florida s awareness and understanding of the interconnectedness of the global community. The views expressed in this monograph are entirely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, officers or advisors of the Global Connections Foundation, the University of Central Florida s Global Perspectives Office or UCF s Political Science Department. Program Offices: University of Central Florida Howard Phillips Hall, Room Central Florida Blvd. P.O. Box Orlando, Florida U.S.A. (407) /0688 (407) (fax) global@ucf.edu Worldviews for the 21st Century Volume 10, Number 4 Copyright 2012 by the Global Connections Foundation All rights reserved The Worldviews for the 21st Century series, a key part of the Global Connections Foundation s educational networking activities, gratefully acknowledges the support of the Darden Restaurants Foundation.

4 The Parties Versus the People Mickey Edwards Most of the real authority of the federal government rests in Congress, that uniquely powerful and presumably representative part of the U.S. government commonly referred to as the people s branch. In our democratic system, elections serve to let citizens tell their representatives what policies they support and what activities they wish pursued. It is generally assumed that members of the House and Senate will be guided by those wishes unless the desired outcomes are proscribed by the Constitution or are thought by legislators to be contrary to the public good. It s a fairly straightforward system, mediated and constrained, but nonetheless a democracy, with 315 million Americans engaged in the exercise of self-government. So why doesn t it work? If polls show majorities of Americans favoring a mix of tax increases and spending cuts to address the nation s economic difficulties, or seeking sensible adjustments to laws concerning gun ownership, why does coming together around those propositions prove so difficult? Why doesn t public preference translate into public policy? The answer is surprisingly simple so simple, in fact, that it has hidden in plain sight. Democracy is predicated on the incentive system a representative s awareness that if he or she fails to conform to the expectations of the electorate, voters will select somebody else the next time. A legislator s job security is thus directly tied to, well, representing. Over time, however, political party leaders have used

5 the authority of public office to circumvent the preferences of the broader electorate by shifting power to much smaller, and decidedly atypical, subgroups. They have done so not by evading the incentive system but by changing the incentives. They have done so in four specific ways that, in combination, make representatives beholden not to the whole of their constituencies but to the political parties to which they belong and to the small bands of activists who control those parties. The cardinal rule of political campaigning is quite simple: it doesn t really matter whether most voters favor or disapprove of a candidate; all that matters is which candidate is preferred by those voters who actually go to the polls. In a general election, with all voters eligible to participate, it is assumed that the voters who turn out on Election Day will be sufficient to fairly represent the community s preferences. Activists have learned, however, that they can control outcomes by using closed party primaries, in which voter turnout is low, to select as the party s chosen candidates, those who are more closely aligned with the most ideological and partisan elements of the party. But that s only the first step, because there would remain a good chance that in the general election, with a bigger turnout, voters might opt for another candidate of the same party whose policies more closely reflected those of the community at large. Which brings us to the second step precluding that possibility by denying voters a range of choices other than those the activists have selected for them. This has been accomplished by enacting in 46 of the 50 states sore loser laws, which provide that no candidate who was unsuccessful in winning a party nomination, whether in a primary or a convention, would be eligible to have his or her name appear on the general election ballot. This combination closed primaries and sore loser laws has resulted in such miscarriages of the democratic process as Congressman and former Governor Mike Castle being denied a place on the Delaware ballot for a seat in the U.S. Senate by a primary opponent who received only 30,000 votes in a state of nearly one million people. And incumbent Senator Robert Bennett being denied a place on the Utah ballot in a state 4

6 of nearly three million people by 2,000 party activists at a closed party convention. It was not Castle or Bennett who were the victims of this distortion of democracy it was the millions of voters who were denied the choices they would likely have preferred by the activities of fewer than 35,000 unrepresentative activists. The extent of this travesty is evident when one considers that the winners of those elections would have enormous influence over tax rates, federal spending, and whether the children of those Utah and Delaware voters would be sent to fight in foreign wars. As for the incentive system? Whoever wins an election in those bizarre circumstances goes to Washington knowing that future electoral success will depend not on ably representing the entirety of a constituency but only on bending to the will of the small subset who will control access to the general election ballot. The third element in this anti-democratic dance is the assumption by party leaders who control state legislatures of the authority to determine congressional district boundaries. Again, it is the voters themselves who are abused as weirdly shaped districts, drawn for partisan advantage, result in wheat farmers being represented by legislators who know nothing about farming and urban dwellers being represented by representatives from distant towns whose primary economic interests are agricultural. Who gains? The political parties, which obtain great influence over members of Congress by maintaining control over how safe or competitive their congressional seats will be. Finally, there is the exercise of party control within the Congress itself. Nothing is more important to the formulation of public policy than the placement of House and Senate members on committees in which they will exercise great power over the shaping, passage, or defeat of prospective federal laws. Here, one might put emphasis less on the delegate function of representing a constituency than on the trustee function of exercising one s own careful analysis and judgment to do what best serves the national interest. But here, 5

7 too, party intrudes to put its own narrow interests first. Appointment, even to committees as important as Ways and Means (House) or Finance (Senate), which write tax policy, or Appropriations (spending decisions), is controlled by party leaders who routinely determine one s eligibility for a committee position on the basis of party loyalty a commitment to use that vital position to advance a partisan agenda. To advance in the competitive world of the Congress, one must respond to the incentive of pleasing party leaders. Why doesn t the system work? It does work; it responds directly to the incentives we ve put in place. To create the democracy the Founders envisioned (all of our first four Presidents warned against the creation of political parties like the ones we know today), we must eliminate closed party primaries (as three states have now done), eliminate sore loser laws, eliminate party control over congressional district lines (as 13 states have now done) and eliminate the ability of party leaders to demand allegiance to party agendas as a price for advancement within Congress. Unless we make these changes, we will continue to wonder why, in a putative democracy, it is so hard for the people to guide what their government does. Mickey Edwards, the author of The Parties Versus the People: How to Turn Republicans and Democrats into Americans, served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 16 years. He was a member of the House Republican leadership, as well as the Budget and Appropriations committees. Edwards subsequently taught at Harvard, Princeton and Georgetown universities. He is currently a Vice President at the Aspen Institute, an educational and policy organization in Washington, D.C. He has also been a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and other newspapers, and has broadcast a weekly commentary on National Public Radio s All Things Considered. He writes an online column for the Atlantic. 6

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