On Super Tuesday I Will Be Part of the Revolution

The Revolution has barely been televised. Perhaps we can change that.

In past elections I have frequently been among the unhappy souls suffering from "electile dysfunction," the inability to become aroused by any of the candidates. I occasionally find a candidate I like in the primaries. In November I almost always find myself voting for the lesser of two evils.

This year is surprisingly different. There are three candidates that I could vote for with some degree of excitement who are still in the race as my state (Missouri) takes its turn in the primaries. It seems likely that at least one of them will be on the ballot in November.

Except for a brief fling as a member of the Citizen’s Party in 1980, I have never belonged to a political party. Although I consider myself an independent voter, I almost always vote for the Democratic candidate in races that seem competitive and for Libertarian Party candidates in other races. I haven’t voted for a Republican since Jack Danforth represented Missouri in the Senate. This time around, the fact that one of the remaining candidates for the Republican nomination is a libertarian (and former presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party) offers me a rare opportunity to vote my conscience without "wasting" my vote.

The slugfest between Barack Obama and the dynamic duo that is "The Clintons" is still too close to call. In all probability I will cast my vote in November for the winner of that contest. I won’t be participating in the choice between them myself, however, because on Super Tuesday I plan to be part of the Ron Paul Revolution.

I don’t agree with his position on health care, but I do agree with him on several other important issues. As a strict constructionist, he is calling for a massive reduction in the size of the national government. He would eliminate entire departments and pass the monetary savings back to taxpayers and powers back to the states. He doesn’t believe the government should be in the business of legislating morality. He wants to bring our troops home, not just from Iraq, but from everywhere. This last proposal is the one that really put him over the top with me.

I have spent my entire adult life looking on helplessly as our military forces have been used to promote and protect corporate interests around the world, interventions that have often obstructed, rather than encouraged, democracy. I have never agreed with our government taking on the self-appointed role of policeman of the world. Our resignation is long overdue.

Hopefully, the United Nations will rise to the task of fulfilling its purported mission of maintaining peace. If not, we may need to replace it with a more effective international organization. Either way, it’s time for us bring our troops home.

Representative Paul does not advocate an isolationist policy. He believes we should remain actively involved in global affairs. Other nations manage to participate in the global economy and to interact with other countries without having troops stationed all around the world. It’s time for us to give that approach a try.

Some people consider voting for a candidate with no apparent chance of winning to be "wasting" your vote. I think the real waste is that so much newspaper space and air time is spent discussing poll numbers and reporting on the amount of money raised by each candidate. It's a shame the mainstream media seem determined to ignore candidates like Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul.

Voters seem to want "change," but candidates advocating and articulating real alternatives to the status quo are marginalized and ignored by mainstream media. As the field of candidates shrinks, if enough people vote for Ron Paul, it will become more difficult for them to avoid giving his platform some much needed exposure.

Beyond the issue of ending our imperial misadventures, the issue I care most about is health insurance. Both Obama and Clinton propose health care plans that would allow a buy-in to Medicare. That is the key to freeing us from the vise-like grip of the insurance industry.

I am deeply disappointed in Ron Paul’s position on this issue. He is among those guilty of muddying the debate by using the term "socialized medicine" to describe Democratic proposals, which can more accurately be described as "socialized insurance." The fact that, as president, he could veto any meaningful reform would make a choice between him and either Obama or Clinton very difficult for me, as I am equally disappointed in their unwillingness to completely end our occupation of Iraq.

With only a slight preference for Obama over Clinton, and the unprecedented opportunity to vote for a libertarian with at least some chance of winning, I will be voting for Ron Paul on Super Tuesday.

Should he overcome the odds and win the Republican nomination, I will look forward to November and the delightfully difficult choice between the greater of two good candidates, as opposed to the more traditional lesser of two evils. If Ron Paul makes it to November, I will be sorely tempted to opt for the revolution.

Make the House of Representatives More Representative

What's the job of the candidate in this world? The job of the candidate is to raise the money to hire the consultants to do the focus groups to figure out the 30-second answers to be memorized by the candidate. This is stunningly dangerous. - Newt Gingrich

Would some change-minded candidate or other kindly inform the American people what this business amounts to? Change what into what? - William Murchison

I’m not a candidate for anything, but one change I believe we should make is to change the House of Representatives into a legislative body that more effectively represents the will of the people. To this end, I propose a constitutional amendment providing for proportional representation in the House of Representatives.

Under the present system each state is divided into congressional districts and voters elect a single representative from their district. With proportional representation voters nationwide would each cast a vote for a political party and its slate of candidates. Political parties would nominate ordered lists of candidates pledged to support that party’s platform. Seats would be awarded to each party based on its percentage of the total number of votes cast nation-wide.

This approach would allow candidates for, and members of, the House of Representatives to focus on participating in drafting their party’s platform. It would relieve them of the burden of raising huge amounts of money to fund individual campaigns. This, in turn, would keep them from becoming indebted to special interest groups. Reducing the influence of special interests would go a long way toward improving the approval ratings of Congress and would begin to restore our faith in government.

If this amendment were to pass, the real action for members of the House of Representatives would take place during the run-up to each party’s convention and the convention itself, as they engaged in serious discussions of which issues should be included in the party platform and how each issue should be addressed. While it would be up to each party to determine just how strong of a commitment its candidates would be expected to make with regard to supporting the party platform, members of the party gaining a majority of the seats in the House would logically be expected (by voters as well as the party) to support their party’s platform.

Drafting a platform was once a vital part of the nominating conventions of political parties. The platform is supposed to define the party’s positions on the issues of the day and offer some idea of what the party hopes to accomplish. Today, however, the nominating conventions of the major parties have become little more than coronations formalizing the nomination of a presidential candidate who has already secured the number of delegates needed to win the nomination. By making party platforms and the conventions at which they are written meaningful again, proportional representation would provide an incentive for civic-minded citizens to get more actively engaged within party organizations.

With the focus shifted from individual candidates to party platforms, the sort of attack ads that have come to dominate political campaigns would be pointless in elections for members of the House. The fact that voters would be choosing between parties based largely on each party’s platform, as opposed to the personalities or peccadillos of individual candidates, would promote debates between political parties that would highlight the differences in their plans for addressing issues of importance to the nation.

I believe that most of our legislators ran for political office initially because they have a genuine interest in the give and take of dealing with political issues. I doubt that they are happy about being under constant pressure to raise money. Many of them would undoubtedly welcome the opportunity to spend more of their time devising solutions to the problems we face as a nation.

Political reporters must also be getting a bit bored with simply reporting the results of the latest polls and providing updates on the amount of money raised by each candidate. Even their "informed discussions" of strategy and momentum are a hollow exercise at heart. Covering the process of drafting party platforms and commenting on the details of each party’s proposals would clearly be more engaging for serious-minded members of the media. It would afford them the opportunity to participate in debates and discussion about how the issues and problems facing our nation should be addressed. It would cast them in the vital role of helping voters compare the agendas of various parties.

If we were to succeed in shifting a considerable amount of media attention to party platforms, formal debates could be restructured to do a lot more to help voters make informed decisions on election day. Instead of each candidate reciting their pre-programed responses to questions posed by the moderators, a series of in-depth discussions of the proposals included in each party’s platforms, with each debate focused on a different issue, would highlight the similarities and differences between the parties. Political parties could select one or more party members to represent the party in each debate.

Once elected, the members of the party winning a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives should have no problem getting the legislative proposals included in their party’s platform passed by the House. Combined with the fact that members of the House are elected every two years, this would make the House of Representatives much more responsive to the will of the voters. This is in line with the intention of the Founding Fathers that the House of Representatives would be the most democratic part of the Federal government.

The system of checks and balances provided for in the Constitution would remain in place. The Senate would have to concur with the legislation approved by the House. The president would retain the power to veto legislation. And the Supreme Court could still declare a law to be unconstitutional. It would be up to voters to decide whether to vote a straight party ticket (for the Senate, the House, and the president), thereby reducing gridlock, or to split their vote. (Some people like gridlock.)

The system of representation in Congress provided for in the U. S. Constitution was the end result of a compromise between representatives from the small states and the large states. The small states wanted to retain the provision in the Articles of Confederation giving each state an equal number of representatives, regardless of its population. The large states wanted representation based on population. The Connecticut Compromise provided for a bicameral legislature consisting of a Senate where each state would be equally represented regardless of the size of its population and a House of Representatives, where the number of representatives from each state would be determined by population.

This was a necessary and effective compromise at the time, but it failed to take full advantage of the concept of a bicameral legislature. Having both senators and representatives represent geographic regions (states and districts within states, respectively) is redundant. Furthermore, under the system devised over two hundred years ago, we have a "national" government without a single component that represents the nation, as opposed to the states.

In the early years of the republic most citizens of the United States identified strongly with the state in which they resided, considering themselves to be "New Yorkers" or "Virginians," etc. This is no longer the case. While some people (particularly sports fans) may identify strongly with their state (or city or alma mater), when it comes to political matters most of us consider ourselves to be "Americans." It is time for at least one part of the national government to represent the interests of the nation as a whole.

Proportional representation is not a new or an untested idea. It is quite common in other democratic governments around the world. Nor is this sort of change in the Constitution unprecedented. In a change necessitated by the rise of political parties, the Twelfth Amendment provided for the electoral college to cast separate votes for president and vice-president and provided a method for resolving elections in which no candidate received a majority of the electoral votes cast. Under the Seventeenth Amendment, direct election of senators by the voters within each state replaced election by state legislatures.

Our political process is in dire need of repair. Our elections have degenerated into a witches brew of fund-raising and advertising. Far too many of the ads paid for with the money raised are attack ads. Even the positive ads amount to nothing more than catch phrases designed by each candidate’s advisors to evoke a Pavlovian response from voters. Slogans, sound bites, talking points, and rhetorical platitudes, address the mood of the electorate, while carefully avoiding saying anything of substance.

Every candidate earnestly assures us that he or she will provide quality health care for all, improve education, help the U. S. achieve energy independence, support family values, and keep us safe from terrorists. Furthermore, they promise to cut taxes and balance the budget.

Like all good illusionists, they are careful not to reveal the details of how they plan to implement this amazing balancing act. Serious, in-depth discussions of the problems facing our nation and the issues of the day take place in forums on the Internet and in the op-ed pages of newspapers and magazines, but are missing in action during political campaigns.

This year’s hottest political buzz word is "change." And the main thing voters want to change is the political culture in Washington. Approval ratings for Congress are even lower than for President Bush. (Not an easy feat!) Providing for proportional representation in the House of
Representatives would make our government more responsive, more democratic, and more effective. Voters who are serious about wanting change should find out which candidates would support this amendment and vote for them.

A couple of footnotes:
1) If this amendment were to pass, it would need to include a provision to alter the Twelfth Amendment which provides for the House to elect the president with a vote by states if no candidate for president wins a majority of electoral votes. I would suggest having the House choose between the two candidates with the most electoral votes (instead of the top three), with each member (as opposed to each state) having one vote.
2) The same redundancy with regard to members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate representing geographic areas, is true of all of the state legislatures (except Nebraska, which has a unicameral legislature). Voters in each state who support the idea of proportional representation should encourage their state legislatures to pass similar amendments to their state constitution.

A final note:
Assuming that you are in agreement with this modest proposal, where do we go from here? You don’t need to join a political action committee or make a financial donation. You simply need to help spread the word. Send a copy of this essay to everyone you know who might be interested in making our government more responsive to the will of the voters. Be sure to include your representatives in Congress and your state legislature.

© 2008 Gary Winston Apple
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Permission is hereby granted to make or post copies of this essay for non-commercial use, provided the copyright notice is included in the copy.