02 March 2010
Congressmen Need Day Jobs
The dysfunctionality of the U.S. Congress was not foreseen by the founders of the republic, I suspect, because they all had day jobs—farmers, merchants, generals, physicians, etc. They were not professional politicians; that was not the way they made their living.
It didn’t take long, however, for professional politicians to dominate the U.S. Congress. Corruption and scandals erupted in the early 19th Century. Sure, there were a few high-minded individuals among those elected to represent the people, who sought to make government conform to their concepts of civility. Those concepts may not always have been admirable, but the behavior of those individuals was not sullied by their need to stay in Congress and demonstrate their ability to influence it in order to be re-elected or ultimately to achieve a good living as a lobbyist.
In the Los Angeles Times on February 4, 2010, Professor Lawrence Lessig identified Congress as a major problem with American democracy. What motivated the drafters of the Constitution was the separation of the sovereign in England from the consequences of his actions on the colonies across the ocean. What should motivate a reform of the American system of government is the separation of the elected representatives in the Congress from the effects of their legislation on the common people.
Unfortunately, the common people do not possess the level of civic conscientiousness that designation of disinterested representatives requires. In fact, the public’s vulnerability to advertising and media influence is the main reason that their Congressmen have become hostages of corporate and other special interests. The “fundraising Congress” is a victim of its constituents’ parochialism, if not laziness, when it comes to forming opinions. They will swallow the ideas presented to them on TV, the radio, and the Internet before thinking them through.
The same problem afflicts corporate governance. Boards of Directors with day jobs would be much more likely independently to represent the interests of shareholders if they were not compensated by management with stipends, rather than with stock, for their supervisory duties.
It is ironic that one of the principle arguments made by conservatives in Congress against the healthcare reform proposals of President Obama is that they would cost too much. The right wing claims that the American healthcare system is already the best in the world because foreigners (who can afford it) flock to the U.S. to remedy their illnesses. Of course, that only means that if all Americans had sufficient sources of income, they too could enjoy the world’s best healthcare.
Short of a popular democracy in which every government policy measure were decided by (an Internet-mediated?) plebiscite, a representative democratic system will not enjoy disinterested decision-making until those representatives depend on independent sources for their livelihoods. Not only must Congressmen’s salaries and benefits be eliminated, but also the private third-party subvention of their campaign expenses and the implied security of assured lobbying careers following withdrawal from official duties. Politics has to be an avocation, not a career, for the civic-minded among us. Only then will government allow all of us to pursue happiness, as the founders hoped.
The dysfunctionality of the U.S. Congress was not foreseen by the founders of the republic, I suspect, because they all had day jobs—farmers, merchants, generals, physicians, etc. They were not professional politicians; that was not the way they made their living.
It didn’t take long, however, for professional politicians to dominate the U.S. Congress. Corruption and scandals erupted in the early 19th Century. Sure, there were a few high-minded individuals among those elected to represent the people, who sought to make government conform to their concepts of civility. Those concepts may not always have been admirable, but the behavior of those individuals was not sullied by their need to stay in Congress and demonstrate their ability to influence it in order to be re-elected or ultimately to achieve a good living as a lobbyist.
In the Los Angeles Times on February 4, 2010, Professor Lawrence Lessig identified Congress as a major problem with American democracy. What motivated the drafters of the Constitution was the separation of the sovereign in England from the consequences of his actions on the colonies across the ocean. What should motivate a reform of the American system of government is the separation of the elected representatives in the Congress from the effects of their legislation on the common people.
Unfortunately, the common people do not possess the level of civic conscientiousness that designation of disinterested representatives requires. In fact, the public’s vulnerability to advertising and media influence is the main reason that their Congressmen have become hostages of corporate and other special interests. The “fundraising Congress” is a victim of its constituents’ parochialism, if not laziness, when it comes to forming opinions. They will swallow the ideas presented to them on TV, the radio, and the Internet before thinking them through.
The same problem afflicts corporate governance. Boards of Directors with day jobs would be much more likely independently to represent the interests of shareholders if they were not compensated by management with stipends, rather than with stock, for their supervisory duties.
It is ironic that one of the principle arguments made by conservatives in Congress against the healthcare reform proposals of President Obama is that they would cost too much. The right wing claims that the American healthcare system is already the best in the world because foreigners (who can afford it) flock to the U.S. to remedy their illnesses. Of course, that only means that if all Americans had sufficient sources of income, they too could enjoy the world’s best healthcare.
Short of a popular democracy in which every government policy measure were decided by (an Internet-mediated?) plebiscite, a representative democratic system will not enjoy disinterested decision-making until those representatives depend on independent sources for their livelihoods. Not only must Congressmen’s salaries and benefits be eliminated, but also the private third-party subvention of their campaign expenses and the implied security of assured lobbying careers following withdrawal from official duties. Politics has to be an avocation, not a career, for the civic-minded among us. Only then will government allow all of us to pursue happiness, as the founders hoped.
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