Despite what you may have been taught in high school civics, the genius in the creation of “Our American Government” was not merely that it is a representative democracy. The Greeks had that idea thousands of years earlier.
The revolutionary American concept was that there are inherent limits to the “just powers” of any government, however constituted.
Before the drafting of our constitution, no one had ever set out to construct a national government by prescribing specific area of authority, subdividing powers, and incorporating checks and balances into its very design.
“In questions of power,” Thomas Jefferson remarked, shortly before becoming our third president, “let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief with the chains of the Constitution.”
This federal structure was so brilliantly conceived that it was essentially copied by all of the states for their governments, as well.
But power, as is its wont, has struggled ever since to unshackle itself from Jefferson’s metaphorical chains.
Two centuries later the people of Michigan (and several other states) decided that an additional constraint on the consolidation of power was needed. And in 1992 we amended our state constitution to limit the terms of office of those to whom we entrust authority.
Politicians predicted chaos, pleading that voters already have regular opportunities to limit terms. “They are called, ‘elections,’” it was glibly retorted.
But that is simply a rationalization for opposing any institutional controls. This same logic could have us do away with the entire Bill of Rights – a circumscription of governmental powers solely to protect individuals from the transient wishes of the majority.
The intelligentsia also warned that constant turnover in the legislature will ultimately transfer power from elected officials to the permanent hoard of special interest lobbyists.
But if that is so, why is there not among this group (that has made a profession of shrewdly discerning interests) a single one who supports term limits? Could it be that they recognize the inconvenience of having to teach every new public official the fancy footwork of the campaign finance, I’m-next-in-line dance?
Now state legislators want a special election, proposing recombinant term limits.
They claim we would be better served by allowing them to remain where they are, devoting all of their time, energy and experience to dreaming up new ways to spend our money and run our lives for us.
I wouldn’t mind the $8 million election, if we could offer voters this amendment instead: Every legislator shall be limited to a single term, and chosen not in elections, but by random draw, i.e., the same way we choose juries.
Then give each incoming legislator a single, simple instruction – when any bill comes to you that you find too difficult to understand, vote “NO.”
Imagine the effect of returning government to the citizen-legislator concept envisioned by our founders!
I doubt we would need fear that laws against robbery or fraud or rape or murder will be repealed. Nor are average citizens likely to allow police and prisons to go unfunded.
However, prospects would, undoubtedly, be bleak for such things as a proposal to recalculate the depreciating tax credit allowance on stabling thoroughbred racehorses.
James Madison, whom historians call the ‘Father of the Constitution,’ said: “It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow.”
Some might consider a proposal to maintain a legislature of neophyte, amateur lawmakers a little too radical a concept. Perhaps. Still, one can’t help but wonder what our fourth president would have thought of a system grown so convoluted that politicians would use that very fact as justification for a professional ruling class.
* * *Published as Legislators don’t need to spend more time dreaming up new ways to spend taxpayer money in the December 28, 2003 edition of the Detroit News
More on elections:
- Term Limits — A baby step in the right direction
- Democracy and Democrats
- It’s good to be King (or Clerk)
- Wasting your vote
- Democracy in Detroit
- They say the Party’s over
- The limits of Term Limits
- Reforming campaign finance reform
- School millage fatigue
- King Edward of Wayne
- “None of the Above” for Governor
- Public Act 399 and the Michigan Legislation Factory
