Preparing the Voters

Every now and then, I drift into sounding scholarly on this blog. I try to block it out, but it occasionally insinuates itself and I need to take just a moment to set the record straight.

I begin this political lament with a quotation from the British statesman, Edmund Burke. It is taken from a speech he made on November 3, 1774 to his consituents, who are referred to as “the electors of Bristol." (If you want to google it, that's what to enter). Here is the only line of that speech I have ever heard quoted.

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Since this event belongs squarely in my own discipline, it ought to be familiar to me in the context of contituent relationships. In fact, it is nothing so scholarly. I know it because it shows up in 1776, the musical about the Declaration of Independence, which I watch every July 2 just to keep the event fresh in my mind. This quote is given in full by the single member of the Georgia delegation as his reason for voting for the Declaration, although he is aware that his constituents might not have chosen that. In the movie, it takes place in the middle of a very bad night and the drama of it is allowed free rein.

Here are the values to be aligned. Contrast the representative’s “industry,” or hard work v. the representative’s “judgment,” or his own well-informed convictions. He “betrays” instead of “serving” when he does what they want him to do, rather than what he thinks is best to do. And “his judgment” v. “your opinion.”

This is a resounding defense of what political scientists call the “trustee model” over the “delegate model” of a political representative’s job. The most recent polling data I have seen shows that the overwhelming majority of voters prefer the “delegate model” in which they instruct their representative and he carries out their wishes. Legislators overwhelmingly prefer the “trustee model” in which the voters send him or her to the capitol to study, attend hearings, reflect, and cast a vote informed by all those activities. So, oddly, everyone wants to be in charge. Is this a great system or what?

Earlier this week, Matt Bai of the New York Times wrote a very perceptive piece on how the Democrats and Republicans are approaching the midterm elections this November (236 years and a day since Burke’s speech). Bai’s article contrasts the Democratic approach to the election--make it a choice between the two parties' approaches--with the Republican approach--make it a referendum on the Obama administration. The political logic is unassailable. "The people" are implacable (that means, literally, that there is no way to please them) so the only real question is where to place the blame. If the election is a "referendum" on Obama, all that anger goes to defeat Democrats. If the election is a "choice of ideologies," the Republicans can be blamed for getting us into the mess that Obama is laboring diligently to get us out of.

My own view is that the most important role of an election is to prepare the voters to understand, support, and critique the policies of the leaders they have chosen. Daniel Yankelovich calls it, in a book I feature every time I teach American government, "coming to public judgment." Matt Bai is more specific. The Democrats, he says, campaigned on "change."

The problem with this strategy was that "change" meant wildly different things to different people, and neither of these elections amounted to a mandate for any discernable set of choices. The stimulus bill (sic) and the health care law may or may not have been good policy, but the sheer scope and cost of those agenda items seemed to jolt a lot of the independent voters who had conditionally supported Mr. Obama. Having failed to establish a rationale for such expansive measures during the campaign, Democrats were easily caricatured by their adversaries as a bunch of 1970s liberals who would spend money wherever they could.

The Democrats, in giving in to political expediency (and gaining the White House and House and Senate majorities) failed to prepare the voters for the support of their agenda. They did not follow a process that would have allowed the voters to "come to public judgment," as Yankelovich would have it. The Democrats in failing to prepare the voters, handed to the Republicans the club with which they are now being beaten on the head by the likes of John Boehner of Ohio and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

The Republicans, when in office, do the same thing for the same reasons. Demonizing the opposition party and playing on the people's implacability is the surest way to prevent an election from being a referendum on how well you have handled the responsibilities of power and choice. And that's why everyone does it.

Neither party has been willing to take the electoral risk of preparing the voters for the sacrifices that will be necessary to extract us from the partisan deadlock and the fiscal profligacy which define our current dilemma. It is always seductive to imagine that Job One is to get "the good guys" into office. Once in office, they will do as many "good things" as they can. Telling the voters that the actions that are now clearly needed are going to hurt a good deal is thought to run the risk of turning office over to the bad guys. And, of course, it might.

But the alternative--THE alternative--to running that risk is to do what we are doing now: for one party and one administration after another to take office, preying upon an unprepared and uninformed electorate and guaranteeing that once in office, they themselves will be able to make only minor policy adjustments and grand symbolic gestures. As a nation, we are well past the time when those two responses will do the job that needs to be done.