Our Founders, in their wisdom, never contemplated a permanent political over-class. The idea was that each citizen had a duty to serve the nascent nation. Brother Hezekiah, for example, the local farmer and leader of the community, would be willing to leave his farm — wherever that was — for a few years to serve the public interest in this novel constitutional republic. Afterward, he would happily and enthusiastically return home to his farm and to his family.
Hezekiah goes to Washington
Unfortunately, many decades hence, that is not the case. Despite relatively low wages — compared to the opportunities in private enterprise — serving the public good has become a treasure of wealth creation, thus it is difficult to inspire incumbents to leave office. Sure, they claim to work for the ‘public good’ or the ‘American People’ (whom they often privately deride as ‘deplorables’), many are sticky in office because the pecuniary perquisites are simply too great.
Some reformers believe that term limits are the answer. But this solution is deceptive. I have witnessed the leadership at private companies that change CEOs every two years or so and the consequence is dire. No one is incented to take bold action; that could disrupt their good fortune and therefore their lifestyle. From a personal persepective, it is more favorable to do as little as possible. Why attempt inprovement when the consequnce of failure could be dismissal?
Warren Buffet had an idea: “[To] pass a law that says that any time there's a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.” Of course that would limit our exposure to ineffective politicians, but I do not have faith that politicians would self regulate despite the dire consequence. Just as we face the annual prospect to default on our US Govt debt, taking it to the brink every time, we would likely face the wholesale dismissal of most or all of the Congress. I have little faith that Congress would get its shite together.
The Honorable R. C. Weddington was elected to the Arkansas State Legislature, a Republican, in 1891, Desha County, AK.
Instead, I proffer there is a market-based solution that would still throw-out the dregs of our political overlords, who would be subject to the market forces of the voting public. Instead of hard term limits, each elected official would be required to earn an increasing proportion of the voting public in order to be re-elected. Starting, generously, with an incumbent’s second re-election, we would award challengers (from the opposing party) a handicap margin of one percentage point of the vote. Sort of like the odds in a football game. The margin of handicap would double for each ensuing re-election attempt requiring an ever increasing (geometric) margin of win.
The first margin-hurdle would be applied to an incumbent’s second re-election, requiring her to win the vote by 1% or more over his opponent-rival. The next re-election she would have to win by 2% or more. 4 percentage points for the fourth re-election, and so on... thus unless the incumbent continues to capture the fervent support of the voting public successively, the incumbent candidate would more easily lose to challengers over time.
This solution fortifies the power of the individual voter, and ensures that incompetence is not given a free ride to self-enrichment. It motivates the ruling party to always advance its best candidates.
R.C. and Hezekiah would be proud.