Political reform

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Political reform

The following is from Thomas Sowell. Is Reality Optional? pp. 108 - 109.

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"Impossible" political reforms

POLITICS IS CALLED "THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE." But the political eras and the political leaders that are remembered introduced changes that would have been impossible before.

The Reagan revolution of the 1980s would have been impossible 20 years earlier. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal innovations of the 1930s would have been considered madness a decade earlier. Just 5 years ago, anyone who predicted all the changes set in motion by Mikhail Gorbachev would have been urged to seek psychiatric help.

Most professional politicians are preoccupied with what is politically feasible right now. Even the great innovators usually take ideas that have been around for a while and have gradually gotten enough acceptance to be worth a try. Without the ideas of Milton Friedman and others in the 1960s Ronald Reagan could not have moved this country—and the world—in the direction of a free market in the 1980s.

What are some of the political ideas we should be thinking about today, in hopes that they will become possible in the 21st century?

The Achilles heel of democratic societies has been their shortsightedness. Stupid and even dangerous policies have been promoted by leaders who knew better, but who were responding to fashionable political moods or to the pressures of the moment. Contrary to appearances, there are some very intelligent people in Washington. The country doesn't get the benefit of their intelligence because they are worried about being re-elected.

Some people think "an informed public" is the answer. It would help. But there is no way that anyone can be really informed about all the incredible^, range of things the federal government is doing—not as long as we have 24 hour days and people have to work to make a living.

What we need in government are men and women who can use their talents to make better decisions for the country, rather than to get themselves re-elected. That is, we need to replace career politicians with people from all sorts of other walks of life, people who will serve in government for a few years to give the country the benefit of their experience and wisdom, gained in the real world beyond the Washington beltway.

There are a few such people in government right now. But the problem is that they are under the control of career politicians. The supply of conscientious and knowledgeable people is large enough to replace the political hacks in government. There are innumerable people who donate their time to serve on all sorts of community organizations and on national organizations such as the Red Cross or the American Cancer Society. The question is: How can we get such people to replace career politicians in Congress and elsewhere?

As long as re-election is the guiding star of government decisions, there will continue to be short-sighted, parochial, stupid and dangerous decisions. A long as campaign contributions are essential to raise the millions of dollars required to be re-elected, special interests will continue to contribute millions to Congressmen—and to get back billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money in return, courtesy of Congressmen who vote all sorts of subsidies and boondoggles.

How can this vicious cycle be broken? One way to make the career politician impossible is to ban re-election. Congress has already limited the President of the United States to two terms. Logically, it is a short step from there to limiting Congressmen to one term in office.

Politically, of course, it is a very long step to start recycling Congressmen back to the real world when they want to remain big pooh-bahs in Washington. But few important policy reforms were feasible when they first began to be discussed.

If we want an entirely different kind of person in political life, we are going to have to make it possible for people who have succeeded in the real world to put aside lucrative careers without sacrificing the education of their children or the well-being of their families. Nothing is more penny-wise and pound-foolish than the present practice of skimping on the pay of people who control enormous sums of federal money.

Washingtonians speak blithely of spending "billions" on this or that program, or of a total federal budget exceeding a trillion dollars. Does anyone have any idea how vast those sums are? A billion seconds is more than 30 years. A trillion seconds ago, no human being on this planet could read or write.

If we paid every Congressman a million dollars a year, it would amount to less than one percent of the federal budget. That could be more than made up the first year by dropping federal subsidies to special interests, to whom Congress would no longer be beholden.

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My comment: I don’t know if the above idea would work well or not. However, one thing is sure. If election campaigns cost millions, Congressmen need to raise that money if they want to be re-elected. And if special interest groups donate large sums of money to a Congressman they will certainly expect something in return.

12 May 2024