Posted by
hwalker on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 5:05:18 PM
We have gone through, and are still in the middle of, the primary season in which We the People winnow out the unfit candidates for the presidency in favor of who we deem worthy to enter the ultimate race. We have seen individuals come and go, offering up their bright and unique ideas about how to address the issues that face the country today. There was Huckabee with his plans to reform the tax system through a strict sales-tax policy. There was Paul with his libertarian leanings and his unrelenting message of isolation. Edwards reminded us that class is an issue no matter how distasteful we find it. The electorate spoke and gave us John McCain, while letting Hillary and Obama fight on, though I postulate that Obama will remain the darling of the people. Democracy is a beautiful thing in that it lives and breathes by the oxygen of participation. But what if that participation were compromised?
It is apparent that within a system that theoretically facilitates and depends on participation, participation leads to representation. Likewise, if a system that is designed to facilitate participation fails to do so then representation suffers. I would contend that our system has developed in such a way that it fails to facilitate participation. Laura Ingraham said it best in her book Power to the People when she said “While our states once had complete control over education policies, criminal codes, and most other areas of domestic policy-just as the Founders intended- now their policies are dictated by Washington.” In other words, power to participate in a significant way in politics has been further removed from the people and centralized in the hands of a relative few.
One could argue that our system retains its dependency on the electorate by nature of its design because we still elect all government officials, aside from Supreme Court justices and members of the Electoral College. We even have indirect influence on those two groups because we elect the president who appoints Supreme Court justices, and the Electoral College is made up of people elected by the official party apparatus of which we have an opportunity to take part. In fact, as members of the electorate, we are a part of the party. The party make-up can be viewed as a “tripartite social structure” including three equal elements: 1) the electorate, 2) the official party organization and 3) party candidates who hold political office (Bibby and Schaffner 5). According to this model, the majority of participants in the party lay in the electorate. Participation is relatively strong within that faction when quantified, and so it could be concluded that the system does a good job of facilitating participation.
The weight of that participation would be reduced if the information being presented to the electorate regarding various candidates were in any way manipulated by one of the other factions that make up the party. In 1976 the League of Women Voters sponsored their first presidential debate and demonstrated how powerful these debates were in swaying the electorate. With a commitment to democracy and the education of the people, the League approached the organization of these events as true, non-partisan moderators. They focused on not allowing candidates and their campaigns to have sway on what the content, format or frequency of the debates would be in an effort to maintain the integrity of the event and thus serve the people better (Farah 23-24). In 1984 the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) was formed as a joint effort by the two major parties and effectively replaced the League in sponsorship of presidential debates (Farah 28). With a board loaded with activists from both parties, the goal of the CPD from the very beginning was to exert control over who could be involved in the debates, what questions would be asked and by whom (Farah 30). This was done as a protective measure to ensure the continuation of the two parties, and their strength through candidate selection and campaign finance. Unlike that of the League, the approach of the CPD creates a chokehold on the information that reaches the electorate and effectively undermines the value of their participation in the democratic process.
I find it depressing to conclude that “our vote doesn’t matter” or that “it makes no difference who I vote for” so therefore “I will not vote.” When we as the voting public choose not to exercise our right to vote, are we not laying down our responsibility to Democracy, futile as it may seem? Let us proceed into the coming season of the General Election, not with a disgruntled mind towards the ever-illusive “They” but with a grain of salt in our back pockets and a healthy dose of cynicism that keeps those closest to us from taking us too seriously.
"'Isn't it funny how our inhabitions creep up on us as we age?' 'Yes, I find that I don't want to be doing much of anything naked these days...'" -anonymous
Ingraham, Laura. Power to the People. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, inc., 2007.
Farah, George. No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presiential Debates. New York, London, Toronto, Melbourne: Seven Stories Press, 2004.
Bibby, John F., and Brian F. Schaffner. Politics, Parties and Election in America. 6th ed. Boston: Thomson Wadsworth, 2008