Posted on 02/21/2010 9:10:28 AM PST by Kaslin
WASHINGTON – It is probably fair to say that U.S. Senator Arlen Specter, D-Pa., started it all. He perceived, long before anyone else, that this will not be the year of the incumbent.
Armed with campaign battle scars, a cantankerous personality and fairly long-in-the-tooth seniority (even by Senate standards), Specter has come to symbolize the end of the incumbent.
A CNN poll last week showed that only one-third of U.S. voters (a record-low number) think their members of Congress deserve to go back next year.
When Specter switched parties last spring, he was brutally honest why: He didn't want to go down in a closed Republican primary. When colleague Evan Bayh, D-Ind., announced last week that he will not run again, he was equally brutal: He’s sick of Washington and Congress.
After a summer of discontent marked by Tea Parties, angry town-hall meetings and plummeting polls, a domino-line of incumbent retirements has hit both chambers and parties.
Democrats have absorbed the heaviest blows. Bayh’s decision followed similar retirement announcements of Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. The decision by Beau Biden, Delaware’s attorney general and an Iraq War veteran, not to run for his vice-presidential father’s old U.S. Senate seat is considered by many to be equivalent to an incumbent loss.
Those are guys who got out while the getting was good. Some notables, such as Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who trails in the polls, and Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., have not retired but perhaps should.
The saucer that cools public passions, as the Senate is often described, has grown bitterly cold for many of its incumbents.
Of course, party activists are furious with Bayh or Connecticut’s “Independent Democrat,” Joe Lieberman, and they are increasingly dismayed with Obama for not fighting the good fight, in their eyes.
“Lieberman is a matter of convenience,” said Purdue University political scientist Bert Rockman. “Most Democrats don’t like him at all, and his whole strategy is to win Republican and independent votes in 2012.”
Many of the Dem activists, Rockman explained, see their Senate leadership and their president as a bunch of wusses – but they don’t carry the same weight within their party as their Republican counterparts do on the opposing side.
Arlen Specter didn’t get along with his Senate colleagues when he was a Republican, and he probably won’t do any better as a Democrat. He isn’t the future of the Democratic Party – but his May primary opponent, the relentless U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, is.
Sestak is positioning himself effectively to the left of Specter (although once Specter realized he was in for a more vigorous primary race than originally expected, he moved steadily leftward – just as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has moved rightward in his primary battle against former congressman J.D. Hayworth).
American politics has become dysfunctional: The parties have moved much farther to the right or to the left than the average voter wants or expects. Ironically, elections that “throw the bums out” indiscriminately tend to throw out moderates because they are most vulnerable, inasmuch as they tend to come from marginal districts.
“So the irony is that an anti-incumbent election is apt to radicalize the parties even more,” Rockman explains. “That will take us farther from solving problems (rather) than closer.”
Specter demonstrated the ultimate in opportunism with his party switch. Opportunism is always a gamble, and it now looks as if he's rolled craps. Or, to use a poker analogy, his anticipated ace in the hole, President Obama (who pledged his support to the senator's re-election), has turned out to be a Joker card instead.
Voters in general will always be suspicious of a party-switcher. That suspicion, while not inescapable, can fade if the switcher persuasively makes a case that he or she did so out of conviction, not just to hang onto public office.
People just don't warm to people who look as if they are taking advantage.
Right now, they also are cooling to incumbents who, right or wrong, have become symbols of this year of widespread voter discontent.
But the one-third who endorse their congressman are committed and can win on their strength alone in a low-turnout election. Many don’t even know who their rep. is. It was noted in a 2007 poll that the majority of the American people thought that because of GWB the Republicans still controlled both houses.
That's a canard, designed to make both "extremes" look bad, and tell people that moderate, a la Bayh, is the way to go.
The truth is that the Dems got taken over by their crazy loony left side, most of the Republican "elites" moved leftward, to embrace Health Care Lite, Cap'n Trade Lite, Stimuli, and all kinds of lefty ideas that we just have to go along with. The American people never moved left, just the elites. So, what appears "extreme" to the McCain, Grahamnesty, Snowe crowd is simply the American people continuing to espouse the values of Ronald Reagan and the American Constitution.
I think he was like that 20 years ago.
Heh, as my brother noted, when I sent him a link to the video of interviews with Obama voters, that was done after the 2008 election , “Some people should never be allowed near a voting booth!”
He would make a great display in the Smithsonian.
Point noted. Thanks, libs_kma!
Including the judiciary, although I’d defer to the wisdom of the founders and give them the longest term limits.
I’d also establish a flat tax at 10 percent on everyone.
I’d also restrict all federal spending to those things enumerated in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, and require that all legislation specifically state which of those enumerated powers gives the bill legality. You don’t want term limited politicians and bureaucrats with a lifetime tenure.
I’d also establish some sort of spending limit, although I’m not smart enough to figure out how to do it. Something on the order of the federal budget not being more than 10 percent of the gross domestic product, although, as I say, I’m clueless how to do it or enforce it. Nevertheless, spending and entitlements is the main reason we’re in the mess we’re in.
I like your list. It’s a great daydream for a Sunday afternoon.
>>> I just have this gut feeling that the small size of the House is the top problem with OUR Federal Government. <<<
You have an excellent point. My memory of the founding fathers is that they believed that one representative for 30,000 people was a good size, so the rep would know most of the people he or she represents. Limiting the number of representatives has, as you say, made them more and more distant over time.
I would love to see a return to the representatives connected to an actual number of citizens. If we had one rep for 50,000 people, that would mean, in Alaska, we would have an Alaska Native rep for those of us here in the Bush, four reps for Anchorage, one for Fairbanks, and one for southeast. That would be a far more fair representation than what we have now.
That would give us 6000 representatives - about half the size of a basketball arena. It would sure be diverse, for certain. So they’ll have to build something like the Senate in the Star Wars series.
I like this idea.
bump
They don’t even need to go to DC and be a terrorist bullseye...today they could meet electronically...from their districts...
That could work to the country's advantage, too. The more they stayed away from Washington, the safer they ( and we, for entirely different reasons) would all be.
There was a serious article about letting congresscritters vote online recently. It made a lot of sense. Much more appropriate for the citizen legislator ideal, plus they would be able to stay out of the toxic stew of Beltwayland and they wouldn’t have to maintain two households or wear themselves out with all that travel back and forth. They would stay close to their constituents and not get addicted to perks. Plus, lobbyists would be hard put to divide their efforts across hundreds of individual districts.
The “old bulls” would snort at the idea but newbie representatives would like it just fine.
Just a matter of ironing out the technical details and voila!
This could be done without a Constitutional Amendment or even a law being passed.
Just a change in the rules of the house and senate for it’s members.
Term limits don’t have to be imposed. Just state in the rules that after three terms one loses all one’s seniority and committee assignments and becomes a permanent back-bencher.
Pay well, but allow no lifetime benefits, no retirement.
@ redpoll : The Star Wars Senate :-) ... I kind of dig that idea myself ... one of the only good things to come from the “new” films :-)! Realistically though, I think distributing the House across the USA would be a better solution than building a stadium (however, spending my tax dollars on a levitating platforms is appealing ... it’s one step closer to owning a Landspeeder :-) :-) ).
@sodpoodle : I agree that our Founders were not prophets. No human being is perfect in both determining the events of the future nor interpreting events of the past. There are always going to be flaws or loopholes. However, they were, for the most part, experts in human history and created our Representative Republic based on experiences learned from other failed government experiences of the past. They founded this country based on the history of recorded civilization at the time. They had to know for certain that population growth was a dynamic that needed to be addressed and it was in the framing of the Constitution.
There were many arguments early on about “one person, one vote”. These arguments led to the shaping of the US House and its role of the citizenry in our government. The very fact that the 30K citizens per Representative role exists in the Constitution shows they anticipated growth. Maybe not the factor-of-10 growth worldwide over 250 years, but I doubt they’d agree that a body of 435 people constituting the US House that now “serves” (yeah, right) the desires of 300M people makes little sense.
I wish I could site from memory who said this, but I recall reading some article from the mid 1800s on this very topic where someone from Pennsylvania stated that “there will be 100 Representatives alone from Pennsylvania by the beginning of the 20th Century”.
I’ll try to find the source of the article for a proper citation as typing that is rather worthless without it. I also know he wasn’t far off as the argument was for 50,000 reps per citizen, not 30,000.
Who’s running in the GOP Primary for seat Specter now holds? Can anyone tell me?
Ignore my Post #55 folks. Pat Toomey will be the GOP nominee. Don’t know where my brain is tonight.
No; let them switch - but only with resignation from their current seat, and they cannot run until after an intervening election for that seat.
RINO Susan Collins is sad Bayh is leaving. Instead of happy the GOP will get the seat now.
On the size of the house.
I do not believe that the size of the house, or the numbers of constitutents per representative, is the problem at all.
The problem is that the fedgov is involved in so very much that is not constitutionally their business. Cut the 90% of federal law and activity that doesn’t need to exist and each rep would have tons of time to do his job.
The states need to assert theri rights and work for the repeal of the 16th(?) ammendment. Senators should be appointed by the legislatures of their states just as the founders designed. As it is now the states have NO voice in the federal government.
“On the size of the house...”
Just a friendly argument as I am far from a Constitutional scholar :-)!
First, I agree with you 100% regarding the appointment of Senators vs. the states citizens voting for them. That is bound to get fresh blood moving through the Senate as well as restore each state’s voice in the Senate. You get no argument from me there. Pat Toomey, the man who will hopefully rid the Senate of a certain “Spector” this fall, is a very strong proponent of restoring the appointment of Senators by the State’s legislature/Governor.
However, the problem with only 435 Reps in the House is twofold in my humble opinion.
One, I firmly believe it has led to this two party domination in the USA. The Dems and Repubs are the only parties with substantial cash needed to win elections. You need at least a million dollars to even have a prayer at capturing a House seat. While I agree that cutting 90% of Federal activity would help, there would still be the risk of collusion that got us here in the first place if the number of Reps stays the same. It is too easy to have 1/2 the House of this size to agree on stupid legislation! We know the population is pretty much against this Government health care nonsense, but an adequate sample of the mood of the nation does not exist in the House.
Second, I think the bloating of the Federal Government is the result of too few Reps coupled with gerrymandered districts. I think more representation would lead to a reduction in the Federal government’s nonsense ... passing laws when faced with such a large body of rabble rousers would be no easy feat. Moreover, I even think pork barrel spending would dwindle as there would be far too many pigs vying for cash from the troff. The old “if you’re not giving me anything, to hell with you getting anything” train of thought would come into play. Also, since congressional districts would more than likely become more of a grid as opposed to alien looking shapes on a map, these people would have to fight a bit harder to maintain their seats as you’d have a more focused set of opinions to represent....if you screw over your reduced number of constituents, you will more than likely be replaced sooner rather than later.
Sorry if I am rambling ... I have to admit I am very tired as I have been up all night working, but I find it refreshing to discuss this topic as I have had the idea running through my head for a while now.
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