
The Roots of the Government Shutdown - wallflower
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/roots-government-shutdown
======
ams6110
I liked this. The summary verion is that prior to about 1970, federal office
candidates were selected largly by party conventions, which were controlled by
party bosses. The bosses were generally corrupt, but not highly ideological,
being more concerned with appeasing broad constituencies so that they could
get their candidates elected and then reap the rewards. In an effort to end
the corruption, most states went to a primary system for selecting candidates.
What the reformers didn't anticipate, though, is that most ordinary citizens
don't really care that much about federal politics. So the majority of the
people who participate in primary elections are ideologues and thus we now
have a much more polarized government, with less and less ability to reach
consensus and compromise. Seems to explain a lot.

~~~
LetBinding
The solution is a non-partisan blanket primary. It keeps decisions in the
hands of the voters, and also insulates against extremists being nominated.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary)
[wikipedia]

~~~
tshile
If the premiss is that only the ideologues care enough to vote then I don't
see how open primaries fixes that. This goes back to the changes that moved
the senate elections to public vote as well.

I don't see how anything could be passed that goes away from the current
system; it would be attacked as curtailing freedom in one way or another
(remember who we're dealing with here...) The only solution I see is
encouraging the non ideological portion of the general public to start
participating in elections. I fear that's a tall order though.

~~~
roc
And a somewhat taller order, year after year, with the ideologues pushing so
hard to disenfranchise voters.

~~~
tshile
Combined with SCOTUS rulings regarding campaign contributions, PACs, and Super
PACs. There's a lot of money behind these ideologies.

------
cdoxsey
Politics in America have always been ideological, bitter and partisan
([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLj6yY4P_Rg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLj6yY4P_Rg)).
150 years ago this country split in two over ideological issues and then we
fought a horrendous war to figure out who was the winner.

And everyone keeps talking about default, but failing to raise the debt
ceiling does not cause us to default. There's plenty of revenue, and plenty of
other spending to cut before we get there.

~~~
at-fates-hands
>>> There's plenty of revenue, and plenty of other spending to cut before we
get there.

The sequester should take care of some those spending cuts. Getting a
Democratically controlled government to cut spending is pretty hard
considering they believe the way to stimulate growth is to spend and increase
taxes.

EDIT: Not saying Democrats are the only ones who like to spend - Bush pushed
the debt up quite a bit while he was in office so Republicans are not
blameless either. However, most Republicans believe in smaller government,
less taxes, and being fiscally responsible.

~~~
gnaritas
Republicans only pay lip service to those ideals, once in office they're far
bigger and more irresponsible spenders than democrats. Democrats reduce
deficits, republicans increase them, that's the reality.

~~~
at-fates-hands
Thanks for the down vote without a shred of evidence supporting your claim.
Very typical of how Liberals argue.

~~~
gnaritas
Your bias is showing. I didn't down vote you, as I replied to you I'm not even
allowed to down vote you. And to then presume I did it because I'm liberal,
you're clearly not the type for a rational discussion.

------
uptown
“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit
of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries
has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.
But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The
disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to
seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or
later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than
his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation,
on the ruins of Public Liberty.”

― George Washington, George Washington's Farewell Address

Even George Washington saw political parties as a great threat to the nation.

Politicians seek to remain in office - either out of a drive for personal
ambition, the need for public validation, or through bright-eyed idealism to
'change the world'. The best way to stay in office is to align yourself with
support - and most get this from their political party. But in order to keep
the support of a party, you've got to go along with all of the things your
party supports. This leads to group-think ... compromising your personal
values for the sake of supporting your fellow politicians. There's no way that
the members of the House and Senate agree on all of the issues they vote
together on, but their party needs support, so they vote along ... abdicating
their responsibility for the sake of party unity. And since their party has an
opponent, part of their job as a good party member is to demonize those
opponents. Now the media has set themselves up to promote this conflict. One
network slants one way ... another slants the other way ... and they'll split
their screen down the middle to make sure the yelling from both sides is
captured. Lobbyists like career-politicians. It means their campaign
contributions can be redeemed over more than one term, and they don't need to
start over each election.

What's the solution? I'm not exactly sure, but the list includes term limits,
changing gerrymandering, reducing the influence of money in politics, making
politics less of a "contact sport" than its being presented as by the media,
and probably all sorts of things I haven't mentioned or thought of. The
problem is, much of this change cannot happen without the support of either
the Supreme Court, or the very people whose careers will be impacted (likely
negatively from their perspective) by such a change - and there's the rub.
Democracy allows voters to remove a Cancer - but lately the replacement organs
are metastasizing upon implantation.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Even George Washington saw political parties as a great threat to the
> nation.

It's important to note that, while the Farewell Address is all too often cited
as a warning against the _future_ emergence of parties or party-like factions
in some general sense, it is, in fact, Washington's view of the threats from
the _then-present_ two-party system, which began forming almost immediately
after the Constitution went into effect, and crystalized around the end of
Washington's first term.

> I'm not exactly sure, but the list includes term limits

Term limits do nothing to reduce the power of factions; indeed, by limiting
the _individual_ influence of politicians acheived through long tenure in
position, they _increase_ the power of organized factions that are not
directly accountable and which provide support for politicians between
offices, and offer new cookie cutter candidates for offices.

> changing gerrymandering

Gerrymandering is a distraction; while its one failure mode of single-member
districts with FPTP elections, its not the problem, just a symptom. Single-
member districts with FPTP elections is the problem.

> reducing the influence of money in politics

Economic power is inherently the ability to get people to do what you want,
and money is simply a symptom of economic power. Its arguable whether economic
power and political power are even meaningfully different concepts.

You may want to consider whether the root problem is really the influence of
money on politics, or the degree of economic inequality in the society.

> making politics less of a "contact sport" than its being presented as by the
> media

What does this even mean in concrete terms?

~~~
uptown
"What does this even mean in concrete terms?"

I believe that cable news broadcasts, where many Americans get their version
of the news, do a poor job of informing the populous.

Instead, these broadcasts provide politically-slanted editorialized coverage
of issues that may do well in ratings, but likely do little to advance the
awareness of Americans about what's actually happening in their world. News
agencies are afforded capabilities and access to the nation's political
leadership that other Americans do not have, but I feel they're mis-using
these rights in-exchange for ratings - what ultimately sells commercials. I
don't watch cable news anymore - but when I did, it was full of guests talking
over one-another, interrupting one-another, or waiting for the other person to
stop so they could ignore whatever the other person had said so they could get
their speaking points across. All the while, the host is cutting everyone
short in order to say their 24-hour news network is just about out of time.
And somehow a 6 minute segment split between two guests yelling at each-other,
jammed between a commercial for a pill designed to make your penis harder, and
a commercial telling us how much a too-big-to-fail bank cares about the
families of this nation, is supposed to leave us with an informed nation
capable of understanding why they're voting for the politician they're voting
for next time they step into a voting booth.

I wish the news was less editorialized, and more factual ... but it's
essentially been divided into two versions of the facts, and you choose which
channel you want to watch for the version you'd like to receive. I realize
there's other outlets to receive news - and I personally believe those hold
the most hope for the future.

------
peterwwillis
Man this guy is verbose. Here's what he was getting at:

\--

 _From where I sit, there was a massive shift in the 1970s in how the American
political system operates. [..] Political bosses controlled the selection of
state convention delegates, and therefore the bosses controlled the delegates
to the national convention [..] The reformers wanted to break the hold of the
party bosses over the system and open it to dissent, something party bosses
disliked. [..] This severely limited the power of state and county chairmen,
who could no longer handpick candidates._

 _Money, not the bosses ' power, became the center of gravity of the political
system, and those who could raise money became the power brokers. More
important, those who were willing to donate became candidates' main
constituency. [..] Money has always been central to American politics. [..]
But with the decline of political bosses, factors other than money were
eliminated._

 _A candidate in either party [..] needs the votes of the majority of voters
who will show up. In the past model, voters showed up because, say, they got
their job on the highway crew from the county boss, and they had to appear at
the polls if they wanted to keep it. [..] Now, people show up because of their
passionate belief in a particular ideology, and money is spent convincing them
that a candidate shares their passionate commitment._

 _But it is the senators and particularly the congressmen -- who run in
districts where perhaps 20 percent of eligible voters vote in primaries, most
of them ideologues -- who are forced away from principle and toward ideology.
[..] I would argue that the problem is that the current system magnifies the
importance of the ideologues such that current political outcomes increasingly
do not reflect the public will, and that this is happening at an accelerated
pace._

~~~
teh_klev
Maybe if you're deeply familiar with the US political system, I'm not, but
still interested all the same, and so liked the "explain it to me like I'm a
five year old" verbosity.

------
triplesec
One solution never considered in the USA for some reason is what most other
Western democracies do, which is public funding for candidates, and limits.
Candidates may spend no more than X on their campaigns under penalty of
serving penal time. In the UK it was about the equivalent of about $10,000
last time I looked a while back. Accounting must be done. This limits the role
of money. The parties can raise their own extra money but only for national-
scale media advertising.

However, there are conditions in the US that conspire against this: the
Supreme Court's interpretation of the 1st amendment being one of them (e.g.
corporations are people); the size of the US and its federal structure being
another.

Yet I agree with the author: there is a hack to make the system more
representative without breaking it much more. We just have to find one and
somehow get it implemented!

~~~
bcoates
"Corporations are people" has nothing to do with campaign spending limits
being unconstitutional. Congress can and does legally limit donations from
anyone (people, corporations, whatever) to politicians. It can't ban any
communication mentioning a candidate for federal office without permission,
which is what the McCain–Feingold Act attempted to do.

The Constitution says "shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech,
or of the press" and doesn't say it's a particular right of individuals, just
a blanket ban on legislation on the topic. Protecting the freedom of the press
as an exclusively individual right doesn't even make sense.

~~~
Shivetya
To expand on this point, the laws they are attempting to pass and have passed
have all been about protecting incumbents. The best way to view many laws out
of Washington is to read them as doing the opposite of what their stated
purpose is.

------
vinceguidry
> In the 20th century, the boss system selected such presidents as Theodore
> Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight
> Eisenhower and John Kennedy. I was struck at how a self-evidently corrupt
> and undemocratic system would have selected such impressive candidates
> (albeit along with Warren Harding and other less impressive ones).

That's very curious. My guess is that the boss system and the petty ambitions
that fuel it is easier to game for those with real ambition. I don't think FDR
would have been able to do what he did in today's political climate. The best
we can hope for is Obama.

~~~
protomyth
If you are appalled by abuses of government power under Bush / Obama then
Theodore Roosevelt's record will terrify you. Woodrow Wilson was very friendly
and supportive of the Ku Klux Klan and rumored to have been a member. These
men should have never been near the Presidency. Much of the problems we face
with an over-powered President started with them.

Party bosses are no better pickers of candidates and their influence continues
to be a true pain for this country.

~~~
vinceguidry
I find it hard to get suitably appalled by any amount of power abuse in the
USA knowing that at it's very worst it's still not Soviet Russia and the
ongoing, depressing culture of corruption its created. Not saying we shouldn't
fight it, but power abuse is inevitable so long as we have human beings
running things.

I'm reading "Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss", and I'm
almost underwhelmed. Bulger managed to capture the Boston FBI and had
informants in all the other police services and a brother in the state
legislature and all it was good for was a handful of murders and control of
some very profitable local rackets. That seems like small peanuts compared to
the developing world and even much of the developed world. Someone with
Whitey's skillset could have become the richest man in a very large number of
countries and wound up running the whole country.

------
tankenmate
Personally I think there are two things that could be done to limit the
influence of overly vocal minorities of any ilk; be it business, ideologues,
etc.

1) Proportional representation - Each district should be bigger and elect a
number of representatives, in a similar fashion to the senate but based on
equal divisions of the population. This will also have the effect of breaking
the two party system.

2) Capped government provided funding for campaigning - This should limit the
effect of money on the ability to disseminate the candidates platform for
election, and steer the issues more towards their merit than audio volume.

~~~
talmand
Yep, let's shut down any minority that chooses to speak out against the status
quo. That never causes problems.

1\. How is this any different than what we have now? How does this break the
two-party system since the Senate you hold up as the example engages in the
two-party system just as much as the House? Why is the House the sole problem
and no other branches of government are involved in the problems?

2\. Government provided funds is not the problem with campaign funds. This
would likely increase the amount of money from the private sector which is
often the problem. Obama took the ultimate cap on government funds in his
first election, he refused all of it. He won handily with a rather large war
chest.

------
the_watcher
>> But in the country our founders bequeathed us, it was expected that most
people would concern themselves with private things.

Good to see someone acknowledge that what many look at as unique American
problems are there by design. If you see them as a problem, that's a totally
valid view, but please, acknowledge that things like the ease of obstruction,
difficulty of substantial, long-lasting, transformative chance, and the public
disinterest in government are all by design. The founders considered them
features, not bugs.

------
the_watcher
Overall, this is a fascinating look at how what originally was intended as
breaking down corruption and opening up participation to the masses had some
unintended consequences. I found the following paragraph particularly salient:

>> In the 20th century, the boss system selected such presidents as Theodore
Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower
and John Kennedy. I was struck at how a self-evidently corrupt and
undemocratic system would have selected such impressive candidates (albeit
along with Warren Harding and other less impressive ones). The system should
not have worked, but on the whole, it worked better than we might have
imagined. I leave to others to judge how these compare to post-reform
candidates like Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton,
George W. Bush or Barack Obama.

Kennedy and Roosevelt were the epitome of boss driven politicians, and while
many argue over how effective they actually were, no one can argue that were
not highly influential. I'm personally a fan of Coolidge as well. In the
modern system, only Reagan and Clinton seem likely to be remembered by history
as peers of the Presidents on the first list, and both of them are regarded as
some of the most historically charismatic politicians of all time. Very
interesting.

------
joshuahedlund
My "narrative fallacy" flags went off, as it's always convenient to look for a
tidy explanation of complex events, although this post makes a good case that
candidate selection changes are at least a very interesting factor that's
generally overlooked. I wonder, though, if the common thread between the
Presidents listed is that they all pretty much oversaw a century of growth in
both government power and within that a growth in consolidated power under the
executive branch, and I wonder how that effects the ideological interests of
different groups who increasingly have more at stake (or at least think they
have more at stake) in what the government does.

It's also interesting to compare, say, European countries which often have the
appearance of similar levels of "big government," but they are generally done
at smaller scales more equivalent to US states. The US may be more unique in
trying to increasingly manage the interests of 300 million people through one
centralized and increasingly powerful yet also democratic government. (then
again, there may be holes in that tidy narrative as well...)

------
websitescenes
Good article but I think the issue has deeper roots stemming back to the
formation of this country. It's all about the state vs federal issue. If you
think about it, conservatives got exactly what they wanted with the shutdown.
A small government with no ability to pay its social debts. They are going to
keep doing this until there is civil war, again, or until states have all the
power, again.

~~~
talmand
Wait, where was this small government with no ability to pay its social debts?
Because I sure as heck didn't see that outcome. Just because a bunch of people
on the TV kept talking about this supposed default doesn't mean the government
wasn't willing and able to pay on the debt.

Your biased one-sided complaint completely sidesteps the issues at hand. The
article that sparked this discussion quite correctly points out the problems
that led us here when two sets, TWO mind you, of ideologies refuse to back
down and compromise. You say conservatives got what they wanted with the
shutdown? I say both groups got what they wanted out of this in their own way
and we'll go through it all again in February.

You need to get out of this "us-vs-them" attitude and realize that two
different people who strongly disagree with each other may still have a point
on the topic at hand.

The only way the states will restore their former power is not through civil
war, but through the total collapse of the federal government. Things have
gone too far in terms of centralizing power for anything other than total
failure to reverse the trend. It's just that no one knows when or if this
would be.

~~~
humanrebar
Though he may not mean it this way, he has a point about federal power causing
this inability to compromise. As a voter in Kentucky, if you get fed up with
Kentucky politics, you can move to Oregon or Tennessee.

But when all laws are federal, the stakes are higher for everyone, so drastic
measures will be taken.

~~~
talmand
That is an excellent point. You can still vote with your feet on the federal
level, but unfortunately that involves leaving the country which in the end
solves nothing.

------
the_watcher
>> the American people did not care nearly as much about politics as the
reformers thought they ought to

This is something that the politically active simply cannot grasp. Most
Americans really do not care at all about politics unless it is currently
impacting their life. They can talk all they want about how important it is,
but most Americans have jobs, kids, a mortgage, friends, and sports teams to
pay attention to, all of which are more urgent concerns than what goes on in
politics, especially given that we only get a chance to participate so
sparingly.

~~~
the_watcher
>> Citizens frequently don't know or care who their congressman is, let alone
who their state senator is.

I know who my hometown congresswoman is, mainly because he is well known in
the community. Same with my hometown state senator, who is a family friend. I
have no idea who any of those people are for the 3 other Congressional
districts I have lived in, except knowing that Henry Waxman was my
representative in college, since he was an alum.

------
duwease
I don't know that the conclusion that pre-reform candidates were more moderate
and/or effective is as self-evident as he seems to believe. It's hard to brush
off the fact that our opinions of them are not only colored through the lens
of history books, but also through a vastly different culture.

In addition to the distortion of perception through second-hand accounts
versus perception through actively participating in the modern scene, I'd
argue that no small part of the perception of modern presidents is affected by
the proliferation of media sources and the formation of specialized media
outlets with a particular ideological audience that didn't exist as widely in
the past.

------
ihsw
I have repeated it numerous times to a variety of people across the political
spectrum -- cooperation is not capitulation. Few people ( _especially_ elected
representatives) realize this.

Our elected representatives are supposed to be pragmatists, and what does a
pragmatist do when faced with a difficult problem? Compromise. Instead we're
left with ideologues that shout from the highest mountaintops about
"bipartisanship" however it's just bluster and posturing.

~~~
jes
With respect, I wonder if pragmatists are really what we want. A pragmatist is
someone who, as you say, seeks to compromise on principles in order to achieve
some outcome. I want politicians who will refuse to compromise on principles,
and I want those principles to be about protecting the rights of the
individual.

Just my two cents. Thanks for an interesting comment.

~~~
BillyMaize
I think it depends on the issue. When it comes to something like abortion or
the death penalty I would rather see a politician hold their ground and never
compromise on it. If it is about spending some money on health insurance then
it should be compromised on.

~~~
jes
I wonder even about the seemingly simple case you mention, that of spending
some money on health insurance.

In this case, it seems like the principle has already been compromised, and
now the two parties are simply haggling over the price, so to speak. The
principle that I think has been compromised is whether the government should
take by force from some individuals in order to give an unearned benefit to
some others.

------
wavesounds
Good article. Why does he conclude with "I have no idea what I could do to
help change matters" after writing a whole blog post about how not enough
average people vote in primaries?

Go vote in primaries, get your friends to go vote in primaries and maybe even
reach out to particularly ideological districts to make sure the moderates
there go vote (this might be a good idea for a web app 'Passionate centrist -
email a centrist encourage them to vote').

~~~
mhb
Because the point of the article is that we have a system in which ideologues
vote. In order to get average people to vote, either the system has to change
to reward non-ideologues for voting (e.g., previous system with party bosses)
or people have to become ideologues. He rightly concludes that these are both
unlikely and he doesn't have another answer.

~~~
wavesounds
Isn't the reward for voting getting the government you want? That's why the
ideologues do it and it seems to be working for them.

------
cantankerous
Why didn't the author didn't just suggest mandatory voting? It seems like he
was building up to it but never got there. Not like it's politically feasible
to implement, but it appears to be a solution to wash out ideological extremes
all the same.

~~~
CamperBob2
Isn't Australia a good counterexample? Going by their struggle to keep their
government's hands off the Internet, they seem to have as many loons in
government as we do, if not more.

