A BETTER WAY

November 5, 2014: the day after.

Thank goodness, these elections are behind us and we will get a little reprieve from the relentless onslaught of political commercials on our TV screens. (By the way who produces all this garbage and how much do they get paid for their deplorable screen productions?)  Reprieve will not be for long though, because —since this election did not solve anything—it won’t be long before the candidates for the 2016 Presidential elections will come out of the woodwork and with them a new unending litany of propaganda. After all, money is no object, the money-men will only be too glad to oblige.

The results of the 2014 Mid Term elections are, this morning after, announced in all the media as a major shift in the political landscape and for partisan voters and office holders they are indeed very consequential. But will it do anything to move Washington DC off dead center and galvanize it into action for the benefit of the people? Jeffrey D. Sachs does not think so. And he puts his finger on the reason why: he commented this morning on the social media “Not a single serious issue was discussed in the US election campaign. US politics have been reduced to image, TV ads and money raising.”

Nationwide little more than half of the eligible voters turned out in this election (only 40% in my home State of Ohio) and you have to believe that the low voter turnout enhanced the Republican shift. The non-voters may have done more to change the political landscape than the voters did. And I can’t blame them. Those who kept the ballot in their pocket voted in their own way: they made a statement that in our current political constellation the voting box does not provide clarity, does not offer solutions to the problems that nag us such as inequality and lack of upward mobility; the size of our national debt; the de-funding of our entitlement programs and pensions; our education deficit; the cost of our healthcare; a failing immigration policy; a crumbling infrastructure; and a leaky safety net.

There must be a better way. What is missing, more than anything else, in the way our democracy has evolved over time (and with active steering by the U.S. Supreme Court) is transparency and accountability. How different would our confidence in a meaningful election outcome be if there would be a constitutional mandate to give us these missing ingredients? What would such mandate look like?

1.       A constitutional amendment calling for the President and the Congress to establish a binding National Strategy that becomes the blueprint for the legislative agenda.

2.       A constitutional amendment that compels elected officials to campaign on the basis of their positions on the top priorities among the challenges facing the nation.

With respect to the first mandate: How much sense would it make if there was a constitutional requirement on the president and the leadership in Congress to establish a national strategy, much like companies develop a strategic plan for their business that then becomes the compass by which investment decisions and other resource allocations are made? Such national plan should have a long time horizon, transcend the term limits imposed on politicians, and be formally reviewed from year to year to adjust for changes in the external environment.

With respect to the second mandate, I envision that in every election, candidates should be presented with a national list of the major issues the electorate is facing and candidates should be required to write and publish a position paper on each of these issues with specifics on how to address the issue, including how to pay for the proposed solutions.Who should put such issue list together? I would say a committee of wise men/women who have held high public office, but are no longer engaged in the battle and other publicly recognized thinking heads.

And TV debates, which should be mandatory in sufficient number to give the public a chance to educate themselves on the issues and on the candidates’ positions, should be limited to discussion of the issues and the respective proposed solutions only.In other words, no one should be permitted to run for a national office without providing the electorate with an unequivocal position on the major issues that the government they want to be part of will be facing.

If we do these two things right then the electorate can 1) make an informed decision and, by voting for the candidate with the best solutions, 2) provide a clear mandate for his/her term in office. It would almost certainly drive up voter participation as voters could then expect to have a real influence over the creation of a national strategy and how the nation’s problems get solved. It would drive voters away from the sideline and onto the playing field of true democracy.