Is it just me, or does it seem to some of you that the wheels are coming off our national political system?
Allow me to vent, please, as we look at our current dilemma:
Thanks to the electoral college and nearly 63 million voters, we have a President who is manifestly unsuited and ill-prepared for the job. He was duly elected under arcane rules that have denied the presidency to the popular vote winner in two of our last five national elections. In 2016, that meant his opponent got nearly 3 million more votes…and lost.
Thanks to gerrymandering and big money, we have a Congress that deadlocks over everything from health care to tax reform. It takes a disastrous hurricane to get anything done quickly, or to even kick the can down the road for three months.
Thanks to partisan redistricting and again, big money, there is precious little turnover in Congress. In 2016, 97 per cent of the House incumbents who stood for re-election won; 93 per cent of Senators who sought re-election succeeded. More often than not, incumbency equals job security.
Big money also has given special interests maximum leverage in Washington. No surprise, because campaigns have become ever more costly. Former Texas Senator Phil Gramm had it right when he said: “ready money is the mother’s milk of politics.” As if to prove it, a record $55 million was spent earlier this year in the special election to replace Tom Price in Georgia’s sixth district, most of it on behalf of the Democratic candidate, who lost. It demonstrated how hard it is to win a seat that has been skillfully gerrymandered over the years.
Look as well at what the U.S. presidency has become. It is an imperial office today, with vast powers to rattle nuclear sabers, tear up trade and international climate agreements, dismantle domestic programs and pardon convicted criminals.
The executive order is today’s all-purpose tool of convenience, used equally by our current and former chief executives. Occasionally, as in the case of the evolving travel bans, the federal courts step in. But most often, a stroke of the presidential pen prevails.
Nothing illustrated the current congressional fecklessness better than the Republican failure to repeal and replace Obamacare. After seven years of pledges and promises, the GOP leadership was unable to control the conservatives in its own caucus and deliver the votes to pass a substitute version.
Nor is tax reform likely to be any easier. Or the much-promised trillion-dollar infrastructure bill, or immigration reform or any of the other big-ticket items that were supposed to be adopted now that one party controls both houses of Congress and the White House. Gridlock is what we get instead.
I’m not sure this is exactly what the founders had in mind when they drafted the constitution and bill of rights and created a system of checks and balances. Congress was supposed to be a co-equal branch, not a frustrated and frustrating cave of winds.
Three things could make our democracy more democratic: non-partisan redistricting, serious campaign finance reform with spending limits and expanded public financing and revising or scrapping the electoral college.
Direct popular election of the President will not solve all our problems, but it certainly will better reflect the people’s choice. Independent re-drawing of congressional districts, based on population not partisan politics, will make more races competitive. Gerrymandering is a bi-partisan passion: the Democrats in Maryland are every bit as adept as the Republicans elsewhere. In Maryland, the politicians choose their voters, not the other way around.
And reforming the rules on campaigning, limiting the time and money involved, will open the process to more candidates and reduce the influence of special interests.
None of this will make for a perfect system. But it would be more fair, less beholden to the powerful groups that distort it today and yes, more democratic. With a lower-case “d.”
Month: October 2017
Mayoral Sweepstakes 2017
Annapolis, Maryland is being treated to a lively, genuinely competitive and so far remarkably civil mayoral race that pits an improbable, 34-year-old incumbent against an unlikely, 54-year-old challenger.
With just two weeks and two days to go, the outcome is hard to predict.
If you’ve been looking the other way, here’s the race in a nutshell:
Mike Pantelides, the 136th Mayor of Annapolis, was just 30 when he squeezed into office by 60 votes out of nearly 8,000 cast four years ago. A political neophyte and a Republican in a city with a two-to-one Democratic registration, he defied all the political odds to become the first GOP mayor in more than a decade.
“Mayor Mikey,” as some of his less-generous critics call him, was boyishly awkward in his first year in office, seemingly uncomfortable in his own skin. But he has gained in confidence and authority as he has battled with the City Council over issues large and small. He has raised more than $250,000 for his re-election and has important segments of the business community behind him. At the outset of the race, he was clearly the frontrunner.
Gavin Buckley, the Democratic nominee, is an Australian-accented restaurateur and businessman often credited with reviving inner West Street (“changing it from a red light district to an arts district,” he says,) who scored a major victory in the primary by decisively defeating the veteran State Senator John Astle.
A total newcomer to politics, Buckley sailed into Annapolis 23 years ago from Bermuda and never left. Married with two children in Annapolis public schools, he has raised some $130,000 in campaign funds and generated serious momentum behind his candidacy with his wit, energy and new ideas.
A long-shot when he first declared, Buckley is now a serious contender who could well take City Hall on election day.
Unlike the name-calling and coarse language of our recent presidential race, the Annapolis mayoral campaign has been remarkably well-mannered, at least so far. The two candidates even lunched together recently at Lemongrass, one of Buckley’s several restaurants.
“I offered, but Gavin picked up the tab,” Pantelides told me last week. “I like Gavin a lot. He has good ideas, but I’m not sure he necessarily knows how to get things done or how to pay for things.”
Last week the campaign tone sharpened a bit as Mayor Pantelides launched a sarcastic online video ad and mailer spoofing Buckley’s idea for a Ferris wheel along the waterfront, a notion Buckley tossed out on a local podcast as a device to lure families downtown and brighten the City Dock area.
“Nothing says historic preservation like an eyesore Ferris wheel,” the ad concludes.
Buckley seemed more amused than annoyed by the needle; he’s not counting on a lot of votes from the historic preservation crowd, whom he described to me in an interview as “a Game of Crones.”
The tone of the race may harden in the remaining two weeks, because it feels so close. Both candidates are pressing hard.
Buckley says he has not conducted any polls, but figures he needs to attract at least 4,500 votes to win. “Mike has the bigger challenge,” Buckley told me, “because he has to bring Democrats to his side to win.”
The Mayor concedes that he has conducted opinion polls, but said in a telephone interview that the results are “confidential.” When I said that sounded bad, he laughed and said, “No, they’re not bad, I can say that.”
Despite their surface harmony, the Mayor and his challenger differ sharply in style and substance. Buckley fairly spouts ideas, while Pantelides is more cautious and measured.
Buckley wants to revive Main Street, get the cars off the City Dock waterfront and make it a people-friendly draw for residents and visitors alike, convert the beleaguered Market House into a vibrant community gathering place, get Annapolitans out of their cars and onto bike lanes, ferries and trolleys and clean up Spa Creek and the harbor. In short, he wants to make Annapolis more fun.
Pantelides wants to build on what he describes as his first term record of economic development, environmental stewardship, financial stability and improved public safety. In short, continue what he has been doing.
For Annapolis voters, then, the 2017 mayoral race offers a choice, not an echo.