During my 70+ years of life, I’ve witnessed a significant number of political campaigns and elections but never have I seen such a marked reversal of political trends as has occurred between 2008 and 2010. Just a little over one year ago, mid 2009, several highly respected political scholars/analysts were postulating that the Republican Party was moribund and on life support. They expressed the opinion that the Democrat Party would be entrenched in power for the next 40 years. Little more than a year later, the Democrat Party finds itself licking its wounds after suffering one of the most widespread election defeats of all time. What happened? How could the American electorate make such a rapid and complete 180-degree turn? How could the pundits be so completely wrong?
We are now hearing all of the theories and opinions of why this happened from a growing pool of so called “political analysts”. It seems that everyone has an opinion in the sport of Monday morning quarterbacking. The reasons advanced include arrogance of the Democrat congress in ignoring Republican input as they raced full speed ahead with an agenda too far to the left for the American public to accept, too much intrusion of the Federal government into everyday lives for the American public to accept, poorly conceived government makeover of our health care system, too many taxpayer dollars (nearly $1 trillion) handed primarily to Democrat interests (i.e., pork) in the name of economic stimulus, no improvement in the unemployment problem in spite of this enormous amount of spending and, most importantly, massive expansion of our national debt. No doubt these and other reasons all contributed to the 2010 political “shellacking” as it was referred to by President Obama.
Of particular concern is the magnitude of our national debt, recently standing at about $13.6 trillion and increasing at the rate of approximately $1 million per minute. At this point in time, it amounts to more than $44,000 per citizen or more than $176,000 if the population is theoretically divided into families of four. Check out the national debt clock on the web for a really scary experience. Putting this debt in perspective underscores the seriousness of the problem. It’s as if all of our families are paying for another home. How many of the 90 million families making up this nation could afford to carry an extra mortgage of this magnitude? How many future generations will be paying for the irresponsible excesses of our federal government, especially those of the current Democrat super majority congress? Add to this the fact that people strongly resent being conned. Millions of people, many unaffiliated with either party, i.e. the so-called independents, who voted for Barack Obama and the Democrat super majority-congress quickly became disillusioned. These were people who believed the campaign rhetoric but soon found that the kinds of changes being imposed on them were vastly different than what was expected or had been promised. Feeling betrayed and disillusioned, they took the opportunity of the 2010 elections to register their disgust.
Our political history is a succession of cycles. Whatever party gains control of the government seems to eventually mess up sufficiently to cause public rejection. Thus, in a sense, they hand power over to the opposition party. This has happened time and time again and I am sure it’s just a matter of time before the 2010 reversal will be repeated in the opposite direction. In fact, even before all the votes of this year’s election were counted, squabbling began between the older Republican establishment and the newly arrived “tea party” Republicans. It’s this history of predictable and repeated failure that leads to the suggestion that it may be time for taking a “mulligan” on the American political system.
Although a strong argument can be made that our system of democracy is probably the best form of government the world has yet produced, there is room for improvement in essentially everything created by man. As is usually the case with most problems arising in human organizations, the problems encountered by our government can likely be traced to the less savory aspects human nature. I’ve dealt with this “built-in booby trap” in several earlier essays. In brief, we can blame our DNA. This devilish double helix constantly drives behaviors aimed at enhancing our survival. Responding to this programmed order, we seek out every opportunity to gain an advantage as we compete in life and attempt to climb the ladder of success. Consequently, whether we admit it or not, we are inherently self-centered. Nearly all public or organizational goals, regardless of how strongly they are advocated or how noble they appear, end up secondary to personal goals. I realize that many of us are truly generous and thoughtful of others but when the chips are down, our DNA is screaming at us to, above all else, take care of ourselves. I don’t mean to say that we don’t often disregard our natural instincts and act in the best interests of others, especially when it comes to our family and friends, but understanding this natural instinct is critical in understanding the nature of the problem. Hidden agendas and disguised personal goals often trump the best interests of our nation as a whole when decisions are made in this context. Although it’s often stated by members of congress that they want to do what is best for the country, most members of the congress, first and foremost, are looking out for themselves and doing whatever they believe will win them the most votes in the next election. In fact this may well be a sincere arrogance if they believe their success in this regard is of such critical importance to the nation’s future. Understanding human behavior, especially implications of the basic biologic drive for survival will be key in devising a viable “mulligan” for the American political system.
II. The “Mulligan”
While a comprehensive “mulligan” on our political system could fill several volumes, one specific “key cog” in the gears of government machinery will be addressed here, the process by which legislative decisions are made. Congress is traditionally directed by a particular form of pack behavior that is similar to the military format. Basically, decisions are primarily made by the leadership and the troops are expected to follow and support their leaders with their votes. In congress it’s the responsibility of the party leaders to keep their members in line and to support the party position. In the military, the troops are required to obey the leaders and follow their orders as they head into battle. This process is appropriate for the military, which necessarily operates as a dictatorship. It would be impractical, perhaps even suicidal, for democracy to prevail in such a context and for all of the troops to individually vote on each aspect of battle strategy. Decisions often have to be made in a split second in order to win battles, save lives and avoid disaster. Thus, every soldier realizes that decisions are necessarily made by their commanders and their best chance for success and survival is to obey commands without pausing to debate the pros and cons. However, the situation in congress is far different. Most decisions can and should be made with careful deliberation. In most cases, decisions formulated strictly by the majority leadership often excluding the participation of one party or the other will be sub-optimal. Unfortunately, some of the most far-reaching recent decisions have been made in that way. The health care bill and the stimulus package are two examples where careful deliberation and inclusiveness were ignored in favor of rapid passage of bills drafted strictly by the Democrat leadership. Having a super majority allowed the Democrats to move forward en masse without regard to input or concerns expressed by Republican members of congress. Large numbers of citizens quickly realized that these bills were so far from optimal and so damaging to our country that they turned on the Democrats that they had supported just two years ago and voted many out of office. In fact, disenchantment with the Democrats was so severe that broad losses of power spread beyond federal positions into many state contests including elections of governors and state legislators.
Situations such as this are clearly not in the best interests of our country. Thus, it’s suggested that one key aspect of the “mulligan” to be taken in the political arena should perhaps be in regard to procedures for making legislative decisions. Once government has opted to address an issue, every effort should be made to assure that congressional legislative decisions are optimal. As has been detailed in my book, “A Path To The Gold”, any group can make the best decision they are capable of by following a relatively simple, straightforward, rational process. To begin with, congress must back away from biting off too much at a time and trying to pass infinitely complex, thousand page bills encompassing a multitude of goals. In the first place, few of the individual legislators rarely have time to read thousand page complex bills, much less absorb and understand them, before they are required to vote. It’s highly doubtful that optimal decision-making can be accomplished when such bills are introduced often burdened by numerous, totally unrelated, “ear marks”. The first step in making a good group decision is to have total group agreement on a clearly stated, straightforward, goal for the bill. It cannot be over stressed that properly defining the goal is the single most important step in the process. Thereafter, brainstorming sessions should be participated in by all members of the appropriate legislative body to get every conceivable approach for dealing with the issue on the table. Following free and open discussion, the list would likely be narrowed to a manageable group for rating. The next step would be for each member of the legislative body to individually rate the probability of each alternative achieving the designated goal. All of the individual ratings would then be combined to yield the ultimate decision. This decision would then represent the specific alternative that has the highest probability, as determined by the entire group, of achieving the designated goal. It would then be a relatively simple matter to formalize these results in a bill to be voted on by the congress. For this process to work best, complex issues with multiple goals should, whenever possible, be broken down into a set of smaller bills, each with a single clearly defined goal. That doesn’t mean that conditional goals shouldn’t be considered. It often makes the most sense to consider such goals. For example, the goal of a bill might be to resolve some issue but at a cost not exceeding a certain amount or to resolve an issue without creating new problems by interfering with ongoing efforts to resolve other issues.
In summary, this “mulligan” requires that rules be adopted by congress to enhance their ability to make optimal decision as described above. This is only one aspect of what might be considered a “Grand Mulligan” for government but starting with how legislative decisions are made could yield countless benefits in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of our political system. As an added bonus, it would probably lead to an elevated public opinion of our lawmakers. Certainly congress needs to take advantage of any opportunity to improve upon their current 17% approval rating. Although unlikely that everyone would agree with all decisions made in this way, they should recognize that honest efforts are being made to improve the lives of the general public rather than the wealth and careers of the elected politicians. Finally, what are the chances of our politicians ever opting for such a change? The chance of this kind of “mulligan” ever being adopted within the framework of our current two party political system probably ranges between the proverbial slim to none. Competition between the Democrat and Republican labels to become “king of the hill” is likely too fierce to ever be overcome by such a simple-minded concept as rationality.
