A SMALL PLAN FOR THE REFORM OF THE POLITICAL PROCESS

The Newest Profession

As with most good Plans, the starting point is the recognition of a misnomer: For although other students of Trickydicktion appear to have overlooked it, Our Millstone’s Our Millstone, A pun on Richard Millhouse Nixon and the idiom "a millstone round the neck". RMN was also known as "Tricky Dick" based in part on his penchant for campaign dirty tricks, which led to the Watergate impeachment crisis; so MAP puns on RMN's diction with a nonce portmanteau. reference to there being nothing inherently wrong with “the profession of politics” the other month "other month" presumably meaning recently in 1973 so spring or early summer? falls well below even his notions in re the rights of the unborn. Indeed, the mere suggestion that such a thing as a profession of politics exists ranks right down there in the Trickydicktionary with the never-to-be-sufficiently-scorned “greatest thing since the Creation” farrago. (After all, to professed Christians there was, one imagines, at least one intervening event of some considerable greatness between Adam and Eve and Armstrong and Aldrin. To those of us who are fond of space travel, an appropriate hyperbole might be “the greatest thing since the Invention of the Wheel” or somesuch; but, since the Creation?!?...)It was Armstrong and Aldrin's moon-landing in 1969 that newly inaugurated President RMN risked hubris by describing thus. And we should note that Sliced Bread was the greatest thing since Betty White. — Ed.

The refutation of the politics-as-profession notion is straightforward, but of some interest nonetheless. Fundamentally, the trick of diction is very simple: Our Millstone has snuck in still another sports metaphor. It is indeed the case that in sports, the “professional” athletes are those who get overtly paid for it; the “amateur” athletes, of course, are not supposed to get paid at all. So one can certainly manage to posit a professional politician as one who gets paid for taking part in politics. Unfortunately, the phrase was not used in a context which would support such an interpretation. Rather, in dedicating the Everett P. Dirksen Memorial Whatever, the attempt was being made to suggest that politics is a profession in the old sense — a “learned profession;” a field for which one is specifically educated over a longish period of time; or at least a way of making a living for which one has had considerable special training.

Yet surely it is clear that none of the above pertains to the trade of officeseeking. Neither M.I.T. nor Harvard has a major in “Politics” (and what “Political Science” means is obscure — probably just an attempt at the orderly study of politics, or the like; at any rate, certainly not the science of being a politician). This is careful wording. In 2021, both Harvard College and MIT have a "Political Science" major; but not "Politics" per se. We may infer that MAP's point is that the Poli.Sci. major and academic career is the Study and Theory of Politicians and Political Systems (and preparation of professors of same), not the professional preparation of politicians, on which he would appear to be on sound ground. Indeed, nowadays if there were a specific academic training program for officeseekers it would doubtless turn out to be under the aegis of the Theater Arts Department.

What preparations, then, do officeseekers make? That is, campaign contribution gathering aside, how do officeseekers prepare themselves for doing officeseeking/holding for a living? Statistically, the answer is resounding: they go to law school first, then try to set up shop as law-makers. Even those of us who are rightfully distrustful of Statistics (including not only cigarette smokers, but also many students of the philosphy of science who have worried a bit about causality) find it hard to overlook how large the proportion is. Most people who make their living seeking political office have only prepared for such a role by getting a law degree. So “professionalism” begins to look like the next-to-last refuge of the scoundrel.

Is that good?

Aid From Socrates

Of course, questions about Politics and the Good always make one think about Socrates — or, anyway, Plato. (No, not the silly old Republic. How could you trust anybody who bans poets, especially when he should be counted as a poet himself. It’s almost as bad as a poem the meaning of which is that a poem shouldn’t have meaning. Recursively unbearable, as the mathematicians say. Besides, this business about training in not getting caught is rather weird itself. All too reminiscent of Reasoner’s Harry Reasoner (1923-1991), TV journalist, commentary on "ABC Evening News", quoted in press, July 31, 1973; Press Telegram has "anything" vs "whatever" and "providing" vs "so long as" on Aug 3d, under headline "Corner Bar vs. Ehrlichman". gloss on the Ehrlichmonster: “You can do whatever you can get away with, so long as you don’t take a drink first.” Fortunately, though, there is a difference between the Republic and the Republicans: one of them believes in sex.) Actually, the Greek Connection comes clear when you think about the Good, Politics, and ... lawyers.

Remember what Socrates is supposed to have said about the Sophists? He used to be one, but he got tired of making “the Worse appear the Better Cause” for a living. Who were the Sophists, by the way? Why, they were the law schools of the day, that’s who. And what are lawyers? The practicing Sophists of this day, that’s who. For what do they do for a living but make the worse appear the better cause?

“Have you stopped beating your wife? answer yes or no,” is a classic, of course. But the public is by and large onto that one. Consider a couple of more contemporary examples: Consider the lawyer who is willing to affect ignorance of the definitions of embezzlement and of hearsay evidence in order to make an unfriendly-to-his-cause witness look bad in the eyes of the audience/jury. But do embezzlers leave I.O.U.'s? Is hearsay not explicitly permitted by Committee Rule 16? (Or was it 13?) To borrow the only felicitous locution ever known to have been employed by Our Millstone, “Poppycock!”

Yet that’s what lawyers do for a living — full-time if they’re not officeholders, and at least part-time if they are. They make, if they can, the Worse appear to be the Better Cause. Perhaps, then, the only legislative relief we stand in need of is the banning of lawyers from politics. One can indeed argue it's a conflict of interest for lawyers to legislate.
A mutual friend of MAP's and ours (Esq., RIP) hastened to point out that it's a comic fool character in Shakespeare who suggests Lawyers should be the first to the wall. (The Social Compact wasn't really formed to keep lawyers off the streets, no matter how much to the contrary appearances seem today.) It is tempting, if only on conflict of interest/restraint of trade/antitrust grounds. After all, if the laws are promulgated by the lawyers, how can the result possibly be other than to create more business for more lawyers? (This might also help to explain The Master’s observation that laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps [!] and hornets break through.) Jonathan Swift, again, Master of Swiftian satire.
The [!] notes the double-meaning acquired by wasp=W.A.S.P. in the centuries since Swift, that coincidentally works quite well here. Does that make MAP the Pierre Mendard to Swift's Cervante, in that the re-telling has greater ironic depth? — - Ed. It’s tempting, but is it enough?

Hayes's Law

However tempting the thought of being Socratic by banning lawyers from our Republic, the solution would be inadequate. It would merely open the doors wide to invasion by officeseekers from some other realm of post-graduate-trained con-men — “social scientists” perhaps. No, a satisfactory solution to the reform of the political process must have its roots in a recognition of the motivations of officeseekers. On this score, we may look to a widely-held law of nature attributed to Professor Woodrow Hayes of Ohio State University. The formulation of Hayes’s Law goes something like this:

There are only three things which can happen when you throw a forward pass,
and two of them are bad.

(If any in this day and age have managed to remain ignorant of the technical details of the Greater American Pastime, it should be pointed out that the three things are incompletion, interception, and completion. From the perspective of the team which attempted the pass, only completion is desirable. No morals will be drawn, but we should be clear on our technical premises when attempting to apply a law of nature from another discipline into our own.)

The application to politics borders on the obvious. Let us restate the law, then consider it in more detail:

There are only three things which can motivate a person to seek political office,
and two of them are bad.

The first category of political motivation is the one which at least feels like the most common. Whether it be termed greed, power-hunger, avarice, cupidity, corruption, or what-have-you, Category I political motivation has to do with what the officeseeker will get out of the office sought. All the sub-headings in this category have been dealt with at great length by others; we need only note it here and pass on, without even arguing about the quantification.

The second category of political motivation is the one which at least feels like the most treacherous. Whether it be termed sanctimoniousness, absolutism, legislation of morality, forced proselytizing, or what-have-you, Category II politcal motivation has to do with the officeseeker’s conviction that he knows what is Right and on gaining office will be able to impose that view on the constituency. Again, this category has been dealt with elsewhere; we need not even argue about the qualification — Category II is also bad, and may be worse.

It is only in the third category of political motivation that hope may be found, for Category III political motivation has to do with seeking office in order to prevent the office’s being occupied by a number of either Category I or Category II. (After all, from the perspective of the defensive team, interception is the best result ....)

And that’s all there are. There aren’t any more. Even in non-elective political structures (saving perhaps the hereditary), you’re either after an office for what you can get out of it, for what you can get into with it, or because your social conscience prompts you to deny the office to somebody less qualified and/or worse motivated.

How Bad Is It?

Before turning to a consideration of methods for increasing the proportion of Category III types in elective offices, we should take pause to consider how bad the current situation really is. Perhaps only a few bandaids are needed ... or perhaps even amputation at the neck won’t suffice.

Taking one consideration with another, it’s pretty bad. There’s no need — other than masochism — to rehearse the recently-exposed evidence in regard to “campaign law” abuses, for example. After all, that they are “campaigning” at all makes most candidates suspect by appeal to Hayes’s Law as reformulated for politics. The very term “campaigning” gives the show away.

A military campaign is a familiar phrase, but is a political campaign also an all-out battle between deadly enemies? Again, there is considerable contemporary evidence that many “in high position” think it so. But should it be? Well, it really ought to go without saying that if you treat an election as a civil war you can scarcely expect to have any real state of the consent of the governed after you’ve defeated the enemy. And yet we have heard a former Attorney General publicly proclaim with surly pride that he himself had violated the law, by vitholding knowledge of a crime ... because he was afraid that his candidate might lose the election/war.

It is not surprising that the trial-by-combat view of politics leads to a view of the world wherein the President is distinguishable from a King only in that his tenure is limited by the Constitution. At the rate the Constitution is being ignored of late, even that limitation begins to feel like fairly feeble comfort. Forty more years of Richard the Lyin’ Heart, anyone? Even a Philosopher King a la Plato would have its drawbacks (especially to those of us who have looked closely at philosophers — Philosophies), but the American Term Monarchy view simply boggles the stomach.

Indeed, even the Monarchial analogy might not go far enough. So much has been said recently about “the Presidency” and “the Highest Office” in such tones and terms of adulation for the abstraction (“My President — may he always be Right, but My President Right or Wrong” is just around the corner),This reformulation from "My Country ... " to "My President ..." being "just around the corner" is eerily prescient in retrospect from 2021. — Ed. that one is led to wonder if mere Kingship might not be a demotion. When a President complains that he cannot govern when people doubt his word, one is even led to wonder whether the Presidency might not be widely viewed as, say ... Our Word made Flesh? The thought should be obscene even to those of us who are not professed Christians, but there it is: Rather than viewing the President as the Head of the Executive Branch (who is not, it should be remarked, Constitutionally expected to “govern” at all — merely to be the Chief Execu­tive), large segments of the population seem to join the encumbered incumbent in viewing the President as ... God.

Curiously enough, going hand-in-hand — or tongue-in-mouth— with such naive theophilia is what might felicitously be called naive politicophobia. That is, if you believe in Polls, you don’t believe in Pols. There’s scarcely a need to adduce evidence here; after all, “everybody” “knows” “all” politicians are “crooks”. The popular conception, then, is that Category I motivations —especially certain of the sub-heads — are totally dominant in those who voluntarily enter the political “arena”. On this assumption, some even profess to be bored with all the scandals. But as George Giles tells us Reginald Hector told him, “‘the scandal-thing’ was no light matter when the reputation of leaders was at stake (‘since men won’t die for a fellow they don’t respect’).” In other words, despite Shaw’s Maxim that “Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few,” we seem to be getting the worst of both world-views these days.

Surprisingly perhaps, the new strategy of attempting to justify the sins of the current Administration by pointing at the (real or imagined) sins of past Administrations panders to the politicophobic position. (The strategy, by the way, is not without its own curiosity value: do 2,000 wrongs make a right?) Indeed, there’s a certain attractiveness to the position — the image of the system of checks and balances’ resolving itself into a system of bank drafts and scales (for weighing stacks of currency) is difficult to repress. But the expandio ad absurdum comes too soon, for this sort of thinking all too easily leads to the fantastic notion that the winner of a popularity contest (or, more often than not, the loser of an unpopularity contest) really does have some sort of “mandate” for his policies. Now that's a frightening prospect ... far more so even than that the President/Monarch/God should actually be proven to have been screwing mortals. (At least there are Classical precedents for the latter.)

On balance, then, perhaps a people really does get the government it deserves and that’s all there is to it. Yet it would be nice if we could find a way at least to diminish the necessity for simply shrugging and saying that all politicians are ... whatevers. Remember, if we could only get more Category IlI-motivated types into office, we’d clearly be better off. At present, though, the public attitude depicted as “apathetic” and/or “cynical” by both the mass media and the politicians does not seem to be a wholly inappropriate response to the circumstances which confront the public. What price idealism, after all, when even the Soap Box Derby is “won” by cheating ...?

It is that bad.

An Essay On “Cynicism”

Between Bull Buckley, Hortatery Howard Cosell, and Vice President Corkscrew (whose-name-was-a-household-word), words are getting a bad name in this country. If we can save just one word, though, not only can we partially refute my friend Tom who keeps saying that it’s a dead language, but we can also forestall the sort of slurs with which it is to be anticipated that the forthcoming plan will be met. The word, of course, is “cynicism”.

Now, who were the Cynics? Well, sometime around the period when the Sophists were hustling the first law schools, the Cynics were more concerned with “virtue” and “the Good”; they were going around saying “I doubt it” about the worth of most material things. (Presumably, about the Sophists most of all.) In short, they may be thought of as an early school of sceptical philosophers. “Scepticism” — now that doesn’t sound nearly so bad as “cynicism”, does it? Especially when you realize that good old Diogenes was a Cynic. Go one step further and observe that the Cynics were as American as the Man From Missouri who insists on being shown, and we see just what sort of havoc Trickydicktion can wreak on our sensibilities.... So, next time a politician or a pundit calls you a cynic, thank him for the compliment and proceed about your business of doubting the pious lies and seeking the nude truth. (And if you’re worried that the Supreme Court’ll getchya for messing around with nudies, well ... surely nobody would find obscene a bumper sticker which says “Fornicate the Supreme Court”.)

The Answer

Alright, we’ve seen that too many politicians are unqualified for office; that the legal profession is the intellectual counterpart of the “oldest profession”; that most officeseekers are in the racket for base reasons; that the contempt of the governed is more prevalent than the consent of the governed; that “water gate” is just another way of spelling “damn”; and that cynicism is good for you. The question is, “Can this Society be saved?” What’s the Answer?

Again, there’s a Classical Connection; this time it’s Reman. Remember Cincinatus? He’s the one who, as you can verify in your dictionary, was a “Roman patriot. He was called from his farm to be dictator in 458 and 439 B.C. Each time he resigned his dictatorship and returned to his farm when the enemy was defeated.” And that doesn’t mean he spent all his time at Campus Davidus after slaying St. George with a poisonous insect on the back. He came, he did what he had to, he went home. It may sound as un-American as eating frogs’ legs to us XXth century types, but that’s what he did. Ge ahead, look it up; you might also happen to learn a few new words on the way, which is always salutary. (But if you want to check up on me on the Cynics, unless you've got a very good one you'd better eschew your dictionary and try Russell's History of Western Philosophy; my dictionary, anyway, has the Cynics confused with the Stoics —who also were scarcely Bad guys.)

Clearly, if there were a patron saint of Category III motivation for officeseeking it would be Cincinatus. And the Question reduces itself to the more managable form, “Can we get more Cincinatus/Categery III people into the government?” I think we can — rather easily, in fact. (This is where the Small Plan comes in. Ready?)

To assure a vast improvement in the character of officeseekers
it is necessary merely to choose candidates for office by lot.

Some explication is perhaps in order, but that’s the kernel: eliminate the sort of people who volunteer for office and we automatically improve our chances of winding up with a good officer.

Of course, the execution is neither so simple nor so elegant as the conception. But it needn’t be terribly complicated. For any office, choose, say, twelve (a good number in many mythologies) constituents’ names at random. As discussed below, certain minimal restrictions might be placed on the name pool. If fewer than six are able to stand for office for reasons of health, keep picking until you have at least six candidates. Then allow them a week to come up with a statement of 200-500 words about themselves (200 minimum to show they know some words; 500 maximum to show they can be approximately concise); age and education data don’t count against the word limit; military service data do, but may not be used to reach the minimum count. At the expense of the governmental entity in question, distribute copies of the statements to all the constituents (and require them to be posted in the polling places just in case). Wait two weeks, then vote. Most votes “wins” — or, in any event, the recipient serves the term in the office in question.

Some embellishments might be useful. If we feel that we can’t live without the over-praised-at-any-price Two Party System (for which, by the way, I can find no basis in my copy of the Constitution), any recognized Party might be entitled to submit a list of no more than two dozen questions to the candidates — answerable by “Yes,” “No,” or “I’m a bachelor and have not started beating my wife.” A tabulation of the answers would accompany the candidates' statements, along with a list of the questions by Party (but no Approved Answers are permitted). Further, no Party may aid in the preparation of any candidate’s statement. (Recall that Parties have been rightly called the madness of the many for the profit of a few.) Matter of fact, it might be worth bringing back the death penalty for anyone who helps a candidate write the required statement. (If there’s anything worse than a lawyer, it’s an adman.)

Speaking of limitations, it might be worthwhile to consider a limited name pool for executive offices — say, pick from the chief executive officers of the 100 (1,000 in National elections) largest businesses in the constituency. At least that way a Chief Exective might know something about being a chief executive. On the other hand, there’s a certain charm to the old myth that anyone (native-born and over 35) can become President (I almost said “grow up to be President,” but, again, nothing in the Constitution says the President must be grown up), so perhaps we should except Federal executive positions from the restricted name pool notion.

Another tempting idea is to make Legislatures approximate better their theoretical representative nature by assuring that a fraction of the seats be at-large, with the candidates drawn from specific name pools — like scientists ("hard" and “soft” are, of course, separate), engineers (including, for kindness's sake, computer programmers), teachers, “housewives,” unemployed, and, it we want to be excessively charitable, maybe even lawyers.

The Advantages

Leaving embellishments aside — after all, there has to be something to debate when the Constitutional Amendment comes up — let’s turn to the advantages of choosing candidates by lot. The Pik-a-Pol Plan (just to forestall the Madison Avenue types making a fortune on it, I might as well get the name copyright now) would clearly fulfill the basic goal of representative government better than the current silliness does. The People would certainly get the government they deserve. (It we don’t get a significantly larger number of Category III motivation types, it’s only because the bad guys vastly outnumber the good in the native population as well as amongst those willing to “run” for office.) (And isn’t it interesting that in English English they “stand” for office rather than “run”?) It’s clearly pure Participatory Democracy. We’d certainly put to the test all the rhetoric flying around these days about the “special genius of the American People” .... Finally, even if the draw were rigged, we’d still be better off than we are now, because at least with six to twelve candidates per office we’d have some chance ot finding someone to vote for instead of merely voting against the one we like less or have been convinced to fear more.

Two rather subtle advantages deserve separate mention: In the first place, it has finally become popular to decry the position of both women and so-called ethnic-minorities vis a vis the Establishment. Well, it surely doesn’t take a statistician to tell what would happen if candidates for office were drawn from the whole population instead of from the boys in the back room. In the second place, there’s our old reliable International Communist Conspiracy. Even if Our Millstone, has lost the faith (and has even managed to go one up on Stalin Himself by collectivizing our farms through the simple expedient of freezing the smallholders out of existence — far more statesmanlike than starving or shooting 14,000,000 kulaks to death), there are still those who would like to see Us triumph over Them. Pik-a-Pol can do it. For if the great appeal of the I.C.C. is that it holds out the premise of a “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” and has won over around half the world with it, how much better will we do with a real live Government of the Proletariat?

Even the one possible disadvantage of Pik-a-Pol turns out to be an advantage when viewed aright. The objection might be raised that randomly-chosen candidates may not be qualified for the particular offices their names were matched with. Now, the “obvious” rejoinder would be to point out that there’s no guarantee that candidates are qualified under the present system either. A more telling answer is that they’d be just as qualified for serving in office as jury members are to serve on juries under the current selection techniques. (Maybe even more so, as you probably have to be brighter to be able to resist the blandishments of a trial lawyer than to be able to decide that if A wants $10 f or each street sign and B wants $5 for each sign of like quality, you should buy from B if you’re buying street signs.

One vexing question remains: Should there be any limitations placed on the name pools because of past indiscretions? That is, should convicted felons, mental defectives (in the medical sense), and lawyers be prohibited? Good arguments can be raised on both sides. When all is said and done, though, I suspect that the best resolution of this issue is to limit the name pool no more and no less than you limit the franchise. For although it was a bit questionable in the context of a Supreme Court appointment, when it comes to holding elective office — as a member of the United States Senate himself has said it — even the mediocre deserve representation. (You might, by the by, want to look up “mediocrity” sometime; Trickydicktion has even given it a bad name....) Besides, if any idiot can vote it seems only fair that any idiot can hold office.

The final advantage is rather visionary. However, it does occur to me that the Pik-a-Pol principle when proven in practice might even be extended beyond the realm of elective office. Is it too idealistic and fanciful to consider the possibility of even picking by lot members of ... the Civil Service? I know it's awfully radical to contemplate a reform of Holy Mother Bureaucracy. After all, officeseekers and officeholders may come and go whether representative or not, but Bureaucrats are eternal. Well, it’s only an afterthought, and I suppose I am a dreamer — but, someday, somehow, to see this land of ours, of yours and mine — and even Theirs, I suppose — come to that blessed point when Their motto no longer need be ... “The Civil Service Isn’t”

Things to Ignore

Certain traditionalists will doubltless express displeasure at so neat a solution as Pik-a-Pol. Prompted by their vested interests, they will speak of the possibility of “cleaning up the current system” and offer Plans of their own.

For example, it might be suggested that the nominating process be opened up by such expedients as barring all campaign contributions; even barring all campaign advertising all the way down to, and including, campaign buttons. Or it might be attempted to improve the character of participants in the electoral process through such ploys as tight limits on the number of terms a legislator may serve, eliminating the all-too-familiar stepping-stone tactics of seekers of local office by enforcing “sabbaticals” of several years between the holding of one office and another, or making perjury by a politician a capital crime (it’s already the Capitol crime). Others will claim that the Chief Executive’s position would not be subject to abuse if there were no re-election to the Presidency, or if White House “staff” positions were replaced by “line” positions (either directly elected or at least confirmable by Congress) so as to have clear channels of responsibility. Still others will assert that lifetime judicial appointments and “career” civil servants should be eliminated in the interests of responsiveness to public needs. Or those who are overly concerned with economics might raise the idea that the public can scarcely expect a fair shake in a setup where individuals’ incomes are subject to higher tax rates than are corporations'. It is even faintly possible that some benighted souls might urge public semantic analysis of all political speeches.

Naturally, all these schemes must be ignored. They are far too complicated; they treat the symptoms rather than the disease; and the time we wasted trying them out would just delay the implementation of the obviously superior Pik-a-Pol Plan. No, only one possible other Plan can even remotely be considered:

An Acceptable Alternative

In the unlikely event any reader finds this Small Plan at all over-complicated, there is an even simpler solution: Despite the drawback that it would generate more work for the lawyers, we could just pass a Constitutional Amendment making campaign promises legally binding ....