Johnson, Gail L.:
Two Years to Democracy: The 2Y2D Plan. Fastest, Easiest, Safest way to restore "government of the People, by the People, for the People." Libri Anatum Publishing, 2012. ISBN: 978-0-9852776-0-4
What do you think of having a House of Representatives with one representative for every 100,000 people instead of one for every 500,000 to 1,000,000? Instead of 435 members, the House would have almost 3,100.
Everyone from the far left to the far right agrees that the U.S. political system isn't really working the way it is supposed to. Whether you focus on the corruption of the system through money – both lobbying and the pernicious effect of money on the election process – or on the alienation of people from the political process, we can all see that something is amiss. The latest wave of grassroots agitation, including both the Tea Party and Occupy movements as well as a new wave of labor agitation, can be taken as evidence that there is a general feeling of dissatisfaction with politics. Those movements are also grounds for some optimism of course - people are not organizing massed armed resistance. There are no insurgencies. The system still works to some degree. But these movements show that recourse is now being saught at the edges of the system - in non-violent protest, not through the normal processes of elections and legislation, because the core of the system is broken.
In her book, Gail Johnson proposes that the easiest way to fix the problems we do have with the core of the system by increasing the size of the House of Representatives dramatically - to over 3,000 members. In terms of direct effects, this would ...
- bring the size of congressional districts down to a size resembling those the founders intended (three times as large, but with today's communication technology similar in its effects) and make communication between elected officials and their constituencies possible,
- virtually eliminate the disparities in representation which we currently have because state borders distort the sizes of congressional districts
- and open up political office to a much larger subset of the population.
The book shows that these first-order effects, which are actually more descriptive than predictive, do indeed pertain. The indirect or second-order effects are what we are really after, however, the cleaning up and invigoration of the political system. I list them here in what I think is decreasing order of likelyhood:
- The possibility of direct communication between voters and representatives would reduce alienation and invigorate political life. More people would see that their voice matters. More people would vote and more people would run for office. Johnson does not address this aspect of the reform in her book, but the proposed reform would be essentially "liberal" in its overall effect. Although it does not address legislative content, the 2Y2D plan would, if it did in fact mobilize more political activity, increase the franchise. As we see from historical cases where high voter turnout leads to a leftward shift, this would do the same. Efforts to limit the franchise are generally something you find on the right. So while this may find support among many who associate with conservative views (the Tea Party comes to mind, but they are not entirely right-wing) and in many districts the result would be the election of more conservative politicians, overall, the effect would, in my estimation, be a shift to the left.
- The cost of government would actually go down. That is intitially counter-intuitive. More representatives must cost more, right? Johnson's book does not actually prove that costs would go down. Believe it or not, however, there is strong impirical evidence based on precedent and comparison as well as some logical extrapolation to show that this is indeed what would happen. Read the book to see it. Furthermore, Johnson points out that even if she's wrong and costs remained stable or went up, the cost of congress would remain a tiny portion of the overall budget and the positive effects would be worth the additional cost.
- The cost of running a campaign would sink dramatically. Since congressional districts would be smaller, advertizing in them would cost less. The methods of advertizing would also be more direct, as television ads would become less efficient. I am not entirely sure, however, that the overall cost of electioneering would go down. Elections per district would certainly become cheaper, of course. So more people who are not filthy rich could indeed run for office and hope to win.
- The costs of lobbying would become prohibitive. This last point is not very well demonstrated in the book. It is indeed likely that a six-fold increase in the number of congressmen would in fact make lobbying more difficult. Congressmen would approach parity with lobbyists instead of being strongly outnumbered by them. But if the stakes remain high (a lot of government largess to distribute), I see no obvious reason why lobbying might not simply increase to meet the new challenge.
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New political parties might emerge. Johnson speculates briefly on this possibility. The idea merits consideration. Even now, an occasional independent gets into congress. With local elections less dependent on large sums of money or infrastructure, this is more likely to happen the larger congress gets. Not only might challengers arise on the "outside" - to the right of the Republican or to the left of the Democratic incumbant - but independence from the national party might prove advantageous to more moderate candidates. If there were more independents, they might coalesce into regional or national parties. Indeed, the small parties already established like the Libertarians or the Greens could start to win seats right off the bat if they have good people locally.
The strongest point to the whole idea is its pragmatism. This pragmatic voice is refreshing in an era when so much political discourse has become so ideological, coarse and vitriolic. The main center of its pragmatism is its moderation. It is easy to brainstorm marvellous and fantastic reforms for the government. My favorite would be introducing some form of proportional representation to open the door to third parties. There are obvious problems with that, which a glance at Europe will show, but that is not the issue here. The problem with that idea, and so many others, is that it requires a constitutional amendment to make happen, and the hurdle for amendments is very, very high. Johnson's 2y2d plan does not. It still requires a majority of sitting congressmen to vote themselves into an entirely different universe, of course, but it is not as unrealistic as a constitutional amendment.
Johnson's idea is also pragmatic because it focuses on the branch of government that is most accessable to change. While it remains difficult to get the House to vote itself into an entirely new situation, it is more likely to happen there than anywhere. The House is the federal branch most likely to listen and act in the interests of and on the initiative of a broad expression of political sentiment.
In addition to pragmatism, the book's strength is its impirical foundation. It shows clearly by looking at the words of the Founding Fathers as well as at the real numbers behind how our system works, that there is a problem and that this idea has a good shot at making significant progress toward a solution.
The weaknesses of the book are omissions, but the author no doubt wanted to keep the proposal short and sweet. At just over 100 pages, including charts, quote boxes and generous margins, whole book can be absorbed in one or two sittings. The stuff left out can emerge from the discussions that this important idea should generate. Everyone will have their own ideas about what needs to be talked about.
The main thing I noticed that the book only touched on, was how Congress actually works. The book contains very little thinking about how the increase in the size of the House would change the dynamic of how the House actually operates on a day-to-day basis. The speculation about the effects on lobbying are plausible. But what about committee work? How do 3000 people deliberate? Are there historical comparisons we could look at which might give us a clue? The reformed House would be larger than any other elected chamber in the world. (China's is currently the largest at 3000, but not being democratically elected, doesn't offer much of a comparison.) Johnson's remarks here are surprisingly brief.
Overall I give the project high marks. The idea doesn't have a webpage yet. Unfortunately, the URL 2Y2D.org is taken by another project which, at first blush, appears to be a somewhat "new age" kind of thing. So the only place to read about the idea right now is in the book. I encourage anyone interested in serious political reform to give it a hard look and to talk about it with friends, neighbors and colleagues, especially with people who are already active.
mhatlie - 2012.03.19, 17:53 Topic:
U.S. society and politics http://hatlie.twoday.net/stories/75237638/
