It's happening from Texas to California. The GOP is trying to usurp the law to take over governments it could not win by the ballot.



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Conservatives wrongly seek 'government by tantrum'

By Ross K. Baker

How ironic it is that American conservatives, who once argued so vigorously that the United States was not a democracy but a representative republic, should now be in the vanguard of those eager to bypass representative institutions and have voters write laws and remove officials in the voting booth.

More paradoxically, California Republicans, in their campaign to recall Gov. Gray Davis, find themselves in strange ideological company. By pushing direct democracy to its limits, they're in league with the counterculture leaders of the 1960s and '70s who argued for participatory democracy.

These troubling ideas are the same: Cut out the middleman. Let people rule without elected intermediaries. That it is happening in California, which often is a model for the rest of the country, is more unsettling. It would be ruinous for other states if they followed California's example.

Direct democracy is a venerable practice. In ancient Greece, citizens would meet to pass the laws that would govern them. In New England towns, residents gather to pass budgets and adopt ordinances. But even on New England's modest scale, direct democracy operates in an indifferent fashion. The highest civic value is usually keeping property taxes low.

Put in broader terms

Translated to as large and complex a place as California, direct democracy results in wild policy gyrations, hasty actions that courts must correct and damage to institutions. Term limits for California Assembly and Senate members have, for example, forced out lawmakers just as they're beginning to comprehend the complexity of the policies they must enact, and magnified the influence of lobbyists.

Californians have, by initiative and referendum, capped property taxes, reduced local governments to mendicants, denied health care to illegal immigrants and will now likely vote to recall an unpopular governor and set in motion a scramble to choose his successor.

The Oct. 7 ballot has come to resemble the cast of a Hollywood epic. The headliners and bit players range from actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and columnist Arianna Huffington to a sumo wrestler and porn magnate Larry Flynt.

California is far too important to be manipulated by political pitchmen. From Howard Jarvis and his tax-cutting gimmicks to Darrell Issa and his feel-good remedy for popular dissatisfaction with Davis, these hucksters unleash on Californians an avalanche of advertising designed to gull the public. If direct democracy California style is presented as a way to curb the influence of special interests, it is pure, undiluted snake oil.

Where idea began

California's noble idea of direct democracy came just before World War I. It was one of those populist surges, when legislators, even governors, were in the clutch of railroads and other industrial giants; so initiative, referendum and recall were instituted to take back the reins of government.

Used in moderation, these devices usually produced positive results. But when used as blunt instruments, they threatened the very institutions they were designed to safeguard. Much of California's current quagmire can be blamed on previous unwise ballot measures, especially stripping the legislature of its most experienced members, which probably contributed to this year's disastrous budget impasse.

So what's the alternative? Do we accept that all such places are ungovernable, or do we perform the kind of radical surgery California did 92 years ago, when it instituted the recall?

Neither response addresses the heart of the problem. The problem is with a public that is apathetic or outraged, sullen or rebellious. Popular anger focuses only intermittently on state government.

The framers of the Constitution bequeathed us a federal system, an early recognition that one size does not fit all and that a country destined to be vast and diverse needed expansion joints for healthy growth. To the states, then, were reserved important powers to do everything from educate our children to license hairdressers.

What states, governors and legislatures do may not always please us. But they're too important to be subjected to the whimsy of self-interested panacea peddlers.

Government by tantrum is unworthy of a free people.

Ross K. Baker is a political science professor at Rutgers University.






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