Painful though it be to assign second priority to desperately needed substantive legislation like fixing the minimum wage and restoring environmental regulation, the Democrats’ first priority must be restoring the rules of the game. That’s right: two-thirds of the Democrats’ energy should be devoted to procedure, not substance. Here’s why:
Imagine a football game in which one team scores repeatedly by running out of bounds, clipping, holding, face-masking, and refusing to turn over the ball after fourth down – moreover, they also bribe, impersonate, threaten, and eliminate referees.
Upon somehow gaining possession of the ball, the opposing team must not simply play with competence and integrity. First, the rules must be restored, or else the brawl will continue, and there will be no game. That means Democrats must reestablish the core elements of democracy: information must be accurate, corruption must be prevented, and elections must be fair.
Once these foundation stones are in place, we will be able to make gains that will not be quickly eroded by a renewal of foul play. Below the fold: specific implications.
Here is what we need to see:
Accurate Information. Restoring and expanding the Fairness Doctrine is obvious – no public license may be sustained for a media outlet that attempts to mislead or defraud the public. Equally obvious is to protect freedom of speech within the government itself, which means protecting scientists and whistleblowers, strengthening the Freedom of Information Act, and severely restricting the government’s ability to classify information. Less obvious but equally important, corporate disinformation campaigns (such as Exxon’s against global warming) must be prevented, and the activities of ideological foundations must be brought into the light so we can assess the scope and source of their role in media disinformation efforts. Net neutrality fits here, too, to protect independent information.
Eliminating Corruption. Lobbying reforms and public campaign financing are obvious, and targeted legislation like Leahy’s anti-War Profiteering Act are welcome. More generally, we need to ensure that administrative agencies are not thwarted in their Congressionally mandated missions, which may mean revisiting some areas of Administrative Law that were considered settled, and perhaps creating a general private right of action in mandamus.
Fair Elections. Voter-verified paper-trails that are in use in some places today should be mandated in all elections at all levels of government, and recounts should be automatic in elections with close margins or voting anomalies. More importantly, the Voting Rights Act should be extended to ensure equality of opportunity to vote in all respects (including equipment) to all people. In particular, Bush v. Gore should be abrogated, establishing instead that the Equal Protection Clause requires that every citizen’s right to vote be ensured, and that every vote be counted. Ensuring fair elections at every level of government is a constitutional issue, and local control must only be exercised to provide even greater protections than federal law should mandate.
If we instead focus most of our energy on worthy substantive goals, we will not only win victories that may be easily unraveled, but more importantly we will have fundamentally misunderstood the challenge of our time. Perilously close did we come to surrendering our country to an autocrat, and the danger to democracy has not yet passed.
The risk that significant structural changes will be blocked by a hostile White House and obstructionist Senate minority is actually an affirmative reason to focus more energy there. Blocking legislation designed to ensure fundamental fairness in democracy will be much more damaging to 2008 GOP hopefuls than blocking substantive policies about which reasonable minds might disagree. In other words, procedural changes are more likely to succeed than substantive changes, and if they do not succeed, then their failure will strengthen the Democrats’ electoral prospects in 2008.
I know that somebody will say we can make significant headway on both substantive and procedural goals, and I agree with that. But don’t you agree that restoring democratic processes has to be our highest priority?