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Title: Why Congress Doesn't Work
Source: The American Conservative
URL Source: http://www.theamericanconservative. ... cles/why-congress-doesnt-work/
Published: Jun 26, 2012
Author: LEO LINBECK III
Post Date: 2012-06-26 08:39:27 by Ada
Keywords: None
Views: 304
Comments: 11

Lawmakers’ avoidance of accountability undermines self-government.

Faced with a complex, hard-to-solve problem, there is a natural human tendency to solve a much simpler, easier one instead. Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman, in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, dubs this cognitive process “substitution.”

We know our political system is broken. The signs are everywhere: knee-jerk partisanship, massive debts and unfunded liabilities, widespread citizen dissatisfaction, trillion-dollar deficits, rampant public and private corruption, and a federal government that has less support than King George III at the time of the American Revolution.

But fixing the system is a staggeringly complex undertaking. The causes of its dysfunction are deep and obscure.

So what do we do? We use substitution: we focus on electing a president who promises to solve all our problems. Conservatives did this in 2000, progressives did it in 2008, and both sides are doing it again in 2012.

But it won’t work. There is no silver bullet, no shortcut, no Superman who will save us. In fact, by focusing almost exclusively on the presidency, we are making the problem worse, not better.

Our nation’s core political problem is a loss of self-governance, and the restoration of self-governance cannot come from the election of a single leader who will fundamentally transform America. It will only come from changing the way we think about political conflict, breaking the cycle of incumbency that has destroyed electoral accountability, dispersing power that has become too centralized, and re-engaging citizens in the political realm. The biggest impediment to these changes is not the president—it’s Congress.

This is not to say that the presidency is irrelevant. But Congress is the most powerful branch—it writes the laws and holds the purse strings—and it is utterly unaccountable for reasons that are widely misunderstood. Perhaps the greatest mystery of American politics in the 21st century is how Congress can have an approval rating that dips into the single digits while, on average, more than 90 percent of incumbents win re-election.

If Congress is unresponsive, restoring self-governance is impossible. But lawmakers will not reform themselves. Thus the critical first step in returning to self-governance is making congressional elections work—reconnecting the ballot box and the people’s will. This is a difficult task, but not impossible. Primary elections are the key.

This year, I have worked with a small group of committed men and women on a simple mission: to use a SuperPAC to defeat, in primary elections, unpopular congressional incumbents in “safe” districts.

Our organization, the Campaign for Primary Accountability, has targeted Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. In its first three months, we engaged in nine primary contests and won four. To put this in perspective, only four incumbents out of 396 lost their primaries in all of 2010.

We have beaten an establishment Republican in Ohio, a Tea Party-supported Republican in Illinois, a Blue Dog Democrat in Pennsylvania, and a mainstream Democrat in Texas. In the process, we have been called conservatives, liberals, Tea Partiers, anarchists, right-wingers, and both pro-Obama and anti-Obama. We are the political equivalent of Schrödinger’s Cat.

There have been two principal responses to our campaign: fear and confusion. This essay will hopefully alleviate the latter—and thereby enhance the former.

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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 10.

#3. To: Ada, all (#0)

I had never heard of this cat the author referenced at the end of the article so I looked it up. For others who may not know what (to me anyway) was an obscure reference to a cat, here is what I found.

Schrodinger's cat

Schrödinger's cat is a famous illustration of the principle in quantum theory of superposition, proposed by Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. Schrödinger's cat serves to demonstrate the apparent conflict between what quantum theory tells us is true about the nature and behavior of matter on the microscopic level and what we observe to be true about the nature and behavior of matter on the macroscopic level -- everything visible to the unaided human eye.

Here's Schrödinger's (theoretical) experiment: We place a living cat into a steel chamber, along with a device containing a vial of hydrocyanic acid. There is, in the chamber, a very small amount of hydrocyanic acid, a radioactive substance. If even a single atom of the substance decays during the test period, a relay mechanism will trip a hammer, which will, in turn, break the vial and kill the cat.

The observer cannot know whether or not an atom of the substance has decayed, and consequently, cannot know whether the vial has been broken, the hydrocyanic acid released, and the cat killed. Since we cannot know, according to quantum law, the cat is both dead and alive, in what is called a superposition of states. It is only when we break open the box and learn the condition of the cat that the superposition is lost, and the cat becomes one or the other (dead or alive). This situation is sometimes called quantum indeterminacy or the observer's paradox: the observation or measurement itself affects an outcome, so that the outcome as such does not exist unless the measurement is made. (That is, there is no single outcome unless it is observed.)

We know that superposition actually occurs at the subatomic level, because there are observable effects of interference, in which a single particle is demonstrated to be in multiple locations simultaneously. What that fact implies about the nature of reality on the observable level (cats, for example, as opposed to electrons) is one of the stickiest areas of quantum physics. Schrödinger himself is rumored to have said, later in life, that he wished he had never met that cat.

.

James Deffenbach  posted on  2012-06-26   9:24:29 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: James Deffenbach, christine, abraxas, farmfriend (#3)

Schrödinger's cat

As long as a cat is used and not a pug.

Cats are worthless and the fewer of them the better. And greyhounds. And chihuahuas.

Turtle  posted on  2012-06-26   17:36:49 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#8. To: Turtle, James Deffenbach, christine, abraxas, (#7)

Cats are worthless and the fewer of them the better. And greyhounds. And chihuahuas.

shut up wench!

oh sorry that's your line. my bad.

farmfriend  posted on  2012-06-26   21:22:12 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#10. To: farmfriend (#8)

shut up wench!

No, you shut up, wench!

Turtle  posted on  2012-06-27   12:38:49 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


Replies to Comment # 10.

#11. To: Turtle (#10)

I was beginning to think you didn't care any more.

farmfriend  posted on  2012-06-27 14:00:40 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


End Trace Mode for Comment # 10.

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