Governing

Especially since 9/11, the media has given us an inside look at government and how it governs. It didn’t mean to, it was merely showing us the circumstances, meetings and hearings involved with whatever story it was pursuing. So we have had the usual pronouncements, testimony and depositions, all in front of us, an across the board sample of how our government works. And that was just the overt stuff, it didn’t even show, usually, the politics, compromise and power-plays that went into creating all the things we were seeing.

Unfortunately our government didn’t come off looking too good. In fact it looked horrible, and inadequate, and ignorant. Even before 9/11, we had started down this road of infamy. The election of 2000 was shameful and inadequate to say the least. The fact a government in the 21st Century, has to throw its election into a part of government never really meant to handle balloting, is the very definition of failure. It was improvisation at its worst. Then, with the terrorist strike, we were witness to three years of mistakes, mishaps and powerlessness. If we were devising a bad novel or a poor TV script, we could not have done better.

Now, before we go any further, let me clarify something. I am not criticizing America nor the basic systems of our republic. Yet, even from personal experience, we know how things get bent out of shape over time. If we don't sharpen the blade, a jackknife won’t even cut cheese. If we don't oil them, hinges on a door will squeal away, till one day they simply freeze. If we are not careful of how we put scribblings in a notebook, one day we will find an incomprehensible mess, instead of a coherent story. The same is true of government. That tendency may be the real source for the Jeffersonian statement about a little revolution being good once in a while.

Without maintenance, even the best of systems go awry. And the American system is huge, complex and multifunctional. Like some kind of giant liberty tree, American government has grown, and sprouted and launched new saplings like few other governments on this earth. Attempting to honor the ideals America started with, we have added, and expanded and innovated as best we could. And we lost our way.

There’s nothing necessarily bad or unfixable about the situation, yet some in government act like we are committing sacrilege to even think about it. Problem is, all that has gone before has now come back to hinder, if not incapacitate, us. It is sad to watch our representatives being told to wait for information. Depressing to watch Congress scrambling to pass omnibus legislation that misses the mark entirely. And a sense of powerlessness comes over us, when we see well-meaning lawmakers at a loss as to what to do to protect their country. And if we add politics to the mix, it is desperation which fills our hearts as we watch battle replace consensus in forging our future. The thankful thing about this, is that our predicament has set before all of us, the problems we are facing.

I think perhaps we have forgotten our basic civic lessons, unless you are like me, and then you never really learned them very well. As I grew older, I began to realize that we are living in one of the most incredible experiments in world history. Being an amateur historian has made me really appreciate just how singular our situation is. Through about ten thousand years of traceable history, there has never been anything like us that we know of. And even though we are the great grandchildren of the founders of the experiment, we are also its sustainors. Even if we count nothing except our taxes and the occasional vote, we are those the experiment has been entrusted to. It is our names which will appear upon the list of foundation members who continue the grant.

Yet it seems all of us have occasion to gripe about the functioning of that government we are in charge of. I know it is not often now addressed in quite this way, yet we are the employers, the board of directors and the owners of America. To me at least, that is what the phrase “by of and for the people” means. Now those are all business terms, yet it seems today those are the only ones we choose to speak in. Originally the inalienable rights were predicated on the idea of natural rights implicit in nature and given by nature’s creator. Unfortunately it seems like we have forgotten that creator, at the very time we speak about putting Him “in” our government. As though we could so constrain such a creator or be so presumptuous as to request Him to do “duty” as the figurehead of our society. Perhaps it is expected God would finally wind up “working” for His creations. Anyway, I have put our relationship with our government in business terms and will continue with that reasoning.

Now all of us are familiar with employers, in fact most of us have worked for a few during our working years. We also know about boards of directors, through our credit unions or the evening news if from no other source. And, of course, most of us have been owners at some time, even though it might be simply owners of a car and a few pieces of apartment furniture. And in all of those cases, we get familiar with the idea of responsibility and maintenance. If we are workers for an employer, we have the responsibility to labor, the employer must provide the means of labor and wages for that labor. With boards of direction, we understand they have responsibility to manage whatever it is they direct and provide the best returns on that management possible. And as owners, numerous regulations, schedules and tax levies, remind us of the responsibilities we have for what it is we own. And in all those cases, maintenance is necessary, both in relations and actual managing, in order to keep everything running smoothly. Except in government.

When it comes to governing, it seems we think everything is on automatic pilot. And it also seems there are an awful lot of people in politics, business and government that seem to want to sustain, encourage and expand that misconception. We are at least given the impression that all we need to input into governing is to vote once in a while, pay taxes and join this or that party. The very basics that lie behind our constitution, the ideas of natural rights, petition and sovereignty, are given very short shrift, even played down as part and parcel of the abilities the American people have. Yet it is we who are the inheritors.

Now as far as maintenance is concerned, I am going to give it short shrift also. It is under that category that we get into arguments. Maintenance is messy, as many of us know, and it is also the area where strong feelings and prejudices come into play. Like the prejudices backyard mechanics display over what kind of engine oil to use, maintaining our system of government often gets into “discussions” over political philosophies and ethical guidelines. It usually results in stalemate or in the opposite extreme of vindictive legislation, which settles little and definitely does not rectify whatever problem is being worked on. I wish to leave this to the ministrations of my fellow citizens, so their hopefully reasoned discussions can come to real and competent solutions, or at least partial solutions.

Except in one area, which I reserve for suggestion. That is the area at the base of all legislation and governance, and that area has two parts, clarity and accumulation. I think here I may have some suggestions that might help things out. And I come to my opinion by way of countless Christmas Eves spent deciphering the directions on construction of “simple” toys like bicycles and electronic game systems. Directions supposedly created by enclaved geniuses trying to construct fool proofed means for the “average person” to complete the assigned tasks. Directions that by 3 A.M. were in the wastebasket, or torn to shreds by repeated paging, and my somewhat dubious natural ability called upon to complete the assignment.

Clarity is a hard subject, accumulation an almost impossible one. Governing is based in its very essence on the legislation created and the language used within those creations. I have little idea of whatever happened to the “common language” movement of a few years ago, and I think it is an idea that must be revisited. The idea was to write legislation in common English, understandable to the everyday citizen and sans the legalize that many of the lawyers amongst our representatives seem to love so much. Its basic idea was to present any law in language that is easy to follow and to decipher, so if something like “pork” is hidden in the law, the citizen may see it clearly and decide if it a worthy addition to their representative’s resume. It may even need the force of law, since our legislators seem to have an innate need to display the acumen of their past legal careers. And it should be enforced rigidly, after all these representatives are our elected officials, answerable to us both at the ballot and in the exercise of their office. It is a suggestion I think that is valuable and necessary in exercise of citizenship at any level.

Unfortunately we have a history of obfuscated legislation and law. This history is the second part of this equation, the accumulated detritus that has infected laws and statute books. Recently the Justice Department invoked a legal principal from before W.W.II to “secretize” an ongoing civil action against one of the Intelligence agencies. Now, not discussing the internals of the decision, it is an example of how accumulation within our laws and statutes can “hide” ways of doing things that we as citizens may find iffy if not onerous. I know in Wisconsin we have recently had a discussion of enacting legislation regarding spitting on the street. Apparently the person urging the legislation did it on the basis of unseemliness, yet it was an exercise in contradiction. Had they investigated they might have found such a law already existing from pioneer days. It was a common law enacted in days when streets were often open sewers and the addition of tobacco juice was the final insult that our forebears did not want to contemplate. Apparently the brown tinged spittle was the final topping to a slurry of human, industrial and equine waste which had strained their sensibilities to the enth degree.

Yet our past laws are almost an example of such a slurry. I think few historians of legislative actions would deny that our past legislation holds numerous examples of antiquated, contradictory and humorous “legalizing” that lays like a slab of coprolite at the bottom of our system of governing. It is an accumulation that we have built on enthusiastically. Only when we come to taxation, do we take any care in crafting new legislation. An example of this is the various income tax reforms which took place in the 1990s. Concern over tax avoiders using the concept of privacy of personal information and the research on the actual state votes on passage of the income tax, apparently caused Congress to do major reformation on tax law, invalidating past income tax legislation and starting out “new.” It is a shame such starting over is so limited, however the fact it happens at all, gives lie to the claim that it can’t be done. I think a small committee, both at the federal level and in each of the states, could fairly quickly “distill” our past laws and statutes into modern and clear form and vastly simplify and clarify the legal basis America and its states operates on. We would thus be starting on even and clear ground, ready and able to understand the legal threads that bind us together and the “impulses” those threads have been woven to facilitate.

And that is important to the next subject on the agenda, responsibility. I can well understand the despair of my fellow citizens when confronted by the present miasma of government actions, programs and legislation. If we are to accept responsibility for our governing, we must be able, within one lifetime, to understand what we are getting into. And such understanding is, I believe, necessary to our rights and duties as citizens as set forth in the formational concept of the “consent of the governed.” If we are to act as citizens, we must first give consent to the government we are citizens of. We cannot do that clearly at present, not with the backlog of legislation we are presented with when we try to become educated citizens. And such a situation kills the desire to be “active” citizens.

And that is something we have to overcome, social inertia. Even if no action is ever taken to simplify and clarify government, it is about time we took the “reigns” of our governing. In fact the idea of reigning in government is I believe a good one, and harkens back to the language of business I used earlier in this essay. As the employers, board of directors and owners of this government, it is time we stepped up to exercise our rights and duties. I understand, because I have this problem of inertia myself, in fact I have a physical remnant of that inertia that I carry in the general area of my derriere. And this “candidacy” is in part my attempt to make amends for my lifelong habit of sitting on the sidelines. In fact, some would say, the rise of spectator sports has helped ingrain the habit of spectator ship in all areas of American living. Maybe, yet I can’t help feeling it is more the concept of “if its not broke, don’t fix it.” that drives our inactivity. Unfortunately we have found in recent events many reasons to realize that if its not yet broke it soon may be. Its time for action.

Now many proponents of action suggest that voting is the major action we should take. And it is certainly a worthy goal, yet I feel that is what it should be, a goal. The reason I say that is that voting just to vote may not be effective. If we leave our easy chairs simply to respond to a sound bite or to “uphold” some long held ethical position, I am unsure that it is sufficient reason to exercise the ballot. If it were, then civil war would have happened soon after our Revolution. Slavery was a divisive issue in America even before we were a country. It ate up untold hours, if not days, of the constitutional conventions, and threatened to stymie the whole process. If, after we had created the country and won the war, we had voted just based on the above impulses, the United States would have been at least paralyzed if not at war within itself. It was over seventy years later that the question of slavery was finally confronted, and even then it helped cause civil war and a continuing legacy of discrimination that haunts us till this very day.

No, I am hesitant to encourage simply ignorant, ideological or one-issue voting. The World, as well as the world of each of us, is a varied, multiple issued and complicated place. The advantage we can practice in our private world is that we, through investigation, thought and prayer, can “whittle” our lives down to a few basic issues and judgments which we base our decisions on. We cannot do that with the wider World and that is the world that America operates in. Regardless if we agree with the presumed trends of the World, we cannot influence those trends by just about any means other than our vote. Unless you are a blogger or a respected maven, you can do little about the World except in the ballot box. And if you exercise that right based on very personal and parochial ideas, there is little indication in history that it will have any appreciable effect. An example is the isolationism that grew prior to W.W.I. It was important to many in America, in fact President Wilson won, apparently, on the pledge he would keep us out of war. Yet, it could be argued, the practical effect of that vote may have been to heighten the assurance of the Axis Powers that they could get away with the land grab they had planned. The surroundings of the citizen in this age, seem not to lend themselves to simple equations and quick moral fixes. It is a situation replete with tough moral and political decisions needed of the voter. And if those decisions are not made, I am afraid we may suffer a future that makes the specter of World War seem like the lesser of several evils. So if voting is one call to action, please do so intelligently and with a mind to the future.

Luckily the next call to action is less murky, though no less complicated. And that call is literally a call, or a letter or an e-mail to your representative. And keeping with the idea of intelligent exercise of citizenship, perhaps I should mention it is a good idea to find out who your representatives are and what they seem to stand for. That is not always easy, as we have seen in the present election cycle. We as citizens must understand that the mechanisms, not to mention the politics, of government are complicated. The very processes of legislating is incredibly complicated, with drafting of laws, votes on the laws in one or both houses, sending of the voted laws to committee to iron out differences and then maybe back for votes of ratification. Such methods leave ample room for “negative” votes at one time “positive” at another. It even bleeds over into the executive branch, where support of some measure may depend on how accurately and forcibly, the President is informed of the desire for or against some action being contemplated. It is only the discerning citizen, to the extent they can, that may pierce such a process to make intelligent decisions. And one other proviso for the concerned citizen who contacts their representative, and this comes from my personal experience, it is probably better to put the question or statement in a letter, since I have learned phone calls and e-mails seem to breed misunderstandings if not outright wrong interpretations.

Now the next suggestion is an even greater strain on citizens’ time, intelligence and resources. And that is to author legislation ourselves, through submitting ideas to representatives and, where permissible, to use referendum to directly submit legislation. And to do it intelligently. And the reason I stress that is that I was in California at the time the people of the state were discussing a proposition to limit government and spending. Each morning as I went to work, I heard the talk shows harping on the subject, raling against the “tax and spenders” in the legislature. The proposition passed and has hampered California ever since. In fact one could say with some truth that the proposition has eventually led to the present state of fiscal instability of California. It was intended well yet the results were far beyond what the citizens foresaw. That being said, I think, if we really create a decent education system, if we really give the citizen training in civic responsibilities and if we institute valid information for the citizen, then we should have the right to author laws just as our representatives do. This, and letting our legislators know our opinions, are the grounds upon which our republic should be built. If citizens take these reigns in their hands, then perhaps the interests of corporations and special interest groups would be diminished, in quantity if not in importance. And governing would be more truly by consent and participation than it was before.

Now, if you have bought any of this, the next will really be an exercise in participation, that is to run for office or serve in government. I don’t know about other communities, but in Oshkosh there are postings on the government channel of the TV, calling for persons to serve on various boards and government bodies in the community. These are volunteers to help steer the community in its various functions and decisions. And, of course, there are the local, state and federal elections. And this is an area I readily encourage, since it seems recently there are more and more elections in America that are going uncontested. Now that in itself is not necessarily bad, yet it seems many of the uncontested elections seem to be examples of political parties either “trading” elections - - we won’t contest here if you don’t contest there - - or seem simply to be due to lack of interest of the citizens or lack of funds of the political parties. To me the concept of “losing” the ability to run for office due to any of the above mechanisms strikes at the very heart of our form of representative government. If we allow “empty” elections to determine our political future, then who is it that must accept the responsibility for future plight? Such one-sided elections are the perfect opportunity for third, even fourth, parties to capture power. Yet it seems we, the American people, do not take that advantage. And if we are too lethargic, inertia filled and unconcerned to step up to the plate, then you and I will be the authors of an American future that is less than what has gone before. We will be owners of the beginning of the Great Lessening of the American Way. And, what is even now almost a fiction, the idea that anyone can grow up to be President, or representative or senator, in America, will be on the wane. Leadership is a bitch, to use the vernacular, yet if we do not accept and embrace it, we must accept leaders who are less than we expect and more powerful than we desire. If we do not practice responsibility and ownership, we will have to settle for obedience and acceptance.

I hope that is not the road we Americans choose to tread. We come from roots well entwined with common sense, stubbornness, work ethic, courage, clarity of vision and freedom loving determination. These are the inheritances we have been gifted with. I find it unlikely we will succumb to powerlessness. There is, however, that other trend in the American character, one I find myself prone to and which I have mentioned above. That is the perception that you do not jump in and fix what is not broken. It is a reasonable assumption, with cars, furnaces, appliances and especially computers. It may not be such a good idea with structures not totally dependent on existence in the physical world, things like businesses, social organizations and governments. Such organizations are existent in the realms of thought as well as in the real world. And I know, at least for myself, my thoughts often start out correctly yet deteriorate as I get involved with other things and cease continued maintenance on my thinking. Facts may be stubborn things and, as we have seen, organizations, especially governments, are not only stubborn but also willful. They are “in corpore” structures, sharing the elements of both the physical and the mental aspects humanity has given them.

Now for a sidetrack, or as Monty Python would say, something a little different. And the reason I go off on this tangent, is that I wish to emphasize the special place in “nature” that the organizations we have created hold. My own theory of development of government, and other organizations, is that the religious impulse in humanity found transmutation in such organizations of the spiritual into the social. Looking back over history, we come to a time when almost every society we can find were rampant with gods and goddesses and ancestors. They centered their societies around the powers of and homage to the deified beings they had chosen to worship. Such beings were immortal, if not eternal, and exercised powers far beyond those of mortal man. True, they didn’t have a blue suit with a large “S” on it, yet they were the amplified image of all that humanity seemed not to be. Then someone got a bright idea, let us harness the power of the gods in the structures humanity could create. And government was born.

Government had many of the qualities of the gods. It was immortal, able to “do” things stretching over many of the lifetimes of its creators. It was powerful beyond the physical and mental powers of any group of humans. It was capricious, in the manner of Divine capriciousness, giving credence to any vile petition it chose, denying any plea no matter how worthy. It was omnipresent, “flowing” through all areas of human society, invisible yet impinging on every area of endeavor. It was creative, spawning departments, bureaucrats and monetary systems with equal abandon. In a very real sense it brought the qualities of divinity into the purview of human control. And it also, most likely unintended, brought into human experience the feeling of powerlessness. From the inclusiveness of the tribe we went to the exclusiveness of the king or the citizen or the serf. Government soon evolved beyond the presumed intentions of its founders, existing despite their consent, even continuing through invasion and “change of regimes.” And it did all that without any apparent cognition by the ruled that their “ruler” had gone beyond any bounds they had thought they had set. It was only with the founding of American government, that some balance has come back into the sphere of government. It might even be, though perhaps unconscious, that the reason that the founders of our nation forbid establishment of religion was that they “felt” this ancient lineage and realized how dangerous it was. For if government really came from that divine wellspring, then we had better be aware of how “calling” that divinity into civic life can lead to reinstatement of all the woes our ancient brethren were subjected to by their creation. Let us hope we have the reason and wisdom to tread this path carefully.

And enough of my theorizing, back to the original subject, our ownership, responsibility, rights and duties under our present system. And I have given little attention to the rights part of this equation. I think I have done so with good reason. For I have noticed in myself a kind of “rights consciousness,” in which I am often heard to exclaim - - “I have a right to do that.” I think, for good or ill, and probably for the good, we, like the founders, believe that what is not forbidden is allowed. After all, those same founders said that all abilities the federal government did not hold were held by the states themselves. In similar manner, we seem to think if some right is even hinted at, it is ours and damn the consequences. Perhaps this is why the right to bear arms is under such heavy scrutiny, it has just enough “openness” to be the focus of the tendency to claim rights without reservation. I do not want to engage in those arguments nor add to such dissension. This area is for the wrangling of the political arena and does not lead to consensus. I would rather dwell on more neglected areas of the citizen, responsibility and ownership.

And that dual idea is the subject of this next section. And it returns us to the language of business that I promised I would put this discussion in. And I do it under protest, for I believe to do so indicates how far we have come from the ideas of our founders. Yet it is the language of this day, so I will attempt to use it to frame an argument for responsible ownership of our government. And, moreso, I think I have delineated some of the responsibilities above, so I will dwell mostly on the ownership aspect, the fact we are the “employers” of government and representatives and have every right to call to accounts.

It is my experience that as an owner, I have the right to expect, within legitimate limits, accountability of those I employ. In my state of Wisconsin, our public radio has offered a whole hour of air time to both presidential candidates. I would frame that as an offer for a “job interview” by the people of the state to the candidates. So far neither of the main candidates have shown up for that interview. And, although they sent surrogates, the chosen representatives could only give us a half-hour of their time. To me that is like sending your cousin to do your job interview and telling the interviewers they can only have half the time you allocated for the interview. As an employer, how motivated would you think such job seekers are? And such behavior does not reside simply at the top, it seems endemic to the entire range of our representatives. How often do we hear a member of Congress or the state legislature denigrate the adherents to ideas that do not match the legislator’s ideology? We do not ask them to be fawning or two-faced in their statements, yet can we not expect they at least address with reason and civility the concerns of the “other side?”

I think it is time for Americans to assert their ownership. To let all and various, government, business and bureaucracy, know that we are taking charge. Perhaps if we practice some of the suggestions above, those agencies will take the hint and begin to mend their ways. Then, together, we and our representatives will begin to reforge a responsive, creative and flexible polity. God knows we are going to need it. I cannot help feeling in my guts that we are going to face tests that make our present situation seem like a vacation, and if that is true, we had better sharpen the major instrument we have in dealing with crisis, our republic. And I hope we do not wait. The tests we face may come on as quickly as a missile in the night or as secretively as a mutating virus. And that does not even take into account the “tests” our own pride or ignorance might set before ourselves.

We are, according to some, on the cusp of a pandemic of illiteracy and, according to others, on the edge of an abyss of genetic experimentation. The demons we may face are many and seldom agreed upon. Perhaps it is time for a public dialogue on just such subjects. And, instead of spending time and energy on criticism and demeaning of each other, it might be better to use our energy on discussion and research. Maybe we should join with the “other side” in attempting to understand each others viewpoint and trying to decide if there is merit to the opposing ideas. Problems do not “choose” to come out of liberal or conservative corners. Problems, almost by definition, are neutral in who and how they strike. Just as nuclear parity and the MAD hypothesis, did not come out of left or right field, so too terrorism and the AIDS epidemic did not check politics before they impinged on the peoples of the world. We, the American people, must accept responsibility. Perhaps our example will enervate or shame our government into acting once again as our servant. That is as it should be - - and has not been for a long time.

And a final point before I end this diatribe. I believe in trying to be realistic, though I often don’t succeed. And one of the ideas I have noticed growing in the last few decades, is the idea that the President is the leader of the world and a very powerful person, able to shape history and guide America and the world to whatever goal is chosen. I am reminded of a poem about a great king of the past named Ozymandias, (actually a form of Ramses) which ends in the ruins of his monuments and with despair of his glory. I will make a very explicit statement about that conception that the President is such a paragon. It is not true! At the best, he is first among equals, or else we have discovered the secret of Utopia and all our ills should be past and peace and prosperity should reign everywhere. This idea of an almost imperial presidency seems to have reentered the dialogue of the republic with President Reagan. I remember the news anchors, almost to the man, commenting on how he “proved” that one man could handle the presidency. I was amazed. That was never true, from the great Washington to the beleaguered Lincoln, to the present occupant of the White House. Staff, advisors and bureaucrats have always been a part of the presidency. Even George Washington, initiator of many presidential traditions and customs, used the other founders as a sounding board and for guidance. Even his protean powers were challenged by the office and his sterling example was the result in part of discussion and advice. His was also an administration of consensus and compromise. It set the pattern even to this day. And as final example, we need only look at the situation in Iraq to see how dependent the president is on advice and counsel. If it is bad or incomplete, even a Solomon cannot overcome such a base. I mention this because we have to get over this idea. I think it is one of the things that stands in the way of Americans taking back their government. Not many of us are administrators, at least not on the level of the president. As long as we stand in awe of the office, our intelligence, judgment and creativity are in abeyance. And when that happens, I at least, have a tendency to wait and see, maybe even give support to what is happening.

I know this is trivial, but there is a movie I really like called “Dave.” It is about an imitator who is conscripted to “fill in” for the president, who is stricken by a stroke during an extramarital affair. Before the movie ends, the imitator and the president’s wife and an advisor, manage to turn the tables on the bad guys and “save” the office of the president from being complicit in criminal activity. And it is the speech which Dave gives as he is admitting wrongs and preparing to foil the enemies, that is the high point of the movie. To paraphrase, he apologizes to the American people because his job, a temp job, was to look out for them, and he chose to look out for himself and his party. He essentially states that the people are his employers and he failed to be a good employee. That is the point! He is ours, no matter which party he belongs to. He is answerable to us, all of us. He is to be held to account, always. We chose, at least our founders did, a president not a king. A king is usually accountable only to God, our president may answer to Him after this life, yet in this life he Must answer to us. The sooner we get over this illusion the better America will be. Recent Presidents, Truman and Eisenhower, warned us of forces which choose to deny responsibility and make us subservient to groups who may not have our best interests at heart. We are the owners and the employers. We are the judges. We are the citizens whose consent this government is based upon. If we do not exercise our ownership and responsibilities, we will begin the writing of its epitaph. Please let us take our birthright seriously.