Levin Says Eliminate Perpetual Privilege

Michigan Senator Carl Levin says the fixed privilege Iowa and New Hampshire have enjoyed for too long should be changed and which he and others have tried to get changed in the past unsuccessfully. He repeatedly mentioned “with all the power that gives them.” Not exactly power to the people, rather power to some people.

He recounted the history of the Michigan delegation attempts to deal with the Perpetual Privilege those two states have enjoyed, despite a national committee ruling that would have put someone between Iowa and New Hampshire. He says that New Hampshire ignored the party committee, refusing to participate in spreading the power by scheduled their primary for the first position. He charges that they were rewarded by “getting a waiver” from the national committee’s own rules.

His and other advocates arguments, were often times persuasive on both sides. I felt like a ping pong ball. All of this demonstrated something most of us give lip service to but understand so little.

The wisdom of our founding fathers.

Before I tell you what part of their wisdom I believe is relevant to this circus, let me first say, the founding fathers were fallible human beings doing their work in a completely different time and under completely different circumstances. While some may think that “fallible human beings” is the definition of any given group of white men, as a conflicted person, I can not yet accept that!

Regardless, I won’t attempt to discuss in detail or even mention everything that can be fairly debated about what they created. However, my grand conclusion is that the world should be grateful for what they created as a way for human beings to govern themselves regardless of it’s flaws. It’s wisdom trumps it’s flaws. One of my recurring rhetorical questions is will our current actions be the same, will our wisdom trump our flaws?

For now, I will only mention that some of the Founding Fathers were slave holders and they denied the vote to both slaves and women partially by silence on the issue. It seems that when they voted for the words “all men are created equal” they specifically meant or at least tolerated and in some cases lived the meaning that the “men” were not mankind, rather it meant white men. In that day, as a colony of England, it was a big step to allow white men who did not own land or have a noteworthy lineage, to vote. Pretty big step at that time.

Advocating the elimination the state level delegate system (yeah, that get’s my vote!) and allowing the direct vote in the presidential primaries by the Democratic Party, Rick Jacobs in the Huffington Post wrote the following:

The framers of the constitution did not trust the public to select the chief executive. They also needed a series of compromises to convince the small states to sign the Constitution. The Electoral College addressed both concerns handily. In today’s world, the prospect of introducing a mechanism by which to buffer the people’s will would be laughable. 2008 should be the last year that any democratic institution insulates itself from the people. While it takes a constitutional amendment to end the Electoral College, it takes only a vote of the Democratic Party delegates to end indirect, manipulated elections. If leaders can’t trust their own members and voters, how can the people trust our leaders? See the entire article here.

Some of us know that the founding fathers did create a pure democracy, but a republic and what that means. Fewer of us know that it is believed by historians that the founding fathers did not think the creation of political parties to be a good thing. For sure, they did think that an indirect system rather than direct voter would be best for President and for the laws we pass.

Neither major party, now that we unfortunately have them, should continue its impossibly flawed electoral system for it’s candidates. It simply rearranges the acknowledged back room practices that enabled a very few to determined the candidate selection in past years and which the current system is designed to fix.

They failed in their purpose even though so much of the process is public, because it is still fraught with unintended consequences. Additionally, given the persuasive skill of our lawyers, the emotion of the issues, and the richness and complexity of our language, all of us would be better off if the members of the private clubs called political parties let their members directly select their candidates.
However, the wisdom of indirect elections at the national level should continue as it exists today. In this environment, no changes should be made to how we elect the President from among the various parties nominees. No changes should be made in this environment to how our House of Representatives or our Senators are elected, who then pass bills by rules they create, another example of how a republic, representative, non pure democratic form of government conducts business.

If there weren’t more important issues facing our country, I might say we should appoint a commission to review the strengths and weaknesses of our current system, for the sole purpose of educating the public. Then maybe someday, decades in the future, that debate can begin.

Not today. We should forget about rearranging any of the chairs in this environment of partisan conflicts so obvious in a failed Democratic Party nomination process to say nothing of the inability of the major parties to be collegial in tehir opposition and find a way to eliminate the acrimony and permanent posturing for an election.

My strong view, is that the most important decision facing us is NOT whether Clinton, Obama or McCain is our president. We can do well as a nation regardless of which becomes President, despite differences that seem to be so pivotal.

What this country needs is a little dose of unity between the parties, regardless of who is president, even a little positive nationalism where in we take a sober non political look at our national interests. We need all of our politicians to stop being so arrogant and to understand our changing place in the world. It is important to understand that we do not site at the near unreachable top of the pyramid in terms of power to protect ourselves anymore.

The world has changed and it is very noteworthy that during this rise of power in other nations, these nations are clearly going to look out for their national interests, and most importantly that their national interest will be determined as interpreted by only a few entrenched leaders already at the top. Putin will never leave. The nominal only communist leaders in China will be unopposed for some time, absent violent revolution. The incredibly rich leaders in the Middle East Countries will bow down to the state religion only because they control the public emotion and if required, the vote in most countries.

All the while we piddle with ineffective Private Party Primary Politics which can legally sell the nomination to the highest bidder under our laws as interpreted by the courts fi they want. Given the money in politics that is almost, not quite, what we already do.