CONVENTION FIRST:

How direct should democracy be?: Schwarzenegger prepares for office, but some see recall as part of a broken system. (Mark Sappenfield, 10/10/03, The Christian Science Monitor )

To some, the Golden State's travails are part of the inevitable evolution of democracy, as the people take the full power kindled in the Constitution's opening words, "We the people...." To others, California voters are the prime culprits in their own mess, as they malign the very lawmakers needed to make government work. Indeed, California's experiment is challenging some basic assumptions underlying American democracy since the writing of the Federalist Papers, particularly the idea that elected officials should use their judgment to act on voters' behalf. In recent decades, Californians' deep distrust of politicians has increasingly led them to limit politicians' power and discretion through ballots - and now the recall.

That, say experts, is the aspect of the recall that could resonate nationwide. Across the country, as here, the heightening stakes of politics has led to greater partisanship. Yet across the country, as here, people have never been less partisan, with registering voters eschewing both parties in record numbers. The result is a decline in respect for government and a new willingness to reshape it. In this context, California will go some way toward determining if there are limits to a government "by the people."

To Larry Gerston, the answer is already apparent: The recall is but the latest example that California's political system is broken. Many of the problems predate the era of the ballot initiative, which essentially began when voters passed Proposition 13 in 1978 to cap property taxes. But voters' best intentions have only compounded the problem.

"We attempt to solve a problem, and we create another one that is unforeseen," says Dr. Gerston, a political scientist at San Jose State University.

Take term limits. More than a decade ago, California voters passed Prop. 140, establishing term limits for state legislators. In response, the Legislature passed a redistricting plan two years ago that made every seat safe for incumbents, in part so they wouldn't have to spend their limited time in Sacramento worried only about getting reelected. The result, however, has been an increasingly polarized Legislature representing districts dominated by the political extremes - meaning that voters played a significant role in creating the partisanship that helped fuel the recall.

"I don't think [term-limit] reformers even considered that," says Gerston, who suggests that California's political problems are so entrenched that the state needs to convene a constitutional convention.

NPR did an excellent interview yesterday, Recall and Democracy (Talk of the Nation, Wednesday, October 08, 2003)

The recall election is just one tool in the arsenal of the democratic system. We'll look at how the recall fits into American democracy.

Howard Ernst
*Assistant Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
*Author, Dangerous Democracy? The Battle Over Ballot Initiatives in America

Given that there are few more significant issues in American life than our overdemocratization and that the Left, which foisted it on us, has begun to get burned by it, now would seem the moment to try and get it under control again.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 9, 2003 10:59 PM