(originally posted http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x/a/tpc/f/28609695/m/531005042731/r/535001142731#535001142731)

I am very much against term limits. If you constrast the scope of modern government with the scope of our supposed natural right to self-govern, voting already looks like a very small compromise toward the demos, if not asburdly small now that we have Departments of Homeland Security et al. as reference points.

If that's the only direct intervention I get, then I damn well better have the right to vote for whomever I please, even if she's a career politician. I can think of only two arguments that might pursuade me otherwise: (1) career politicians and bad politicians are strongly correlated by historical standards (2) the general culture of poor governance is tied to the culture of Washington careerism so directly that no other solution can free us from its consequences.

Offhand, there appears very little evidence for (1). Throughout ancient and modern democracies we find scores of both good and bad career politicians. Meanwhile there exists plenty of evidence that the skills necessary to succeed in politics are vested significantly more strongly in a few individuals than the general public; that the drive toward corruption among those with that tendency is far swifter and deadlier in modern governmental structures than any proposed term limit would prevent; that when taken in sum, our finding a few good politicians every generation has gained us more than the scores of bad ones could hope to undo.

Argument (2) is intentionally phrased overbearingly. Given the light in which I view republican elections, I'd even prefer something dramatic like "once every 25 years, every elected official from the previous period becomes thereafter ineligible for public office" to something that would cripple nearly every trip to the voting booth. While Jefferson might approve of such periodic revolutions, I think I can safely leave it to the reader to think of a myriad more moderate measures. Nor do I think I just restated the original thread goals ;) Republican government is what it is, so barring my inevitable rise to Absolute Dictator we have to acknowledge the strengths our system gives us, and within it good politicians represent a precious commodity indeed.


Oh hell no. I'd almost rather have Bush send my hypothetical kids to "free" us from Iraq/Iran than have Feinstein "save" them from guns/porn.

I don't know enough about Congressional internals to make specific recommendations here, but even our "stupid" public must be of some use in reorganizing its power structures. John McCain may never find himself on a presidential ticket, but despite my dislike for some of his policies I must credit him with representing a far grander populace than either his official station in Arizona or his U.S. Senate seniority currently afford him. On the flip side, is there any American who actually idolizes Tom DeLay? That the two figures can speak with roughly the same voice in their respective chambers is frustrating.

In the larger political landscape, I actually am enamored with one facet of the Jefferson-revolution idea -- the freedom to experiment. Right now the only genuinely innovative ideas lie dormant in public policy journals, or worse get adopted in "fledgeling" democracies like Norway or Brazil and thus earn a permanent "socialist"/"communist" label (:rolleyes:). The best analogue we have in our tradition would be to revive the notion of states' rights. Obviously the modern nature of transnational communication, commerce, and culture makes many kinds of decentralization within the U.S. impractical or simply dumb, but many of the other ideas that saturate the national soundbite debate could be tried in parallel. One would then only pray that the next generation's reverence for historical lessons exceed our own.

With regard to American culture, I think the answers coming out of social science research are pretty clear:
- education
- education (for real: not excluding the messy parts some people don't want you to hear)
- education (for life: emphasizing your absolute responsibility as a citizen to critize the world around you)
- communication: a transparency between the governing and the governed, a free marketplace of ideas among the citizenry, a culture belonging to the creatively inspired instead of the legally trained, and a 4th season of Family Guy delivered to my door via fiber


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