American Democracy is an experiment. When it goes south we should do something about it.

 The American form of democracy has gotten too big and too awash with money to do much of anything but make large segments of the electorate furious.  It doesn’t matter which candidate we elect.  Their agenda is doomed by inefficiency (think the roll-out of Obamacare) or by compromises with the devil (think of Obamacare where we traded one messy and expensive system of health care for another equally expensive and messy one.)  

I don’t think it makes much sense to get exercised about this candidate or that one when it is the size of the government itself that has caused and continues to exacerbate the problems Americans would like to help with.  Democracy is an experiment and when the experiment goes south we should not be afraid to evaluate and tweak it.  That’s what America is famous for – not the current state of stasis.

What we might try.

Health care and education are intimate concerns for families and their communities.  Their take on these issues wherever they are in America ought to count a lot more than Washington’s.   We ought, as starters, let states and municipalities design and administer their own unique programs instead of the one-size fits all that Washington only knows how to give us. I might be willing to extend this to immigration as well.  Not only has Washington proved incapable of handling the problem, but I don’t understand why a constituency in Hawaii or Alaska ought to have perhaps a swing vote on what people in our beleaguered border states have to endure.  You may demonize Hungary for putting up a fence to keep out the wretched immigrants, but at least in the EU they have the freedom to do it.

A flat tax might help but as Steve Forbes and Jack Kemp learned long ago this probably isn’t going to happen.  Money is the third rail of politics in both the public and private sector and tinkering with taxes in terms of fairness just isn’t going to happen.  We are taught to care about racial/gender inequality as a right, but not taught fairness as a freedom.  I have to think it is ironic that Bernie Sanders, running as a Democrat, is pushing this old Republican idea.

Campaign funding for national elections is close to a criminal activity, I would point out that if we reduced the federal government’s portfolio, we might reduce the money largely wasted on these campaigns. 

More than half of our federal legislators are lawyers. I don’t mean to pick on these guys who often are the smartest guys in the room, but a lawyer’s job is to win (here re-election) and become a rising star.  Ambition may not be an issue to be recused for but in recent time the leaders of the two national parties have pushed or tabled issues on the basis of the general electability of their members.  Again, reducing the federal portfolio might help in doing the people’s work.

At a time when eighteen year-olds couldn’t vote but were being drafted and killed in Vietnam, the federal government decided that Vermont’s drinking age of eighteen just wasn’t acceptable so they withheld federal highway monies.  Vermont caved.

Some may read this and feel I am being unpatriotic.  We were taught that our democracy is messy, but better than any other form of government.  Maybe, but I can guarantee you that it won’t stay on this pedestal unless we are willing to look at the mess we find ourselves in.

Democracy is an experiment.  When it goes south we should do something about it.