An Immoral Majority?

Originally posted on Monday, May 23, 2005:

As I write this, news reports are indicating that the Senate will probably vote this week on a scheme to prevent the “filibustering” of judicial appointments. I think this so-called “nuclear option” is immoral, un-American, and unwise. I’ve written both of my Senators to let them know that opinion, and I’d encourage others to do the same. Here’s why. 1) It’s immoral. The type of procedure that we call “parliamentary” has many forms, including that used in the Senate. Parliamentary procedure has evolved as a system for balancing the rights of the majority against those of minorities. Parliamentary procedure protects the rights of the minority by providing that certain actions require a “supermajority” vote: that is, a vote larger than a simple majority. Examples of actions that require supermajorities are suspending rules and closing debate, In an ordinary organization, cutting off debate requires a two-thirds supermajority; in the Senate, the rule is more lenient: it requires only sixty votes. Thus, in an ordinary society, a minority of one-third is protected; in the Senate, a minority has to have at least 40 votes to get that protection. While the specifics differ, in both cases the rule protects the rights of a minority of the members. What is really tyrannical is how the Senate majority proposes to end filibusters. Since the minority is sizable, the majority can’t pass a suspension of the rules. So what they propose to do (a point which gets little attention) is to use a parliamentary provision by which a simple majority can uphold a chairperson’s ruling. If they decide to pursue this course, a member of the majority will raise a parliamentary point and argue that the filibuster of judicial candidates is unconstitutional; the President of the Senate will rule that the point is correct; the minority will appeal the decision of the chair; and the majority will sustain that decision. In other words, the majority will cut the rights of the minority by using a vote which requires only a simple majority. 2) It’s un-American. In its simplest terms, “democracy” simply means a rule by the people, and that’s generally interpreted as a rule by the majority. In fact, American democracy is far more complicated than that: the Constitution provided for the sharing of power among distinct, often competitive institutions, and the Bill of Rights was provided largely to guarantee that minorities would be protected against oppression. In countries around the world, we see the real difficulty of exporting our form of democracy. It turns out that disarming dictators, conducting elections, and empowering winners is the easy part. The real challenges have been to convince newly empowered majorities to value–not just tolerate–diversity and to find ways to protect it. Our success in this has been the great good fortune of the American experiment, but it has proved harder to export than simple majority rule. In this respect, the behavior of the Senate majority isn’t unlike that of ideological majorities in emerging democracies. I suspect that one reason the Bush administration has been so surprised at the difficulty of establishing an American-style democracy in Iraq is that neoconservatives and their theocratic brethren don’t grasp, don’t value, and didn’t provide for this second component of “American-style” democracy. 3) It’s unwise. The Senate has always been the place that moderates the more extreme tendencies of the House of Representatives–a characteristic which it shares with the “upper houses” of other bicameral legislatures in individual states and in other countries. The American Senate has long been a place where teamwork and compromise are valued more than they are in the House. If the majority-passed reinterpretation of rules is employed by this Senate in this case, then the tactic will be used again, and in connection with other issues. The Senate will forever become more like the House in its style, regardless of its partisan composition. At my core, I believe that people get the government they deserve. Americans elected a one-party government in November. Since January, the Democratic minorities in both houses have used stalling tactics in an effort to mitigate the more extreme ideas of the Republican majorities. In doing so, they protect voters from the consequences of their decisions, and they look obstructionist while doing it. The nuclear option might force impotent Congressional minorities to focus on articulating their message while the majorities give Americans what they voted for. That wouldn’t be all bad: voters would learn the consequences of their decisions. Right-wing extremists would have their way for a while. Generally, extremist agendas of both the right and the left aren’t sustainable. I believe that the present right-wing plan would eventually be exposed as a fraud. The pendulum would swing and a new majority would emerge. Neoconservatives and theocrats would hide out like postwar French collaborators. This would undoubtedly be a great victory for someone, somewhere; but the price would be too high. The nuclear option and the political climate it engendered would have institutionalized bitter ideological differences and hardened the cultural chasm between red and blue states. We would risk losing public education, social security, large chunks of the environment, and precious individual liberties. Ideologically-driven junk science would make us a worldwide laughingstock. Workers’ rights would disappear, the divide between rich and poor would increase, and inner cities would become even more dangerous. If this scenario seems as bleak to you as it does to me, consider contacting your Senators. For readers in Ohio, the links to Senators DeWine and Voinovich appear below.

Another Election Day

Originally posted on Tuesday, April 5, 2005:

As November’s Election Day approached, spurred on largely by a growing frustration with the abysmal state of political discourse, I began writing a series of weblogs, posting them on my Web site and emailing them to a number of friends. Today is another election day of sorts, but only for some on my original mailing list: ballots for positions on the State Teachers Retirement System Board were mailed on Saturday, April 2, and are now beginning to arrive, kicking off an elections process that will continue until May 2.

It would be hard to overestimate the importance of the State Teachers Retirement System in many of our lives. For those whose principal retirement income comes from STRS, that agency is critical to our future comfort and prosperity. Yet there was a time when most of us, active and retired, thought we could safely ignore STRS business: it was a given that our retirement was in good hands and that we were far better off than those poor souls outside education who had to depend on Social Security for their retired well-being. We could ignore the periodic reports from STRS; we could vote or not vote in the periodic elections for positions on the STRS Board. We could treat the retirement system with benign neglect.

The economic recession of the early nineties showed us that our neglect was hardly benign. As STRS assets plummeted, the System’s contribution to members’ health insurance costs declined as well; and retirees who had become accustomed to a thirteenth check each year found that they couldn’t rely on that annual bonus. Dissatisfaction, discontent, and anger replaced complacency.

In most respects, the interests of retired teachers are the same, no matter whether they retired as union members or management, and regardless of their organizational affiliations while active. But there are some legitimate differences. One such difference concerns the role that administrators, especially superintendents, play in lobbying for legislative change: many observers assume that active superintendents are more sensitive to employer interests and more willing than classroom teachers to push the contribution burden to employees rather than employers. The differences continue after retirement: once retired, administrators are far more able to negotiate customized, lucrative rehiring arrangements with boards of education. Therefore, they may have rather different interests from classroom teachers in the areas of health care and retire-rehire rights.

All of these conflicting interests are crystalized when examining the role of competing organizations. The vast majority of classroom teachers belong to either the Ohio Education Association or the Ohio Federation of Teachers. Ideally, OEA and OFT would have figured out a way to divide the available contributing-member and retired-member seats between them and present a unified front, but that doesn’t seem to have happened.

Among retired teachers, the situation becomes even murkier. In addition to the retired memberships of OEA, OFT, and administrator organizations, the Ohio Retired Teachers Association (ORTA), which includes members of them all, has often been an important player among retired teachers. OEA dwarfs ORTA and is better-financed, but seems to have been singularly unsuccessful in organizing its retired members. ORTA aggressively and effectively recruits membership among retired teachers, and has a statewide network of county organizations offering periodic meetings and activities. By contrast, OEA-R has no statewide network and offers few activities for the rank-and-file members who do join. Any doubts about OEA’s vulnerability were dispelled in 2001 when the late Marilyn Cross, a respected OEA Past President, lost an election for a retired position on the STRS Board.

In the present STRS Board elections, five candidates are vying for two retired seats. OEA is recommending David Speas; ORTA has recommended David Speas and L. Neil Johnson; and OFT is supporting Jeff Chapman and Teresa M. Green. The fifth candidate is supported only by a group I haven’t mentioned yet: CORE, the “Concerned Ohio Retired Educators.”

CORE came to prominence several years ago when Chillicothe Superintendent Dennis Leone began making charges that STRS was misusing funds. As retirees lost the thirteenth check and paid more for their health care, Dr. Leone was welcomed as a hero by many who were looking for scapegoats. While some STRS practices may have been ill-advised, they constituted far less than 1% of the losses suffered by STRS investments in the economic downturn of the early nineties. But after OEA waffled in supporting its members serving on the STRS Board, Leone and CORE went into attack mode, defeating Eugene Norris, an incumbent contributing member of the STRS Board and member of OEA, in a 2004 election in which fewer than one in five voters bothered to cast a ballot.

Dr. Leone is retired now and a candidate for one of the retired vacancies on the STRS Board. Having lost a retiree seat to an ORTA-endorsed candidate in 2001 and a contributing-member seat to a CORE-endorsed candidate in 2004, OEA faces the possibility that STRS voters will once again elect a member whose main qualification is that he’s not OEA.

I had never met either Dr. Leone or Mr. Speas until recently, when I attended a CORE meeting in Summit County. In response to questions, Mr. Speas provided substantive answers and avoided simplistic solutions; I was impressed by his grasp of a wide variety of issues and his apparent good judgment. By contrast, Dr. Leone showed little knowledge of STRS business outside a few main themes: pampering of STRS staff; excessive capital and operating expenses; luxurious travel by Board members; and OEA domination of the system. In fact, he referred almost exclusively to past grievances that continue to play well with CORE members (like the insensitivity of the past STRS Executive Director and the opulence of a now five-year-old building).

So once my ballot arrives in the mail, for whom will I vote?

I was tempted to cast only one vote, for David Speas: the idea of “bullet voting” is to give one vote to the candidate you care most about and not give anyone else a vote that could bring that person’s total over that of your main candidate. But I believe that Mr. Speas is almost certain to be elected: the dual endorsements of ORTA and even a wounded OEA should translate into victory. If I’m right, my second vote won’t threaten him, and I’m reluctant to let others choose the other winner for me. I read Dr. Leone as a demagogue and an opportunist, and I believe that he would be a divisive force on the STRS Board. I’ve concluded that L. Neil Johnson’s ORTA endorsement gives him the best chance of defeating Dr. Leone; so even though I haven’t met him or the other two candidates, that’s enough reason for me to give him my second vote.

When this election is over, we will have about four years to prepare for the next. That’s four years to contemplate how things could be different and to move in that direction. OEA can start by providing appropriate staff support for its retired organization. It can continue by funding expenses for OEA-R leadership to attend STRS Board meetings, speak on behalf of retired members, and report back to OEA. It can consider how to develop a system in which it continues a meaningful, valuable relationship with members after they retire. It can explore a relationship with OFT which respects the legitimate interests of both organizations and presents a united front. With luck, with this election, OEA can stop the bleeding and learn how to fight a better fight another day.

Election Day 2004

Originally posted on Tuesday, November 2, 2004:

I arrived at our community library this morning to find a line of people extending beyond the polling place to the doors of the library itself. What has typically taken a few minutes took about a half hour. People’s spirits were high, partly because after today we won’t have to hear any campaign ads for a while, and partly because it is so refreshing to see people so eager to vote. All of us in line this morning felt that it was a good problem to have.

Here in Ohio, and in many other “swing states” as well, we’ve been hearing campaign ads for six months. It would be tempting to think of today as the day that all ends; but it won’t, of course. Lots of observers expect challenges and recounts to delay our knowing the final results for weeks; but it’s the nature of America to be a work in progress. Even if we were to have no electoral challenges, and even if one candidate were to win in a walk, this Election Day would end with unfinished business.

I have received overwhelmingly positive responses from the readers of this little series of essays, including those who have disagreed with some of my conclusions. Their support encourages me to take some time today to address the challenges we will continue to face after we know today’s outcome.

First: we need to address the very real “culture war” that exists in this country. Let’s hope that the renewed interest this election has seen will reduce the “echo chamber” effect in politics, in which people speak only to those who already hold the same beliefs while those views become more and more extreme.

Second: between this election and the next, we will need to communicate with our public officials. Sometimes we forget that electing the right people is only the first step: that we have a responsibility to keep after them once they are elected so that they will know what we want them to do. Thanks to the Internet, it is easier to stay in touch with public officials now than it has ever been before; likewise, it’s easier to see which ones are responsive and which ones aren’t.

Third: we should all rejoice at the renewed interest in participation in democracy. The scandalously low turnout in some past elections robbed their outcomes of legitimacy and encouraged more voter apathy. Perhaps this year’s events reflect a real change in the quality of our political life.

Fourth: we will still have negative campaigning. Negative campaigning keeps good people from running for office; it uses up campaign funds that could be used to explore real issues; and it contributes to voter cynicism and apathy by perpetuating the myth that “they’re all alike.” But it’s been around nearly as long as our democracy because, unfortunately, it works.

Fifth: we need more candidates. Close to half the positions on my ballot this morning were uncontested; I think that’s unfortunate. Over the years I’ve run for public, party, and organizational office, I’ve found candidacy to be challenging but rewarding; even losing is educational. I hope that this year’s elections will stimulate a resurgence of interest in public office, particularly among younger citizens.

I am always hopeful–not confident, just hopeful–about democracy’s ability to correct itself. Institutions seldom make progress in a straight line, so that corrective function works slowly. Maybe, years from now, we will look back at 2004 and realize that it was indeed the most important election in our lifetime: not just because of the issues and the candidates, but because it called forth the passion and commitment of people on all sides and reminded us once again of the blessings that we share as Americans.