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Ivan W.
Parkins |
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2009, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
requires permission of the author
and can be obtained by contacting,
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About Ivan W. Parkins: Dr. Parkins is a retired professor of
Political Science from Central Michigan University. He received his PhD from the University of
Chicago and is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. Dr. Parkins served as a naval officer
during WWII aboard the battleship Alabama.
He is a recent widower with three daughters, 3 grand children and 2
great grand children. Dr. Parkins has
written extensively, having authored 3 books and a newspaper opinion column
for many years. |
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Front Page |
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OUR PARTISAN REPRESENTATION By Ivan W. Parkins
Today, Members of our House of Representatives are known to their
constituents mainly through information conveyed by an office staff of about
twenty people, messages circulated by special interest groups, and the mass
media. And the Representatives learn
of the needs of most constituents, mainly, through the same sources. That is indirect representation. Even the older system involving more
reliance upon political party organization, though often corrupt, may have
represented grass-roots opinions more adequately.
There is a major reason for the declining quality of representation in
America, apart from the sheer ballooning and complexity of the population to
be represented. It is the burgeoning
numbers, resources, autonomy, and class consciousness among those who are
professionally trained and devoted to providing the public with
information. Besides
journalists, they include many educators, lawyers, artists, and others. Such people now constitute a class with
special interests. And they may be
even more closely related to the influence and finance of our politics than
the commercial and financial class of a century ago or the land owners of our
earliest years. As
Representatives have lost direct contacts with most of their constituents
they have become more directly connected to both the lobbyists of traditional
special interests and the newer and more ubiquitous information/communication
specialists. Close relationships with just a few such people can go far
toward assuring an incumbent Representative of campaign publicity and funds
for those reelections that he/she must face every two years. Other elected officials, Presidents and
Senators, face fewer elections, more intense media scrutiny, plus more
numerous and varied interests competing for their favors. This leaves many Representatives actually
more secure in their tenure than the supposedly longer term officers of our
government. Our
problem extends much farther than the indirect nature of representation. It is also partisan. The emerging new class of information
providers is also heavily Democrat in its political leanings. Since the New Deal and WWII, and especially
since television and massive college enrollments, the House of
Representatives has become a virtual Democrat bastion. All Democrat Presidents have been favored
with Democrat majorities during at least part of their time in office, most
during all of that time, and much of such time with huge partisan majorities. Meanwhile, only two of the Republican
Presidents, Eisenhower and G.W.Bush, have enjoyed any time at all with a
Republican House of Representatives.
And both of them had that time with only slim partisan advantages.
Prior to Eisenhower’s reelection in 1956, every American President who
had won a majority of the popular election entered office with a Congress
(both houses) of his own party. In
1956 and since, Republicans have won three popular landslides (57.4, 60.7,
and 58.8%) [all larger than President Obama’s] without getting even slim
majorities in the House of Representatives.
Both the older Anglo-American tradition and our written Constitution
give to the people’s representatives special powers over the purse. We, in recent decades, have allowed that to
become, almost, a monopoly of the Democrats. I.W. Parkins 060609 |
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REPRESENTATIVE
DEMOCRACY? By Ivan W. Parkins
The key to maintaining representative democracy in America lies in the
relationships between the people and their individual Representatives. It is primary to both the constitutional
and the political aspects of our political system. And, it has now deteriorated badly. Major reasons for that are neither
mysterious nor widely understood.
First, on the side of our Constitution, Article I, deals
with Congress, and the first offices described therein (section 2) are those
of Representative. Skipping on to the
Bill of Rights, James Madison, who had done so much to shape and chronicle
the Constitutional Convention, also became the leader of the House of
Representatives in devising a bill of rights.
First among the twelve articles that the First Congress submitted to
states for ratification was a proposal aimed a assuring a close relationship
of individual Representatives to their constituents. For reasons that are not
now clear, that proposal and the one that followed were not ratified by the
required three-fourths of states.
Hence, what is now our First Amendment obtained that priority by
accident.
Direct access of the people to their Representative is a vital aspect
of representative democracy. We have
allowed that to become grossly attenuated. Even though membership in the
House of Representatives has been increased to more than four times the
original number, our population is now approaching 100 times what it was in
1790. Also, a much larger portion of us are now
eligible to vote. Representatives now
have, literally, more constituents than there are minutes in a year. Two
centuries ago sessions of Congress were relatively brief and the
Representative could spend most of his time in his district, meeting
personally with a substantial portion of the few thousand individuals who
were then eligible to vote for him.
Today, congressional sessions are long and other Washington duties and
attractions are numerous. Today,
he/she must communicate with hundreds of thousands of constituents, mostly,
through professional third-parties, i.e. through staff, special interest
groups, media people or party representatives.
Even allowing for such technological advances as telephones and
e-mail, the Representative simply lacks the time necessary to deal directly
with more than a few of his constituents.
Long hours spent campaigning for election help, but expensive and
professionally managed campaigns are now the norm. Furthermore, once such a successful
campaign has been achieved, the incumbent Representative becomes exceedingly
difficult to replace with someone who is less connected to Washington and
more familiar with changing affairs in the home district. We do have an excessively centralized
system of representation, and that is neither very representative nor very
democratic. Even very authoritarian countries use
representation of some sort. I.W. Parkins 060709 |
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RECONSTITUTE CONGRESS See
DISASSEMBLE THE HOUSE for my proposal. Additional articles on this subject appear
in
Broken Congress and
Failure of the People’s
House.
Now more than ever we need better
representation of the people’s concerns in our republic. By Ivan W. Parkins One
concern of those who drafted the Constitution of the United States was that
representatives should not have such small constituencies that the office
would fail to attract able candidates.
Even so, Chairman of the Convention, George Washington, called for a
minimum constituency of 30,000 instead of the already approved 40,000. This was his only suggestion regarding
details of the Constitution and it was adopted. THE FEDERALIST, No. 51 states
that “dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the
government.” No. 52 adds “… it is particularly essential that ..” the
representative “… have an immediate dependence on and an intimate sympathy
with the people.” Now, with the congressional
districts having average populations of about
690,000, and with only 524,160 minutes in a year, we face a very
different situation. All Representatives,
whatever their origins, become members of the upper class by virtue of their
salaries and perks alone. The long
sessions and increasing details of
their involvement in nearly all matters of government, keep their minds and
bodies within the confines of the “Beltway” most of the time. National journalists, pollsters, lobbyists,
and congressional staff members, along with legislative “earmarks,” get them
reelected. Meanwhile, it is literally
impossible for them to allot one minute of their time per year to each
constituent. The House was intended to reflect changes in public
opinion. It too often reflects entrenched political power and
privilege. My
proposal, now very old and not so much forgotten as dissed, i.e. never widely
considered, was "Let's Disassemble the House,"--the title of my
article in SOUTH ATLANTIC QUARTERLY, Spring 1960. The legally fixed
number of the United States Representatives is now 435, far more than the
Framers, and I, believed to be practical for a legislative assembly.
But, with our vastly expanded national population and improvements in
communication, wouldn't it be possible, now, for much more numerous
representatives to operate separately, from their several districts?
And, wouldn't the representatives then be much more directly dependent on and
sympathetic with their constituents? My submission of that
to a couple of dozen political scientists, some acquaintances and some not,
produced several and mostly similar responses. My idea was declared to be original, interesting, logical,
and sound in its description of Congress. But, it was unlikely to be
accepted and unworkable. Such comments came from senior people at
Harvard, Cornell, Miami of Ohio, and the Legislative Reference Service of the
Library of Congress. My chief reply, now, would be that the present
House looks less effective and our population and communications improvements
continue to grow. A much
larger number of disassembled representatives would be a very practical
defense if our nation's capital were to be destroyed. It should also
provide a suitable base for nominating presidential candidates--as the
earliest Congresses did. It should reduce the need for vast media
advertising and the money to pay for that. Most of all, it should
encourage more extensive and meaningful involvement of "the people"
in major policy decisions. Our representatives should be much more numerous; they should spend most
of their working time in their districts; and they should have infrequent,
but authoritative votes on major public issues. In order to add that to the Constitution, I
suggest the following: (See the
proposed amendment, “
Disassemble the House,” ) |
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Congress, Road to Chaos It
takes a bizarre partisanship for the majority of 110th. Congress to suppose that their modest victory (in an election attended by nearly 30
million fewer American voters than elected the 109th. (Two years earlier) mandates major changes in the nations direction. The evidence suggests more clearly that
many Americans are alienated and confused about how their government does, or
does not, work.
Congress has come to believe that oversight of the Executive and Judicial
Branches is it’s most important function.
And, the resulting conflicts do win media attention. Meanwhile, Congress focuses too little of
its attention on providing our country with effective laws for dealing with
immigration, energy needs, etc. Even
more significantly, Congress fails to approve timely, manageable, and “clean”
budgets. If the United States is to
survive and to prosper, it cannot afford a Legislative Branch that neglects
its own primary, and most constructive, powers while it interferes in
time-consuming and other damaging ways with the Executive and Judicial
Branches. No simple reform will remedy what has
become a systemic and institutional failure of Congress. The problem extends beyond the short
comings of individual members and practices.
Congress must be reconstituted to be both closer to the American
people and more respectful of the other branches. Anything less is just more pavement on the
road to chaos. I.W. Parkins |
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Confused
Elections By Ivan
W. Parkins Our
national election system has become confused in ways that hamper effective
leadership and obscure partisan responsibility. Since 1948, the first post WWII
presidential election, five democrats (Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and
Clinton) have won office. There have
also been five Republican winners (Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, G.
W. Bush). But,
contrary to our previous history, there has been little apparent correlation
between presidential election successes and congressional support. In 1992, Clinton, who had just won 43% of
the popular vote, entered office with larger majorities in both houses of
Congress than any Republican President has had since the 1920’s.
Carter, a majority winner of the popular vote with 50.1% got one of
the largest congressional majorities in our history.
Among recent Democrats, only Truman and Clinton have had to face
Congresses dominated by the other party, and neither of those Presidents won
a majority of the popular vote. Among
the five recent Republicans were three winners of landslide reelections
(Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan) and none of them got a Republican Congress
with his new term. Do
American consciously vote against leadership and for partisan conflict, or
are other factors shaping our election results? |