READING TIME: 2 minutes
SUMMARY: Our democracy has long suffered from a lack of civic engagement. Since Trump’s descent down that golden elevator, we’ve been taking a remedial civics lesson. Our solutions to what has ailed our democracy are completely wanting, though: term limits, age limits, re-election incumbents. The only solution is for us to make civics cool again.
KEY WORDS: Political Divide, Divisive Politics, Democracy, Term Limits, Age Limits, the Incumbent Effect, Civics Lesson, Remedial, Civics Engaging, Outsourcing
COMMENT: How can we make civics cool again? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
Our democracy is in trouble. It’s the one thing most of us can agree on. When you ask about the reason, we diverge. The folks on the right side of the polarization divide will say the folks on the left are trying to destroy our democracy — they hate us for our freedoms, they assure us. Those on the left say it’s those on the right trying to usher in single-party, pseudo-democratic, minority-rule white autocracy. Spoiler: the left is right. But, Ye Olde Blogger says the reason we’re in trouble is because of us. We the People. We the voter.
Our democracy is in trouble because the American voter is very passive. The ultimate victims. Completely lacking in agency. We don’t hold our elected officials responsible for their actions. We let ourselves be easily swayed by appeals to our emotions and divisive social issues that, in many cases, aren’t even real. We vote against our own best interests.
Proposals to Improve Our Demcocracy
During the past fifty years we’ve proposed many solutions to the problems our democracy faces. Most of them take the responsibility for hard decisions away from the voter, though.
Term Limits
How many people say we need term limits to keep professional politicians from staying in office for the rest of their lives? Really? If you don’t like the incumbent, not only can you vote for the challenger, you can work to get them elected! You can volunteer, donate money, write letters to the editor, make social media posts. You could even write a snarky, sarcasticky, profaney political psychology blog and change the whole gottam world! Term limits just take the responsibility of the voter to know the candidates, parties, and issues away from them. They encourage disengagement, disinterest, and disillusion. Why pay attention if the limits will handle it for you?
But, but, but — politicians might be more willing to take on special interest groups if they don’t have to worry about reelection! Not if they know they have an informed, engaged, active electorate watching what they do, understanding the issues, and taking their democratic responsibilities seriously.
Age Limits
How many people say we need age limits to protect us from elders in cognitive decline? It seems so reasonable. We all remember the tragedy of Diane Feinstein, who refused to resign as she became increasingly infirm. Obviously, the solution is an age limit! Of course, that would mean we’d be deprived of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Nancy Pelosi — all because voters can’t be bothered with hard choices.
Why not just advocate for a recall mechanism instead? We have the Twenty-Fifth Amendment for the president. Many states have recall petitions. Why not for all offices? Some will complain that recalls can be abused by cynical political types, but the solution is to make them pay a political price — to be more engaged, not less.
Our passive approach to our democratic responsibilities is one reason the incumbent effect is so strong. We’d rather re-elect a candidate than carefully consider the issues and their record.
Blog On. Siblings!
Image Attribution
The image was found on Cheerfulmonk’s Flickr page and has a Creative Commons license.
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I have been calling for these for decades…..we have lost our way because we allow the MSM and special interest decide our fates…..time to make a stand or live with the disasters we have created. chuq
The MSM is a special interest group. I have never been more disgusted with the press. It is clear that we are remaking our society on the same level as the industrial revolution.
Jack
MSM is controlling everything these days. chuq
The billionaires control everything, including the MSM. The MSM controls the narrative that controls the attention of the masses almost like the old nursery rhyme about the old lady who swallowed a fly. Only now, I guess syou have to include social media since there isn’t a platform other than Bluesky and the Metaverse that isn’t owned by a billionaire.
Huzzah!
Jack
Social media is defining our nation and this younger generation…..chuq
I have been preaching these exact things for decades….we the people have turned our backs on civics and allowed MSM and special interest decide our fates…..time for us to get serious or just live with the disasters we have created. chuq
There’s the puzzle, how to get more, many more potential voters into real, effective civic engagement, and to the polls, not the pollsters, the actual voting. The election that overthrew Orban had 87% turnout. I don’t know when the last time was (if ever there was one) that we topped 50%. In Australia, if you don’t vote you get a fine. How do we get across to Americans that It really matters who gets into office and that they have agency and duty. What a concept, a duty to be involved.
I think we got up to about 67% in 2020, 63% in 2024, and 60% in 2016. Not even close to the 87% in Hungary. I know several countries have compulsory voting, but not all enforce it strictly. I think we’d get more voting if we just made it easier to do, but that’s out of reach for us as long as the current Republican Party is active.
The hard truth is that about a third of our voting population is actively consciously authoritarian and anti-democratic, willing to oppress the votes of others to achieve their political goals. That is the most sobering thing to come out of our current era.
The portion of the population that is consciously anti-democratic has been well known to those who know it well, but not shared widely among the public. I really resent my civics education — which really was pretty good up to this point — for not pointing that out. The anti-democratic element has been with us from our inception as colonies.
Huzzah!
Jack
The 12 Step programs have a saying, “Never underestimate the power of denial.” Our educational system has long presented the mythological vision of American democracy very well, and except in describing some few “aberrations” in complete denial of the anti-democratic element. That needs to change, but the authoritarians resist having their covers pulled.
Howdy Bob!
Having worked with terminal illness as a social worker and with parents of children with learning issues, I know the power of denial. There is no getting around it. The best thing you can do is recognize it as a coping mechanism and provide social support until the person comes round to accepting whatever it is as reality. I don’t guess we can do that to an education and media system, though.
Right now the authoritarians are coming out loud and proud. They are not ashamed of their anti-democratic policies and are selling them to their followers and those among us who are swayable as necessary. It is discouraging.
Huzzah!
Jack
The anti-democrats almost always wear the sheep skin of populism over their wolfy selves, grievance populism, offering scapegoats on which to blame all the miseries they themselves are inflicting. Remember, the US began basing the “consent of the governed” on an enfranchisement of only White men of property. Those guys have resisted every extension of the franchise since, and are still working to reverse the process any way and to any degree they can, or to make the votes of others irrelevant. Major case in point, Citizens United. Still, the pendulum swings, and at least some of the hoodwinked wake up.
This has been the struggle of democracies since Ancient Greece. Once the franchise is granted to one group, no matter how limited, there is another group that is agitating for it. Gradually, the franchise grows being granted to more and more people. Does it become unwieldy at some point? Does it get to be too large and collapse upon itself? Is the European parliamentary model a successful system of how to grow the franchise or is it successful because of the homogenize of the electorate and its relative small size?
To me, it is clear that the forces of greed and hatred have engineered this crisis point in American history. They have dumbed down the electorate, blunted our interest in civics, distracted our attention from the hard problems we face. Restarting our democracy is the hard part. Perhaps the severe challenge we face: the state sponsored violence and the corruption will finally get the interest of the electorate.
Huzzah!
Jack
What really gets, and may now be getting the attention of the proletariat about high level corruption is the the realization that the implied promise that they would get their piece of the action was always a lie. That can out weigh even “first and worst”. Then all it takes is a “Let them eat cake.” moment and they are ready to march and take the Bastille and start counting heads.
As for the expanded franchise and the problems of too big and too much variety, the elegant, or, least ugly, solution is a multiplicity of parties combined with sufficient pork and horse trading.
Howdy Bob!
It occurred to me decades ago that the experiment in democracy had concluded and that European parliamentary style democracy is far superior to American republican democracy just for the reasons that you’ve stated. It promotes the existence of multiple parties and compromise in order to form stable governments.
The only surprising thing there is on the American political scene is that we haven’t had the preference cascade moment either among MAGA or Congressional Republicans. Certainly enough of the Republicans in Congress can see what the war in Iran was, is, and will do to the world economy to realize that this cannot stand and the sooner it is ended the better off everyone, especially them, will be.
I’m reminded of the bystander effect and the way to avoid it is to point to someone and say, “You! Call 911.” There is no one standing over the mortally injured body of our Executive Branch madly applying first aide and pointing to an individual in Congress and commanding them to do the right thing. Maybe that is what We’re missing. Vance is too cowardly and too committed to being Trump’s successor to gamble on cutting him out early. Rubio is too intent on fulfilling his boyhood dream and promise of becoming president of Cuba to do the thing he knows is necessary. And, everyone else in the Cabinet is too self-service and shortsighted to even be able to begin to formulate a vague hazy picture of the danger the republic is in much less understand what is needed to save it.
It is one of the saddest and most sobering moments in American history. There are no American heros coming to save us. There is no Lincoln willing to fight a civil war, no FDR to pass the New Deal, no LBJ to pass civi rights legislation and the Great Society, no Obama to rescue us after the Great Recession. Biden came the closest that we came with his monumental legislative successes, but aged out and fumbled the baton due to racism and misogyny.
Huzzah!
Jack
The kind of leader we need emerges, I think, unexpected, in response to the need when everybody else is running like Chicken Little. Biden might could have pulled it off if he’s been ten years younger. The gerontocracy we have is part of the problem. The young need to feel seen and heard. They will have to live in a future we will not see.
Wee the stinky pipples in Arizona passed a referendum establiching term limits for all state offices in 1992. since then we’ve found:
1. Legislators don’t know how to legislate, and by the time they have enough experience to be good at it, they’re termed out.
2. Because of 1, the people actually writing the laws are unelected lobbyists and special interest groups, like ALEC
3. Far from tempering political factions it has worsened them (and like the rest of the country, mainly in the Republican direction)
4. It has INCREASED corruption, because since the Legislature is in a constant state of churn, it’s easier for powerful legislators to use the system to enrich themselves. (the Senate Leader who rammed though the Charter Schools laws owned a company that consulted for Charter Schools)
We do have term limits: THEY’RE CALLED ELECTIONS! They happen every two years! We can throw out anyone we want to by voting!
Howdy Grouchy!
You’re preaching to the choir. Term limits removes decision making from the electorate and individual voter. It encourages people to check out of the their civic lives. It adds another layer of complexity that you’ve outlined well.
We can vote after studying candidates and issues and decide who is right for the office right now. It makes for the strongest democracy.
Huzzah!
Jack