Category Archives: government

A Reason to Still Like Ike

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Here’s a piece of trivia for you that we learned years ago while touring the boyhood home of Dwight D. Eisenhower in Abilene, Kansas:

He was born David Dwight Eisenhower.  His father’s name was David, too, so his mother reversed the first two names to avoid having two Davids in the family.

At the end of World War II, President Truman told him, “General, there is nothing that you may want that I won’t try to help you get. That definitely and specifically includes the presidency in 1948.”  Eisenhower called the idea “an astounding proposition”   that he treated as a “splendid joke, which I hoped it was.”  He laughed it off and told Truman that he would not run for president in ’48.

The incident is recounted in Eisenhower’s 1948 book, Crusade in Europe, his view of the European War.  You might find his last few paragraphs something to reflect on in our current times:

Volumes have been, and more volumes will be, written on the collapse of world co-operation and the true significance of the events that accompanied the tragedy.  For us, all their words will amplify one simple truth.  Freedom from fear and injustice and oppression will be ours only in the measure that men who value such freedom are ready to sustain its possession—to defend it against every thrust from within or without.

Eisenhower warned against any signs of military weakness (as Churchill did in Fulton in 1946) but he felt “Military preparedness alone is an inadequate answer to the problem.” And nationalism isn’t either.  In a time long before Russian hacking, Eisenhower wrote:

Communism inspires and enables its militant preachers to exploit injustices and inequity among men. This ideology appeals, not to the Italian or Frenchman or South Americans as such, but to men as human beings who become desperate in the attempt to satisfy common human needs. Therein it possesses a profound power for expansion. Wherever popular discontent is founded on group oppression or mass poverty or the hunger of children, there Communism may stage an offensive that arms cannot counter.  Discontent can be fanned into revolution, and revolution into social chaos. The sequel is dictatorial rule. Against such tactics exclusive reliance on military might is vain.

The areas in which freedom flourishes will continue to shrink unless the supporters of democracy match Communist fanaticism with clear and common understanding that the freedom of men is at stake; meet Communist-regimented unity with the voluntary unity of common purpose, even though this may mean a sacrifice of some measure of nationalistic pretensions; and above all, annul Communist appeals to the hungry, the poor, the oppressed, with practical measures untiringly prosecuted for the elimination of social and economic evils that set men against men.

As a world force, democracy is supported by nations that too much and too often act alone, each for itself alone. Nowhere perfect, in many regions democracy is pitifully weak because the separation of national sovereignty uselessly prevents the logical pooling of resources, which would produce greater material prosperity within and multiplied strength for defense..

The democracies must learn that the world is too small for the rigid concepts of national sovereignty that developed in a time when the nations were self-sufficient and self-dependent for their own well-being and safety. None of them today can stand alone. No radical surrender of national sovereignty is required—only a firm agreement that in disputes between nations a central and joint agency, after examination of the facts, shall decide the justice of the case by majority decision. This is a slight restriction indeed on nationalism and a small price to pay if thereby the people who stand for human liberty are better fitted to settle dissension with their own ranks or to meeting attack from within.

We believe individual liberty, rooted in human dignity, is man’s greatest treasure. We believe that men, given free expression of their will, prefer freedom and self-dependence to dictatorship and collectivism.  From the evidence, it would appear that the Communistic leaders also believe this; else why do they attack and attempt to destroy the practice of these concepts…

If the men and women of America face this issue as squarely and bravely as their soldiers faced the terrors of battle in World War II, we would have no fear of the outcome. If they will unite themselves as firmly as they did when they provided, with their Allies in Europe, the mightiest fighting force of all time, there is no temporal power that can dare challenge them.  If they can retain the moral integrity, the clarity of comprehension, and the readiness to sacrifice that finally crushed the Axis, then the free world will live and prosper, and all peoples, eventually, will reach a level of culture, contentment, and security that has never before been achieved.

It might seem to some that Eisenhower’s seventy-year old message today would be “Make the WORLD great again.”

Morbid Bracketology

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A lot of office employees have filled out basketball tournament brackets this year but I’ll bet you’ve never seen one such as the staff at the Missouri State Archives has each year.

Instead of “March Madness,” these folks have a “tournament” called Morbid Madness. It started six years ago when staffers were talking about some of the “weird, interesting or amusing causes of death while researching, processing or indexing records,” as archivist Christina Miller explained it to me a few days ago. “We come across death certificates, mortality schedules (1850-1880), probate records, coroners inquests and court records during the course of our work,” although the brackets are not limited to those years. Since it was about March when this came up, the staff decided to create a bracket to determine a “winning” unusual cause of death. Before long, people from other divisions of the archives joined in and before long the bracket became a “team building” activity.

One example from a previous bracket was a death certificate that listed “drowned while washing car.” That set the staff off on a search of newspaper accounts which showd the car apparently was partiallyi driven into a lake for washing (strange enough right there!) and the driver got his foot stuck under water and drowned.

These are folks that are keying thousands of old records into databases that the public can access. Among those records are death certificates and the supporting documents, usually coroner’s inquest reports.  These folks discover all kinds of funny (in a grisly sort of way) causes of death.

Here is this year’s Morbid Madness Bracket;

Some of these are pretty prosaic—smoking in bed, for example.  Others are just—–Well, we don’t know that to say they are.

We don’t have room to include coroner’s reports but the case of the death of William Nabe who died of a knife wound in an argument about pies at the Coker School House in Cape Girardeau County, 1916—which reached the final round—happened this way:

A deposition from witness Louis Schatte recalled there was an “entertainment” at the school that featured a pie sale. One Jim Thompson bid to buy all of the pies, prompting Nabe to ask in a friendly way, “What are you going to do with all those pies?”  To which Thompson replied, “It’s none of your damn business.”   A short time later, Nabe told Thompson he’d be better off saving his money because the next day he wish he hadn’t spent all of it and had let the other guys a chance and “if he was going to invite the boys to eat pie with him.”  Schatte said, “All Nabe’s remarks were seemingly in fun and Thompson replied in a very short plain manner that it was none of his God Damn business.” (The involvement of the Deity indicates things are much more serious now.)

In a follow-up conversation, Nabe said he wasn’t looking for a fight inside the school but if Thompson was looking for trouble “to come outside and he would get it.”  Outside, Thompson was ready to go but Nabe didn’t want to fight on school property. There were some other words exchanged and the two wound up wrestling in the road in the process of which Thompson stabbed Nabe while Nabe was on top of him.  We don’t know what happened to Thompson or to all the pies he bought.

“Died during a fight over pies” prevailed over such causes as dragging dead hogs, burned by a kettle of ketchup or by really hot hotcakes, being shot “slyly,” and just plain old smoking in bed, or in a drunken brawl.

Reaching the championship round on the other side was the death of William Diez (as nearly as we can decipher the old handwriting) from “Drinking Almond Oil”  in February, 1848.  It seems a man named Magnus Gross (perhaps) was making a liquer called Maraschino, the recipe for which called for the oil of bitter almonds. Diez argued with Gross about the properties of the oil. Although Gross said it was among the most dangerous of poisons, Diez disagreed and said that while he was a student in Europe he drank the stuff after a night’s spree. The dispute continued until Diez suddenly grabbed the glass containing the oil and chugged it down.  Not long afterward he complained of feeling ill, vomited material strongly smelling of almonds, and lost consciousness. He died within a half-hour.

A doctor later testified that eight drops of the oil would often kill a man.

Drinking almond oil defeated whiskey of questionable quality, thought bug killer was wine, a watermelon seed in the lungs, drowned in a keg, and used a railroad tie as a pillow.

Drinking the oil of bitter almonds was this year’s Morbid Madness champion.

Last year these jolly archivists had an all-star bracket that featured winners of past brackets. The winner in 2018 was suicide with booze and women as the contributing cause. In 2019 it was about a man hit by a cow on a public highway. In 2020 it was a guy whowas attached to a chain on his wife’s car—which was ruled a justifiable homicide.

The winner of last year’s All Star contest was the winner from the 2017 bracket—a guy more than fifty years ago who tried to throw a beer can to a neighboring house. There was a little more to the incident than that, though:

Moral of the stories for 2022: If you’re going to have a pie fight, throw them and in the other case sometimes (I can hear Shirley Bassey singing this) “Almonds are forever.”

The Hypocrisy of Term Limits

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Sometimes we write stuff here that won’t move the public needle but we do it to get something off our chest and into whatever public discussion flows from these pieces.  Truth be told, these columns have limited readership and since I don’t mess with Facebook or other social media platforms (I have a life and it is not lived between my thumbs), this wisdom reaches only a few feet from the mountaintop from which it is dispensed.

But today, we need to expose term limits for the hypocritical entity that they are. And the hypocrisy that voters showed in approving them thirty years ago this year.

We related some of the problems a few days ago.  There are two major points today, one that can be made in just a few words and the second one that will take a little more. The point, however, is the same—term limits are voter apathy and voter hypocrisy at their worst:

The first point is one we’ve made before—that voters gave up their right to vote for the people who represent them in the legislative chambers when they adopted a law saying they did not want the right to vote their state representative a fifth term or their state senator a third term.

They just threw away their votes.

Voters said we must have term limits to get new, fresh blood into our governments—-and then immediately contradicted themselves.

The same voters who approved limiting Missouri House members to only four two-year terms voted in the same election to return 53 members to the House of Representatives for a fifth term.

Of that 53, four were returned for their ninth term, one for a tenth term, two for their eleventh term and one for his SEVENTEENTH term.

Two years later, Missourians voted for 36 of these same people for still another term and gave fourteen others a fifth term or more.

And in 1996 voters sent 22 of them back again! And they gave 13 representatives fifth terms.

The last person affected by term limits to serve in the House of Representatives, as far as we have been able to determine, was Chris Kelly of Columbia, who was elected to his ninth and last term in 2012 after having been away from the House for several years.  He could have run for a tenth term but did not.

In all, Missouri voters who think term limits are good public policy have voted 263 times to elect state representatives to a fifth term (one was elected to a 19th during this time).

The Missouri Senate, a much smaller body, has seen voters send its members back for more than two terms 32 times.

That’s almost 300 times for both chambers of our legislature. .

And what does that say?

It says that if voters have a chance to vote for someone they like, they’ll do it.  But those voters of 1992 decided you and I won’t have that opportunity.

The second point is that term limits miss the target.  The real issue is POWER.  Instead, term limits cripples SERVICE.  The most dangerous people in our political system are the people in power.  They set the agendas.  They decide what legislation will be heard in committees or debated on the floors of the House and the Senate. They are in positions that attract financial support that hey might wish to share with a favored few.

Terms limits can be, should be, applied to those who can manipulate the system.  Speakers and Presidents Pro Tem have the power. The Governor and the Treasurer have policy and financial power in state government and limiting that power is a safeguard as would be limiting the years a person can lead a legislative body.

There is no doubt that incumbency has its advantages at campaign times.  But the answer to that advantage is not in taking away the right to vote for that person again instead of for an opponent. It is in making challengers more equal in presenting their cases.  Reforming the way campaigns are financed is an answer. The challenge is in finding a constitutional way to do it.

One way to start is to change term limits laws to apply to those in power and to restore the citizens’ right to pick their public servants.

Will voters reclaim their right?  In today’s political climate, it’s extremely doubtful regardless of how much we owe it to ourselves as voters and our system to do it.

There are people who are dying today to keep their version of democracy alive.  We smug Americans who too readily wrap ourselves in our flag and use it to justify all kinds of dubious remarks and actions cannot fully appreciate  how desperately millions of others want to hang on to something we regard so casually and irresponsibly and are willing to give away with so little thought.

But term limits are what we have and that’s what we are thirty years after Missourians gave away their right to vote for those speaking for them in the chambers where our laws are made.

PQ 

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The PQ is more formally known in parliamentary circles as the Previous Question.  Moving the previous question forces an immediate vote on whether debate should continue.  If the motion passes, a vote is immediately taken on the issue.

It’s a maneuver intended to stop endless debate that is leading to nothing productive. It has never been used, in your observer’s experience, by the party in power against a member of its own party.

But when endless debate within the majority party impedes productivity, the PQ against a member or members of the majority can become a matter of enforcing discipline.

The filibuster was rare and so was the previous question for most of the legislature’s history.  Both are internal disciplinary matters that have lost their value because of their abuse, one by excessive and unchecked use and the other by partisan practice.

Both are tools for advancement of the governmental process if they are respected as such.  Clearly, the filibuster has become a punitive tool abused by those who believe their actions will not be challenged by their own majority party.

In recent years the previous question has been used as a punitive step by the majority to avoid reconciliation and compromise with minority concerns.

The disrespect of the legitimate purposes of both has weakened respect for equals in the Senate chamber and has impeded progress in public policy.

Given conditions in the Senate this year, this seems to be the time for the majority party to use the previous question on some of its own members.

Such a departure from custom will send a strong message that there will be discipline in the Senate that allows the lawmaking process to progress.

Filibusters have had one of two results:

First, the majority side realized that time is exceedingly valuable and the only way to preserve it for important work is to reach sufficient compromise on an issue that the disagreeing parties will agree on a half-loaf that is better than no loaf at all. The lawmaking process advances, leaving continuation of a disagreement for another day—and another compromise.

Second, the minority party is able to either achieve enough of their points to step back from the confrontation, or no compromise is possible but the minority position will have a chance to be heard before other business can be brought up, eliminating the need to use the previous question.

In both cases, the purpose of the filibuster is respected.  The dignity of the Senate as a great deliberative body is protected.  And the concept that “everybody is a senator” is honored.

Allowing the filibuster to be abused creates a climate of disrespect that impedes public policy progress.  So does overzealous use of the previous question.  But judicious use of both retains a balance of discipline within the system.

And using it, even on a member of the controlling party, to restore Senate discipline seems to be a worthwhile step to take, especially if the purpose behind the motion is made abundantly clear to both sides.  It is likely there will be heated criticism from those who have locked down the Senate repeatedly for the first two months of this session but it is possible that most of the Senate membership will appreciate the message that our system of government is supported by a discipline of common respect among members.

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Jurassic government

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How many times will we hear the cheap, vague, promise to “fight big government” in this campaign year.  Candidates pressed by their voters—and the voters need to do this is great intensity—might come up with a statement that equally cheap and vague.

We’ve run into someone who actually thinks about that. He’s also realistic about what needs to happen—and what realistically can NOT happen,

Maybe he’s just whistling in the wind, but Professor Donald Kettl is suggesting the push toward smaller government is counterproductive.  He’s not arguing for bigger government but he does argue that there is an alternative to the philosophy that cutting “the size” of government is the silver bullet that will solve government’s problems.

Kettl is a former dean of the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, one of the most prominent think tanks in Washington.  It calls itself non-partisan although media reports put it barely on the left side of the liberal-conservative scale (53 on a scale of 100).  Regardless of where you fall on that scale, his observations are worth evaluating.

Unlike many who rail against “big government” or proclaim government is “too big,” Kettl puts some serious thought behind what his contentions.

Kettle begins his 2016 book, Escaping Jurassic Government, with an observation partisans on both side of the government aisle seem to agree on: “There is a large and growing gap in American government, between what people expect government to do and what government can actually accomplish.”   Government, he offers, comes out poorly when the public compares what it can do with what the private sector does, an image worsened by the cynical “and sometimes nasty view” expressed through social media.

But he points to the contradictory nature of the public’s attitude toward government when he speaks of “citizens’ rising—and sometimes impossible—expectations about what government ought to do for them,” and continues, “No matter the issue, the first instinct when problems arise, even among the biggest advocates for smaller government, is to see government as the cavalry and wonder why it doesn’t arrive faster to help save the day….Almost no one likes big government, but no one expects to have to cope with problems alone.”

The result is what he calls Jurassic government.  “Like the dinosaurs, government is strong and powerful. But like the forces that led the dinosaurs to extinction, government is failing to adapt to the challenges it faces. American government struggles with its most important and fundamental decisions. Even worse, it too often fails to deliver on the decisions it makes. That wastes scarce public money and leaves citizens disappointed,” he writes.

How did we get here?   It’s simple, he says.  This country has lost its commitment to competence in government.  And he argues that competence cannot be restored simply by cutting funding for programs and agencies.

His book focuses on the federal government.  But the points it makes apply, too, to state government.  The goal, he says, is competence, not necessarily size.  “We need to restore government’s capacity to deliver on what we decide as a country we ought to accomplish…We do have it within our grasp to restore confidence that what the government seeks to do it will do well.”   But it won’t be easy.

Kettl notes that the growth of government has been a bipartisan affair—Democrats creating three and turning one into two.  Republicans have created three new departments and have reduced one (Nixon kicked the Post Office out of the cabinet).  But in terms of the thirty-two countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has has fewer government employees as a share of the national workforce than the average among the OECD countries).  It might be surprising to realize that only one in eight federal bureaucrats work for the federal government.  Government spending as a share of the economy  is less than the average spending of those 32 nations.  Kettl says government employment has been flat at the state and local levels since the days of Ronald Reagan. The number of local government workers  has increased, however, as population has increased.

Is privatization the answer to reducing government costs? Kettl maintains it is not and, in fact, reduces accountability.  He cites several instances in which government has been criticized for failing to do its job—but it is the private contractor to whom that job has been outsourced that has failed—and accountability has suffered.

He notes the greatest increases in government costs is in entitlement programs while total government spending has stayed pretty flat.

He thinks liberals who want to increase government spending won’t get far because slow long-term economic growth will not provide much new money to pay for many initiatives.  And while conservatives want to cut government spending, most of the federal budget is consumed by payments on the national debt, entitlements, and defense spending.

At the state level, he says, the outlook is not good.  “The U. S. Government Accountability Office forecasts that state and local governments could face structural deficits for the next fifty years,” he writes.  Aging populations will put pressures on state governments while public opposition to higher taxes “make it unlikely” that state spending will grow.

The upshot of all of this, he suggests, is-–as he puts it in one of his chapter titles—“Government’s Size Can’t Change (Much),” and to condense much of the book into a line or two: cutting government’s ability to pay its bills only reduces government’s ability to do the things it is supposed to do well.

There is much, much more in Kettl’s book, a lot of it challenging traditional political rhetoric.  He thinks today’s efforts to “cut” government size actually is cutting government’s competence and it is the declining competence of government that creates a distrustful public that criticizes the government for not meeting its obligations. It seems to this reader that he is pleading for those in government as well as those who pay government’s bills and want government services to throw away the bumper stickers and to put on their thinking caps.

If you’re in government, his study is worth reading.  If you are one of those paying the taxes and taking the services, it’s worth reading, too.

The dinosaurs, he says, didn’t think about the changing world around them and move realistically to adapt.  And we know what happened to them.

We think that his thoughts are worth serious consideration whether you’re the 53 or the 47 on the liberal/conservative scale.

Escaping Jurassic Government: How to Recover America’s Lost Commitment to Competence,  by Donald F. Kettl, published by Brookings Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 2016.

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Two Worlds

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The General Assembly is spending this week on its annual spring break, a few days to relax, unwind and reload. And to do a little campaigning or campaign planning perhaps.

They’re back in the real world this week.  For those who haven’t seen their other world, the differences are hard to understand.

When a member of the Missouri General Assembly steps through an entrance of the Missouri Capitol, that person is stepping into a small, confined, hot world with little respite that tends to consume even the best of people for most of the first five months of the year before it spits them back out into the world from which they came.

And they’re glad to come back seven months later to step out of their comfortable home world through those doors and back into the collision of wills, the competition of ideas, and the fight over the words yes and no.

They move from a world of service to others into a world of demands from others. And the demands are unrelenting, sometimes with consequences implied if the demands are not met.

They might be active at home on issues of poverty, food shortages, spouse and child abuse, veterans needs, church work, homelessness, and other social issues that can’t afford high-powered influence in the hot little world that is the Missouri Capitol. And as they deal in the capitol with pressures from those that can afford to apply them, it might be hard to think of their gentler work at home.

Imagine lives lived in fifteen-minute segments, each segment featuring someone who wants something, or a world of one or two-hour meetings to listen to proposals pleasing to those in the Capitol hallways, and days of increasingly long sessions arguing about the propriety of answering demands and which ones to answer.

Imagine all of this far from the comfort of home, family, friends, and co-workers with whom they share their streets, or coffee, or church pews.

It is hard to remember in those eighteen weeks or so who is more important—the people they meet on the street back home or the people they meet in the hallways of the State Capitol.

Seldom is there time or opportunity to think about things in depth, to study issues in depth, to look for pitfalls in legislation in depth. The pressure to take what they are given, often not knowing all that is within the proposition, is enormous. Sometimes the pressure squeezes out reason, leads to action counter to what is best to those back home, and demands action without burden of thought.

This is the world of unrelenting movement, of unrelenting asks and demands, a world far detached from the freedoms enjoyed where they live.

Furthermore, it’s more than consuming. It’s addictive.

Plaques on the office wall from those whose bidding they have done. Checks in the campaign account to encourage or reward a vote.  Intense seeming friendships today that disappear when the last vote is cast that can benefit a person, a group, a cause.

This is the other world of the people we send to represent us in Jefferson City. As individuals, they return home the same people.  As a group, however, in the capitol they become “government,” an enemy to many.

Is there is a way to improve this system?

Ideally, yes.  Sometimes it’s a matter of those sent to Jefferson City to show courage in the face of pressures, to question more closely the things asked of them. But sometimes it’s the case of those who vote to send others to represent them in this small stone world we call the Missouri Capitol meeting a citizen’s responsibility to pay attention to issues that are not always “my backyard” issues.

Government does not take place only in the Capitols of our country.  Its roots are in the home towns of those who are sent forth. And the folks at home need to care, to pay attention, and to hold accountable those who are to speak for them in that hot little world.

 

The Whirlwind

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This year is the thirtieth anniversary of two major decisions made by Missouri voters.  One has proven itself to be a disaster for Missouri’s political system and the other has led to proof of the fallibility of the first.

Missouri voters hypocritically approved legislative term limits with a 75 percent favorable vote on November 3, 1992.

On the same day, Missourians went 62 percent in favor of what was then called “riverboat gambling.”

These two events have become a toxic political brew in our system of government.

In today’s discussion we are going to look at term limits.  Later we will discuss casino gambling.

The Old Testament minor prophet Hosea, a contemporary of more important prophets Isaiah and Micah, warned metaphorically of the downfall of Israel for its various sins—lying, murder, idolatry, and covetousness, along with spiritual and physical adultery, these latter two characteristics personally experienced by Hosea and his wife Gomer.  Gomer carried on with another man.  The faithful Hosea accused Israel of spiritual adultery.

He warned that Israel and Judah would fall:

“They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no head; it will produce no flour.”

Term limits was the wind.  We are reaping the whirlwind in the Missouri General Assembly—most particularly in the Missouri Senate.  But the term limits whirlwind is not just blowing in the Senate which heads towards its spring break at the end of this week with only one bill approved in weeks of division, derision and disrespect. It is felt less in the House where its impact is less visible because it is more controlled.

It rages in the Senate where unlimited debate among the 34 members is still considered a virtue—as it should be if members respected it more than they abuse it.  The House has rules that are necessary in a chamber of 163 members to limit the time a member may speak on an issue.

The public, which has little interest in the more subtle or arcane factors of lawmaking, bought the idea that politicians should be limited to a maximum of eight years in the House and eight in the Senate because politicians are basically—

Crooked.

—Except for their own representative or senator.  While voting to limit House members to four terms and Senate members to two terms, many of those 1992 voters were electing their Representatives and Senators to terms five or three in many districts.

The voters voted to restrict their own right to vote when they for term limits.  This year, voters in will be prohibited from considering whether five of their Senators deserve a third term. In most of those cases, those Senators will never again have the privilege of representing their citizens on the floors of the House or the Senate.  Voters in 1992, most of whom do not live in those senatorial districts, decided these five are no longer fit to serve regardless of how distinguished their work might have been.

But terms limits is more dangerous than that.

Those of us who voted in that election were warned that term limits would destroy the institutional memory that is vital to lawmaking. Senior lawmakers who knew the value of respecting the other side of the aisle, of knowing that today’s enemy is tomorrow’s friend, who understood that collegiality benefitted the people of Missouri more than hostility, disappeared.  With no one to teach newcomers the importance of legislative control of the lawmaking process, that control passed to outsiders.

I watched the first crumbling of the legislative process.  The first piece fell the first time I heard the sponsor of a bill ask a colleague offering an amendment, “Have you run this past so-and-so in the hall?,”  clearly an indication that a blessing from a lobbyist (lobbyists are not allowed within the floor of the chambers during debate) was necessary for acceptance of the amendment.

Later as cell phones became more ubiquitous, I watched debaters with their cellphone in their hands checking for text messages that influenced the debate.  Technology has put the lobbyists in the chambers.

There also have been other indications that much of the power of lawmaking has shifted from the bests interests of constituents being argued on the floors of the House and Senate to the best interests of those in the hallways being transmitted into the discussion from outside.

I watched the disappearance of lawmakers capable of amendments written by hand during the debate, replaced by pauses in debate so a legislative staff member could write what he or she was asked to write—the origin of the amendment sometimes in a text message from outside.

In the entire first half of this legislative session, only one bill has been approved by both chambers and sent to the governor. Just one.

The wind the voters sowed in 1992 is the whirlwind of 2022 and in the splintered and often dedlocked Missouri Senate, at least, (and in the Congress as well) “The stalk has no head; it will produce no flour.”

And legislative bodies—Congress and state assemblies alike—seem unwilling to prove they serve above the low regard the public has for them.

 

“We should look for common honesty”

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He signed his letter, “A Voter,” which many newspaper editors would not allow today and rightfully so. Whether you let off steam or offer calm advice, the writers of letters to the editor should have the courtesy and courage to sign their names.

But hear the voice of “A Voter” from a time when our state was but three years old and the first presidential election since Missouri joined the Union was only weeks away.  He wrote to the editor of the Missouri Intelligencer, our first outstate newspaper—published in Franklin. The words in the June 5, 1824 issue are valid today.

It is…common, in all governments, for those who seek for offices, to woo the power that can bestow them; and, in our government, the man who cannot, or who will not, flatter the people, may content himself in private life…

To facilitate his design, the first object of a candidate is to discover our hobby; and when found, mount it and ride without mercy…My heart misgives me every time a new circular is announced, or whenever a fresh candidate mounts a stump, lest the poor jade should not be able to hold out to the end. It is thought, however, if a candidate rides gracefully, he will do…I cannot suppose that this is a general belief—but some, we know, have more confidence in vicarious power than others.

The time is approaching when we shall be called on to exercise that inestimable franchise of free men, the right of suffrage, to its full extent. And, as all power is primarily in the people, the right of suffrage is not only a privilege, but a duty obligatory on all; and to him that is remiss in this duty, the sin of omission may be fairly imputed.

In performing this duty, then, it is incumbent on us to deliberate before we act; and before we give our voices to any man to perform any of the functions of our government, if he has not passed the ordeal of a public trial, let us first, if possible, ascertain if he is the man he professes to be. 

I am aware of the impracticability of personally knowing every man who offers his services. But every man who is constitutionally eligible to important trusts under our state government is known by some in whose probity and impartiality others may justly confide. And, where we cannot obtain personal knowledge, the information of men of integrity and who have had opportunity to possess that knowledge, may be relied on.

I admit that it is vain to look for perfection in man…We should not look for great talents and splendid acquirements to fill every office.  But we should look for common honesty and if a man possess no other qualifications but such as would entitle him to a diploma from an academy for horse-jockeys, I think he is not entitled to any post of trust or profit under our government.

A lot of words are thrown around during election seasons, as we saw in 2020 and will see again this year, some irresponsibly and some sincerely. “Common honesty” might be a high goal, but it’s one we should demand of those who want our votes. To fail to do so is to sell ourselves cheaply.

What to do with him

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It surely has occurred to many people watching investigations from Georgia to Washington and New York that criminal charges against former President Donald Trump are growing more possible.

There is no joy in writing that sentence or in contemplating the issue we address today.  But the issue cannot be ignored.

What is to be done if a president or a former president is charged and convicted of serious crimes?

Based on almost daily reports that a new rock is turned over and something disappointing crawls out from under it, there is no avoiding the possibility that the former leader of the free world, as we like to think of our president, could be found guilty of an offense that could mean imprisonment.

We have witnessed first-hand several public officials at the state level being sent to prison. It hasn’t been that hard to watch it happen without concern for or about them.

But if it’s a former President of the United States?

The mental image of a man whose dark suit and red or blue tie are so familiar trading those clothes for an orange jumpsuit is jarring.

If the betrayal of public trust is so severe that not even a Gerald Ford/Richard Nixon-type presidential pardon can be contemplated, where does he go?  Does he become part of the general population, even if it’s a so-called “country club prison” some think disgraced public officials occupy?

Inmates do have rights within a prison. They aren’t left in a bleak cell 24 hours a day. But what kind of cell should an ex-president occupy? A cell/suite?  Or the same kind of cell occupied by the state official doing time for campaign embezzlement?

Would he take his meals in the same room with the other inmates and at the same time—even if surrounded by guards because someone might want to become infamous by doing him (possibly fatal) harm?

Should restrictive house arrest be off the table?  Depending on the severity of the offense(s), should any be proven, should the ex-president be allowed to stay at Mar-a-Lago? Being punished by staying in the big house and not being allowed to play golf has a ludicrous aspect to it.

Should an ex-president be given a job in a prison?  Kitchen work.  Janitorial work.  Tending to the prison garden.  Mopping bathroom floors.  Working in a prison industry (making furniture for example).  Should he be allowed to attend a class and earn an associate college degree?

We know, of course, that if things get this far, thousands and perhaps millions of people will feel that the justice system is more rigged than they think the most recent presidential election was.  How should justice be meted out in the face of that kind of conspiratorial thinking that could produce widespread civil unrest?

With courage, we think.  Our court system knows it must operate despite any mob behavior.

None of this is something any of us wants to think about.

But we should.

Just in case.

 

I Mourn for the Missouri Senate

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I was talking to one of our state senators a few days ago in one of the side galleries when he said, “I think I’m witnessing the death of the senate.”

If so, it has been a long and agonizing death.

If this is what the Missouri Senate is to be, he’s correct. And it hasn’t been just a death. It’s been a slow suicide. The life-blood of the body has slowly seeped away, leaving a once-deliberative and respectful lawmaking chamber splintered and dominated by a self-centered, small but power-hungry, group that has brought the place to near anarchy.

Make no mistake: the senate has been the scene of some fierce battles, even wars perhaps. But respect for its customs, traditions, and its famous unwritten rules has imposed an inner discipline that has served it well.

The increasingly painful decline and drift away from those characteristics seem to have two points of origin.

The sacrifice of public responsibility represented by the adoption of term limits is one of the points.  The rise of those I call Gingrich Republicans is the other.

Term limits is the disaster its opponents warned us it would be. Voters willingly but hypocritically gave up their rights to vote for someone who had earned their confidence and in doing so laid the groundwork for the sad spectacle we have seen in the senate for the past three weeks, a situation that is a tyranny imposed by a minority.

A small group of senators demanding a new congressional district map that serves the purpose of political power more than it serves the purpose of fair political representation has stopped almost everything else from moving with actions that disrespect the very thing in which they are engaged—the filibuster.

The filibuster historically has been a tool that forces two disagreeing sides eventually to find some acceptable middle ground, assuming the two sides have a modicum of good will. Sometimes no agreement is possible.  The losing side, while not getting some or any of its wishes, nonetheless recognizes that it has at least aired its grievances and allows the process to move ahead despite the differences so the process can serve the people’s needs on other issues.

That has not been the case in the senate this year. A small group has decided it must have a map drawn its way to expand the power of one party or the people at large who are expecting the makers of law to take actions that protect and serve them are out of luck.

The attitude has irritated colleagues of both parties, has aggravated a bipartisan group of women senators, and has gotten on the nerves of the senate leadership.  When one of the contentious crowd violated one of the unwritten decorum rules by wearing bib overalls on the floor (even with a coat and tie) and was called on it by the President Pro Tem, he instead of quickly leaving and returning properly dressed argued about it.  For elevating what should have been a small issue into a larger public one, he was penalized with the loss of most of his committee assignments—which led to another extended period of reading from a book instead of publicly apologizing to the Senate.

Parents sometimes have to deal with a defiant child by taking away some privileges. The same holds true in a public body of government.

How does term limits fit this situation?

A deliberative body such as the Senate must have within its being a deep traditional sense of respect for the chamber, the processes, and the members. The saying, “Everybody is a Senator” is more than a statement recognizing an elected title.  It is a proclamation that all participants in the senate process are equal and will be respected as equals, that the title is greater than the individual. Respect for the title and the mutual recognition of shared courtesies required for progress are essential and those who disregard those responsibilities and therefore disrupt the work of the senate for their own purposes are subject to discipline.

These are qualities of service in the Senate that once were taught to new members by those who had served for years, perhaps decades, and knew from life experience that respect for individuals and the system were the keys to responsible lawmaking.

But term limits have robbed our legislative bodies of that valuable institutional knowledge and have left them liable for disruptive actions that undermine responsible lawmaking. And the situation has deteriorated so badly that some wonder if the Senate can ever recover enough of those values to be the effective body it once was.

The second factor that has led to the present debacle was the advent of the Gingrich Republicans in the early 1990s.  The take-no-prisoners style of politics was almost immediately disruptive of the deliberative process that was the culture of the Senate.  The early small and disruptive  element increased as years went by. Increasingly, filibusters increased and a small dissident group learned how it could hold the floor for hours and passed along that knowledge so that the filibuster became less of a tool of compromise and more of a sledgehammer of force.

Distressingly, what we are seeing in Missouri is not uncommon in other states and is on flagrant display in our national politics.  Some have suggested term limits are needed for Congress.

Congressional disarray is already frightening enough.  What has been happening in Missouri should be a warning of the danger to democracy that term limits in Washington would bring.

Where we are in the state senate has been a long time coming.  Those who have watched the  deterioration of the chamber and who cannot see an end to this distressing set of events wonder if deliberative and respectful government can be returned to our capitol—and to our nation.

You and I, dear readers, are the ones who hold that future in our hands.

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