Posted 8/10/2003 6:10 PM
Conservatives wrongly seek 'government by tantrum'
By Ross K. Baker
How ironic it is that American conservatives, who once argued so vigorously that the United States was not a democracy but a representative republic, should now be in the vanguard of those eager to bypass representative institutions and have voters write laws and remove officials in the voting booth.
More paradoxically, California Republicans, in their campaign to recall Gov. Gray Davis, find themselves in strange ideological company. By pushing direct democracy to its limits, they're in league with the counterculture leaders of the 1960s and '70s who argued for participatory democracy.
These troubling ideas are the same: Cut out the middleman. Let people rule without elected intermediaries. That it is happening in California, which often is a model for the rest of the country, is more unsettling. It would be ruinous for other states if they followed California's example. (snip)
(snip) Translated to as large and complex a place as California, direct democracy results in wild policy gyrations, hasty actions that courts must correct and damage to institutions. Term limits for California Assembly and Senate members have, for example, forced out lawmakers just as they're beginning to comprehend the complexity of the policies they must enact, and magnified the influence of lobbyists. (snip/...)
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