Where’s Dr. Jekyll when you need him?
McGehee (8 January) looks for Hyde to be tanned:
Back in 1995, after his party took over the majority in the House of Representatives on the strength of the Contract With America — of which one of the points was congressional term limits — Rep. Henry Hyde took to the floor to argue against term limits by claiming you couldn’t find effective representation by taking names at random from the phone book.
With that comment — along with his longtime support for federal gun control — Hyde eclipsed, to my mind, everything worthwhile he ever had done or ever would do. That idea, of the indispensable political veteran who must intermediate between the people and their government, has been the single most corrosive concept ever introduced into American politics. For his part in blocking that legislation, Hyde deserved to depart Washington by rail in a sticky, feathery suit.
As has been pointed out on occasion — thank you, Lisa — the electorate can always throw the bums out, should they be so inclined. But McGehee has hit on the subtext here: we’ve become accustomed to thinking in terms of hiring the expert rather than doing the job ourselves. And I appreciate this concept: after recently failing to reduce the size of an overgrown holly which was threatening to take over a section of roof, I had to call in a tree surgeon. But the American political system is based on the idea of, yes, doing the job ourselves. You could argue that the job is now too big for us; what is needed, I believe, is to cut it back down to size.
Lisa Paul »
11 January 2010 · 12:15 am
Then there is the problem of not calling in a professional when you are not qualified to do it yourself. Witness our referendum and initiative madness here in California. Voter initiatives have ballooned our ballots to telephone book size, bankrupted us with special elections and resulted in a mish-mosh of conflicting legislation. But then again, we are in this do-it-yourself mode because we don’t feel our legislators are doing it for us.
Jeez, it’s a vicious circle.
CGHill »
11 January 2010 · 9:19 am
Anent our general lack of preparation for this duty, this P. J. O’Rourke quote just popped up in the sidebar:
Dick Stanley »
11 January 2010 · 9:27 am
The trouble with throwing the bums out is that they now come in both parties and throwing them out every time they stand for re-election, well, that’s asking for a long more attention than most of us are willing to pay to anything they do.
McGehee »
11 January 2010 · 12:35 pm
The January 8 entry has a permalink on the datestamp.
McGehee »
11 January 2010 · 12:40 pm
And a version of a response to Lisa’s point can be found here.
If the people are no longer qualified to understand their own laws and oversee their own government, then the American experiment is a failure and we might as well throw in the towel and embrace the Leviathan.
I refuse.