Others, Benjamin Franklin. But yesterday, I discovered who the real author has to have been. The Michigan Democratic Party, or, more specifically, Mark Brewer. Here’s how I found out.
The Democrats in this state really don’t like democracy very much. At least, not within their party. Here’s what I am talking about:
The way the system works, most candidates for office are chosen in primary elections in August. Some candidates, however, are not chosen by the people themselves, but by party activists at state conventions that take place after the primaries, usually in late August. Those include the candidates for lieutenant governor, state attorney general, secretary of state, the Michigan Supreme Court and various boards of education.
Both parties do it this way, in part, to help balance the ticket.
Actually, however, I suspect the system was set up that way largely in order to give the political parties more control. In any event, that’s how it works. My feeling is that it cuts the people out of the process. True, the way our system has evolved, candidates for President of the United States get to pick their running mates.
So it makes some sense to allow the candidate who has won a tough primary for governor to select his or her nominee for lieutenant governor, though that choice has to be ratified by the state convention. But the jobs of state attorney general and secretary of state are highly important, highly visible, and I think we should have the chance to choose those candidates in state primaries.
That, however, would take a state constitutional amendment, or perhaps even a new constitution. So while the people don’t have enough say, Mark Brewer now wants to give them even less. He wants to call a special party “endorsement convention” to pre-select these non-elected candidates in April or May.
They would get together, endorse candidates for these jobs, and thereby put pressure on the delegates to the August convention to ratify their will, instead of picking the candidates themselves.
The oddest thing about this is that Mark Brewer has forever been trying to preempt the process and select candidates early, only to see it blow up in his face. Twelve years ago, he and his allies tried to muscle the party into nominating for governor Larry Owen, one of the most lackluster candidates in state history.
The voters revolted and nominated Geoffrey Fieger. This time, Brewer decided a year ago the best way to retain the governorship was to push everybody out of the race except John Cherry. This time, his horse metaphorically dropped dead in the starting gate.
Democrats need to show a little patience, trust the voters, and allow the right candidates to emerge naturally. If they want to fix something, amend the constitution to give the people more power.
Looking back at the record, it’s hard to see how the voters could do a worse job picking candidates than the party hacks.
Disagree with Jack Lessenberry if you will (I often do), but I find it routinely difficult to find fault with his sense of history and political science.
Voting is important, when government is becomeing increasingly bureaucratized and when more and more of what we do, from smoking in a bar to texting in a car to getting a student loan or getting a job, is all increasingly under some form of legal scrutiny.
Voting is important, not just for attorney general, and secretary of state, but also for the state supreme court justices, as Jack Lessenberry quite wisely writes.
This is a principle of good governance that is going to come under attack, however, in Michigan. The Brennan Center (funding from George Soros) and "Justice at Stake" will soon be mounting a campaign in Michigan to take away ctizens' right to vote judges into office. (They will lobby for some kind of system in which the lawyers' union controls selections for state judgeships. We'll see more about it next month.)
Then, we'll see, whether Jack Lessenberry is really a fan of citizen voting.
Posted by: Anonymous | January 28, 2010 at 05:04 PM