Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Hendrik Hertzberg's world
Former Jimmy Carter speechwriter and current senior editor and staff writer for the New Yorker magazine Hendrik Hertzberg has posted a video on his blog. In it, he discusses the National Popular Vote movement. NPV is an effort to reform the Electoral College so that it would be impossible to win the popular vote and lose a presidential election, as was the case in 1876, 1888 and most recently in 2000. The proponents of NPV almost regard it as a "workaround" of sorts -- it is not directly unconstitutional, yet it modifies the effect of the historical practices of Article II, Section 1, and does so in a "try before you buy" method of implementation.
There is some research that indicates that there is reasonably broad bipartisan support for NPV, although there is the underlying problem of a possible scenario of a state legislature being compelled to direct its Electors to vote in a manner that is the opposite of that state's popular vote, which is why both Governor Schwarzenegger of California and Governor Lingle of Hawaii have vetoed the legislation. Henrik Hertzberg is in favor of the NPV.
Allowing for the fact that there is a jump edit in the video (but it is his video posted on his blog), I am pretty sure that in the first minute of this clip, as he introduces the concept of NPV, Rik Hertzberg is juxtaposing and comparing the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of Apartheid in South Africa with the proposed reform of the Electoral College in the oldest constitutional republic in the world -- a reform that would prevent a very infrequent event from occurring, and, accordingly, a reform that would not radically alter the fundamental nature of representative government in this country.
Huh?
Am I misreading this, or is this an enormously inapt comparison, whatever one may think about the relative merits of NPV? He is "waiting for the other shoe to drop" in a worldwide democracy movement, and sees NPV as an example of that? Is it that Rik Hertzberg just can't quit the Bush/Gore election of 2000, even with President Barack Obama in the White House nearly nine years later?
8 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue May 19, 10:14:00 PM:
I didn't even bother to watch the video, because I think I got the point from your summary. There's probably many issues with this proposal, but I jumped to one ... Jesus H Fucking Christ ... as if we haven't read enough words out of the Constitution ... or into it ... these assholes still need a work-around for this inconvenient document.
A Man For All Seasons:
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
Link, over
By , at
Tue May 19, 11:22:00 PM:
I voted third party in 200, so I didn't have a dog in the fight. Gore's highly partisan stances after the November election disgusted me. It was as if he were saying,"recount only the votes that would go for me." Moreover, as anyone who has ever engaged in counting many objects can testify, counting a second or third or fourth time is no guarantee of greater accuracy.
Considering his subsequent comments on foreign policy and other matters, I decided that Gore's loss showed the wisdom of the Electoral College setup. Don't fix it. It ain't broke.
Again, I voted third party in 2000.
By , at
Wed May 20, 12:15:00 AM:
Obviously a lot of liberals and progressives do not have much use for the constitution.
"No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay." Article 1 Section 10.
By 
Escort81, at
Wed May 20, 01:37:00 AM:
John -
See this link and scroll to 15.4 and see what you think about their explanation on the good point you raise. I think the long answer there might be the weak point in whether the whole thing is Constitutional.
I think the point I was trying to make, and did not emphasize enough, was how strange I thought Hertzberg's comparison was -- two brutally repressive regimes go away, and changing the EC here falls into that category of change? I guess in fairness, he throws in the "unification" of Europe, but still.
By , at
Wed May 20, 07:13:00 AM:
After I made my comment I went looking in the Federalist Papers. I am hazy about it, but I seem to recall the founders were concerned about the larger states ganging up on the smaller ones (which is why we all have two senators) and they talked about such a prohibition. Could not find it.
There is another problem, of course: do state governments have the right to nullify the votes of their citizens in national elections?
By , at
Wed May 20, 09:30:00 AM:
2000 was a long time ago, but hate never really dies.
By Dawnfire82, at
Wed May 20, 10:27:00 AM:
I'm so god-damned tired of journalists writing about things they don't understand, like structure of government, while pretending they do.
"the founders were concerned about the larger states ganging up on the smaller ones"
Indeed. That was a major issue that predicated the Connecticut Compromise and established the bicameral system that has worked so well here. The country has now grown large enough that political cultures in different parts of it can be radically different. Compare California to Texas, for example. Should enough large population states establish a political culture separate from the small population states, then you might end up in a situation where the citizens of 5 or 8 states consistently select national leadership or determine policy for the whole country, a situation that I feel supremely confident would be unacceptable to the smaller states and would require yet another constitutional amendment or result in partition. Hurray.
The Electoral College works fine.
"There is another problem, of course: do state governments have the right to nullify the votes of their citizens in national elections?"
Not really the right way to think about it, as the 'state governments' themselves are local citizens who are accountable to their fellow citizens and this little dilemma worked itself out many decades ago. So yes, theoretically, but not in practice.
By Elise, at
Wed May 20, 01:06:00 PM:
I could argue that Hertzberg is seeing other countries become more democratic and would like the US to become more democratic. He’s not saying we’re as bad as the USSR and South Africa but rather that even though we’re way ahead of them on the democractic road we should still keep moving forward just as they have. I could argue that but I won’t because as far as I’m concerned anyone who considers making an end-run around the Constitution via the NPV to be moving forward on the democratic road has no clue what kind of democracy the United States is.
The only people I’ve seen pushing the NPV are liberals, convinced they are so much smarter than those old guys who wrote the Constitution. Mesmerized by 2000, they assume a Democrat will always win the popular vote even if a Republican wins the electoral college. It has apparently escaped their notice that for a few brief, shining moments during the 2008 Presidential campaign, polls indicated that John McCain would win the popular vote while Barack Obama would win the electoral college.
As much as I hate the whole idea of the NPV - and I do hate it with a passion and am embarassed that NJ has adopted it - I’m almost tempted to root for it to happen. Hubris and nemesis being what they are, I firmly believe that should the Compact ever be fully implemented, a Republican will immediately win the popular vote while a Democrat wins the electoral college. The enjoyment to be derived from watching very liberal states being forced to send their Electors off to vote for the conservative would not quite make up for shredding the Constitution but it would definitely have its moments.
