Robert Buddan
The Bruce Golding-led Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) has been fairly silent on the American-type model that Mr. Golding had championed as leader of the National Democratic Movement (NDM). The American mid-term elections, due on Tuesday, are already drawing much attention within the United States towards what Americans find unsatisfactory about their own model. There are real concerns that we in the Caribbean should heed. The separation of powers model is not popular in the region although certain aspects of it might be.
The Democrats are expected to pick up seats in Congress but doubt remains about whether they will win enough to control the House and the Senate. My greater concern is about how the American system works. A number of polls in October showed that trust in Congress is low. A CNN poll showed that half of Americans think Congress is corrupt and 71 per cent said the American system of government is broken and cannot be fixed. We need to know why this is so.
Democrats have called for legislation on transparency in government saying that too much spending goes unaccounted for. Voter turn-out is expected to be low again and probably one reason is the overwhelming advantage of incumbents. Only a small number of seats usually change hands in elections. CNN has been running a series called 'Broken Government' pointing to the inordinate power of the 'imperial' presidency. How can we explain these features of the American system?
Congressional Stagnation
American government is a function of American politics, not the other way around. American political scientists developed the idea of congressional stagnation in the 1970s to explain a growing trend by which incumbents keep winning seats. Now, more than 90 per cent do and often no more than 5-10 seats change at election time. Congressmen and interest groups rely on redistricting, interest group lobbying, and campaign financing to make this happen.
Congressmen on these redistricting committees from the two parties have an understanding to make Republican seats more safely. Republican in exchange for making Democratic seats more safely Democratic. This protects incumbents on both sides. It leads to the highest rate of incumbency in all democracies.
Incumbents tend to raise three times the amount of money that challengers raise. Lobbyists want to keep their congressmen in office and on committees strategic to the interests of the groups they represent. Incumbents, in turn, are soft on strict campaign finance laws. Even the Supreme Court leaves loopholes that congressmen and interest groups exploit. The Court makes a distinction between direct contributions to candidates, on which it places limits, and contributions to 'independent committees' that spend money on the issues supported by the candidates, on which there are no limits. This has made campaign finance rules virtually unworkable. The Centre for Responsive Politics says that whereas the cost of the mid-term elections in 2004 was US$2.2 billion, the cost this year has increased by 18 per cent to US$2.6 billion.
Because of the high rate of incumbency and the power of lobbyists and interest groups, voters feel powerless to affect the outcome of district elections. Voter turn-out is therefore usually low. Even when public opinion polls show wide margins of support between the two parties, as at present, the actual voter turn-out is
not large enough to make a great difference in seats won and lost.
As The International Herald Tribune of October 30 says, "because congressional seats have been redistricted over the years to make Republican seats more Republican and Democratic seats more Democratic, there is less of a relationship between the popular vote and the exact number of seats won". Despite the fact that the Democrats have a healthy double-digit lead over the Republicans, it is still uncertain that it can make a 15-seat difference to win control of the House, and a six-seat difference to win control of the Senate.
Beyond Safe Seats
Still, more seats might be unsafe for the Republicans despite the advantage of incumbency. For some time now respected pollsters have been predicting a gain of 20 to 35 House seats for the Democrats and 4 to 6 seats in the Senate. This is because the politics of congressmen, interest groups, and money do not give them full control of events. Although President Bush is not up for elections, analysts say that these elections are really about Bush's foreign policy and Republican policies in Congress.
Mid-term elections are supposed to be about domestic and district issues since the presidency is not at stake and the president is chiefly responsible for foreign policy. Yet, these elections are more about foreign policy than domestic ones. The Democrats say it is a referendum on the President and the US war on Iraq. The Republicans go into these elections with low approval ratings of the president, more people disapproving of the war on terrorism than those who approve; more people saying they intend for vote for candidates of the Democratic Party; and more voters believing that the Democrats will do a better job dealing with corruption and the economy.
If the average incumbency rate holds, the Democrats will not control the House or the Senate. Should the Democrats win more than 15 House seats, however, this would be because of the anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-Congress mood of voters. This is why Democrats are making so much noise about the Bush presidency and the failed war in Iraq.
The Imperial Presidency
American political scientists point to another fault of the American system ñ the power of the presidency. The president has powers to manipulate Congress and the media and use the immense global power of its military, intelligence, and treasury to stand above domestic and international accountability. Americans charged that the presidency had exceeded its limits during the wars on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and evident in the Watergate scandal that brought Richard Nixon down. The CNN series on 'broken government' makes the point that one man in particular has been dedicated over the decades to restore and even exceed the parameters of power during that era of the imperial presidency. That man has been Dick Cheney, Bush's Vice-President. It was the influence of men like Cheney that led to the excesses of the Reagan presidency leading to the Contra scandal and Irangate.
Aided and abetted by a Republican Congress and the post 9/11 paranoia of Americans, the Bush imperial presidency has passed laws that violate the right of privacy of Americans, pursued policies that support torture and imprisonment of people merely suspected to be terrorists without charge or trial and often based on racial and religious profiling. It has fought a war in Iraq under false pretences, created a new ministry of security (Homeland Security), and refused the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court for war crimes by American soldiers. The elections are as much a referendum on Cheney and the imperial presidency as it is on Bush and the complicit Republican Congress.
The mid-term elections are more than just about whether Democrats or Republicans win. They are about whether Americans can restore the balance between the people and democratic values on the one hand and congressmen, special interests, money, and an imperial presidency on the other. But American voters have been confused, misinformed, and passive before. They might be caught off balance again.
Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm
