Morning Constitutional III

Didn't stay for the whole interview, but this morning C-SPAN featured a segment with Mike Gravel. Never heard of him? That's because he is a candidate for president of the United States from the Democratic Party not named Hillary or Barack. He's apparently running mostly as a single-issue candidate - with the issue being the "national initiative", the ability of laws to be passed directly by popular vote, without having to go through representatives (i.e. Congress).

This kind of democracy is used in some states already, of course - witness the recent recall election in California - but it was explicitly rejected by the Framers as a model for the national government. It was seen (rightly, in my opinion) as too subject to the notion of mob rule and demagoguery; not that it doesn't exist now (Lord knows), but it would be on a huge scale if used nationally. It would be the "tyranny of the majority" writ large, where basically California and New York would run the entire country; Wyoming might as well pack it up and go home.

But where Gravel goes from being a man with a bad idea into idiocy is where he'd like to have the national initiative used. The interviewer asked him what measures he would have put up for a national vote first (weren't the measures supposed to arise from the public, not from the president?). His first choice: abolition of the Electoral College (which is another form of representative democracy).

Now, this guy was apparently a United States senator for twelve years, and was well-known for using parliamentary procedures (filibuster, entering into congressional record, etc.) to accomplish his goals. So this guy knows his way around the federal government.

And am I now supposed to believe that he is proposing amending the United States Constitution strictly on a popular vote? Because that is what abolition of the Electoral College would entail.

But that's not all. He also wants to use national initiative to change the federal tax system to a consumption tax, specifically the Fair Tax. As it happens, I right now tend to be in favor of such a change (don't know all the pluses or minuses, but so far the pluses outweigh the minuses in my view). However, this again requires a change to the Constitution to enact, and he plans on doing it by popular vote. Bad idea (which makes me all the sadder that the Fair Tax might come to be associated with this guy).

It's hard to get too much of a boost in the morning by listening to a marginal candidate like this, but it's better than nothing. Gravel, you are an idiot, the time you received on C-SPAN this morning is far more attention than you deserve. Go away, so we can get back to our Obamamania.