This Lousy Compromise
Almost no one is happy about the health care reform bill currently making its way through Congress. The Earl Grey Tea Party is apoplectic about the forthcoming fascist takeover of the U.S. health care system, or whatever, and progressives can't believe that they rang 1,000 doorbells for Barack Obama only to get this lousy compromise. And yes, the legislation making its way through Congress is a lousy compromise. Even if it survives the lawmaking process, the "public option" will most likely be closed to most Americans and be too small to compete with private insurers. The rest of the reform package would grant an even larger role in public life for private, for-profit insurance companies, who should no more be entrusted with the public good than Andy Reid with in-game clock management.
So now, casual political observer, you're probably frustrated, and perhaps a bit mystified by this tendency of our system to produce middling, ineffective laws that please precisely no one. The median voter theorem (MVT) is your prime suspect.
First outlined by Duncan Black (not the the Atrios one) in 1948, and refined by Anthony Downs in his 1957 book, An Economic Theory of Democracy, MVT argues that politicians will enact legislation aimed at the voter whose preferences on any particular issue leave an equal number of voters to the left and to the right. In English, it works like this: Let's say you have three voters taking stands on the stimulus package that passed earlier this year. Voter A is your Paul Krugman, who wants massive government spending. Voter B, who we'll call David Broder, fusses about deficits and demands watered-down half-measures. Voter C is, well, anybody who goes to Sarah Palin book signings. MVT predicts that politicians will gravitate toward Broder's position, and he'll reward them with more unreadable drivel extolling the holiness of bipartisanship. And that's more or less what's happened. But MVT doesn't work so well with the current health care debate. First, it's not clear what voters' preferences actually are. In polls, voters support the "choice" of a "public option," but have reservations about a "government-run insurance plan." More importantly, senators have to worry about primaries, where they'll be subjected to the verdict not of the median voter, but of their party's most committed ideologues. This problem is compounded by an insane filibuster system, a 60-vote requirement that ensures that all laws must pass muster with the almighty centrists.
As esteemed political scientist Robert Dahl pointed out, the Senate is already one of the most undemocratic institutions this side of the Chinese politburo, endowing the 1.78 million citizens of Nebraska with the same effective voting power as more than 36 million Californians. The pivotal voices in the health-care debate — Maine's Olympia Snowe, Montana's Max Baucus and Nebraska's Ben Nelson — collectively represent about 1.4 percent of the population. Elsewhere, this isn't so. The British have a system wherein the party that wins the election gets to actually enact the platform they placed before the voters, rather than having party leaders prostrate themselves before the opposition's moderates or their own party's most craven opportunists (ahem, Joe Lieberman). Just like the stimulus was crafted to meet the demands of the self-appointed moderates, so, too, will be any health care legislation that actually becomes law. That means that these moderates will be handed the keys and allowed to drive us wherever they deem fit.
The overarching problem with centrism is that the middle point between two wildly different proposals is rarely an effective one. This is not to say that progressives should oppose the health care reform because it's not perfect. It will give many more people access to care, and prevent many Americans from being bankrupted by medical debts. But if you're wondering why you don't have a better bill, don't blame Harry Reid, Barack Obama or even the mythical Median Voter. Blame a system that requires a three-fifths consensus, but rarely produces an actual governing majority.
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As if this ineffectiveness wasn't already embedded in the narrative of our politics, I feel even more hopeless after reading your article than I did before (a feat I didn't think was possible). How is your article any different from David Broder's? At least he tried to propose solutions to the problems facing the system instead of trying to remove himself totally through cynical criticism.
What is missing is that - since you can't change the system - you'll have to change the moderates. Maybe that means forcing television news coverage of elections to be less about the horse race and more about the issues. Maybe that means raising the ceiling of how much political discourse is "proper." Maybe this means appealing to the moderate to not be afraid to be a little partisan (lord knows being a maverick didn't work for some). The important thing is to make an appeal or propose a solution. Without this, you do nothing but perpetuate the cynicism that causes moderates to be so hesitant to enter the discussion in the first place.
It doesn't take a Ph.D. in political science to know that pandering to the median voter is only going to bring about watered-down, ineffective legislation. That fact isn't any less obvious than "the escalation in Afghanistan is bad."
I am not hating on City Paper or the author of this column, I'd just like to see you stop underestimating the intellect of your readership. Instead of restating the obvious, why not use your expertise to--in the words of the commentator above--"make an appeal or propose a solution."