I watched with some amazement the Ames straw poll. The process is truly bizarre and yet for some reason it was treated as some kind of major political event. A straw poll, as the name implies, is a quick way to see which way the wind is blowing at one particular instant, and it is absurd to use it for anything more. And yet, such a poll resulted in the elimination of Tim Pawlenty from the Republican race.

Just think about it. Less than 17,000 votes were cast. As of 2008, there were 206 million voting age citizens. So 0.008% of the voting age population, all located in a small part of the country and representing very narrow interests, denied the rest of the country the chance to decide if they thought Pawlenty would make a good president.

Let me make it clear that I am not holding a brief for Pawlenty. I did not like his politics and he showed that he was willing to pander to the nutty base of the party as enthusiastically as the rest. For all I know, he may have run an awful campaign in Ames. But he did not seem to be obviously insane and did serve as a governor of a major state for two terms and this should at least count for something. The point I want to make is that it is crazy to allow such a narrow segment of the population to have such a major voice in determining who should or should not be the president and allow them to summarily eliminate candidates who, at least on the basis of their resumes, deserve to be taken seriously.

In his fine book Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (2010), constitutional scholar Richard Beeman describes the extended discussions the Founding Fathers had during the summer of 1787 as they tried to figure out the best way to elect a president. The problem they faced was that the president had to represent the nation as a whole but the state of communications was so poor and travel so difficult that, apart from war hero George Washington, they feared that the public scattered across the thirteen states would not have the knowledge to vote for someone who was outside their region or state. They feared that a truly democratic election in which each citizen cast one vote directly for the president would result in each state’s voters choosing their ‘favorite son’ for president, leading to an inconclusive result. They were also somewhat contemptuous of the wisdom, integrity, and intelligence of ordinary citizens and feared that they could be easily manipulated into voting for self-seeking and unscrupulous but charismatic politicians.

Hence the Founding Fathers developed the complicated indirect voting system that we call the Electoral College, whereby the voters in each state would vote for Electors who would in turn vote for the president. The hope was that these Electors would be from among the best and the brightest people in the state and most knowledgeable about national affairs and thus would cast an informed vote. But even this safeguard was considered insufficient since they feared that the numbers of Electors from each state was so small (varying from three each from Rhode Island and Delaware to twelve from Virginia) that they could be too strongly influenced or manipulated or even bribed by ambitious state politicians to vote for them. Hence they put in an additional requirement that each Elector had to cast two votes, at least one of which should be for someone from outside their own state. The hope was that it was from the votes cast for an out-of-state candidate that a truly national figure would emerge.

But they added even more precautions. If as a result of this process, no single candidate emerged with a majority of votes in the Electoral College, then the House of Representatives would vote from among the top five candidates. In this final election, each state’s delegation would have just one vote. They hoped that this elaborate process would allow for the election of someone who could rise about the parochial interests of his home state and represent the interests of the new nation as a whole.

In April 1789 George Washington was elected the first president under this system, having received every one of the Electoral College votes cast. But of course, the main concern was not about Washington, who was always expected to be a shoo-in for the post, but to ensure that someone close to his stature would be elected once he left office.

But look what we have now. Unlike in 1787, we have rapid travel and almost instantaneous universal communication so that all voters everywhere have access to information about all the candidates. The difficult conditions that the founders designed their system to overcome no longer apply. And yet, rather than having a system that takes advantage of the elimination of those constraints to select a truly national candidate, what the Ames straw poll illustrates is that we have actually gone into reverse, granting a tiny, self-selected, and highly parochial group the right to decide who are the candidates worth considering and whom to eliminate.

The whole process is also profoundly anti-democratic and corrupt. The candidates buy tickets ($30 each) to enable people to participate, with the candidates acting like carnival barkers luring people to their particular sideshow. Michele Bachmann spent $180,000 to buy 6,000 tickets, of which almost 5,000 voted for her.

The media elevated this non-event to something of significance and also skewed the interpretation of the results. Ron Paul essentially tied with Bachmann in the vote (the difference was less than 1%) and yet the media treat her as if she was the sole winner and ignore Paul.

The most important quality that a candidate needs to possess to win the Ames straw poll is the ability to coax and bribe a tiny group of people to vote for them. This is precisely what the Founding Fathers sought to avoid. So why are we giving this non-event so much prominence instead of consigning it to the oblivion it deserves?

When I made my own predictions about what would likely happen in the budgetary process with the so-called Super Committee, it was even before the members of the committee had been selected because according to my model of how politics works, when it comes to basic issues of the economy, the decisions are made off-stage behind the scenes by the oligarchy and the political leadership, and the people deliberating these things in public are merely actors giving us the impression that they are deciding things.

It is important to note that the actors themselves may be quite sincere in thinking that they are autonomous agents, freely deciding the issues. But the reality is that by the time they reach those positions, the people who might do something that the oligarchy does not want have long been filtered out, because the system works well in creating the kinds of pressures that result in pre-ordained conclusions. The personal views of politicians become important only in those cases where the oligarchy does not care about the outcome (guns, gays, abortion, pledge of allegiance, burning the flag, compact fluorescent light bulbs, etc.)

This model differs considerably from the standard approach because many liberal commentators tend to still have enormous faith in the good intentions of the politicians who say they have liberal goals. For example, now that the Super Committee has been constituted, there has been considerable analysis of the past record and statements of its members, with a view to getting clues as to how they might decide. Steve Benen runs the liberal Political Animal blog over at the Washington Monthly. He is good source for political news because he scours the wire services for news and aggregates it is a useful way. But a recent post of his illustrates the basic flaw with many liberal commentators who place their faith in the supposedly good intentions of Democratic leaders rather than paying attention to what they actually do.

After listing Nancy Pelosi’s nominees to the Super Committee, people whose past records suggest that they may well agree to cuts in entitlements and no increase in taxes on the rich, he says the following:

I suspect the key takeaway from the House Democratic selections is that all three are key, close allies of Pelosi, and they will very likely be representing her interests during the negotiations.

Since I like Pelosi and agree with her expectations for the process, I consider this a positive development.

He is hopeful about the outcome because he ‘likes Pelosi’ and agrees with her ‘expectations’ for the process. But let’s look at Pelosi’s rhetorical trajectory, which is the standard Democratic one of first raising expectations amongst the base of the party and then slowly talking them down. On August 2, this was her position:

At a pre-recess press conference Tuesday afternoon, TPM asked House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) whether the people she appoints to the committee will make the same stand she made during the debt limit fight — that entitlement benefits — as opposed to provider payments, waste and other Medicare spending — should be off limits.

In short, yes.

“That is a priority for us,” Pelosi said. “But let me say it is more than a priority – it is a value… it’s an ethic for the American people. It is one that all of the members of our caucus share. So that I know that whoever’s at that table will be someone who will fight to protect those benefits.”

Then on August 4, she began the familiar backtracking, using the ‘trigger’ of automatic cuts as the excuse:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says her caucus will be broadly united in a fight to protect Medicare and other successful programs from cuts when the committee convenes to reduce deficits by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years. But neither she nor the people she appoints to that committee will publicly draw bright lines.
…
Far from suggesting that the Democrats she appoints on the committee will keep a wide-open mind to cutting benefits for seniors, she emphasized that her caucus is broadly unified against such measures. But she also said House Democrats on the committee will work toward a solution that’s better than allowing an enforcement mechanism — $500 billion in defense cuts, and domestic spending reductions, including a two percent cut to Medicare providers — to take effect. (My italics)

Then a little later she appoints people to the Super Committee who might well give in on cuts to Social Security.

That’s how it works. In this strip from 2010, cartoonist Tom Tomorrow describes Obama’s use of this same strategy during the health care debate.

Benen is a thoughtful person and generally good on issues so I do not want to be too hard on him. But his willingness to trust in the good intentions of democratic politicians symbolizes the weakness of mainstream liberal commentators. He reminds me of Kevin Drum at Mother Jones who said on an earlier occasion:

If it had been my call, I wouldn’t have gone into Libya. But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his judgment. And not in any merely abstract way, either: I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I’d literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he’s smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted. I voted for him because I trust his judgment, and I still do.

These people keep putting their trust in the good intentions of Democratic politicians, however many times their expectations are dashed. I am not sure why.

When the inevitable sellout occurs, watch for the Democratic leadership to proclaim it as a big victory because they supposedly prevented something much worse.