Make mine a Republic

I was having a conversation with a very young friend of mine a few years ago.   We were talking about the 2000 Presidential Election.   You might remember that one.   It’s the one where we didn’t get to find out who really won for a few months.  She was saying that it didn’t make sense to her that Al Gore had more votes (meaning the popular vote) but that George Bush won.   I explained that it made perfect sense.   I told her that in our form of government, the people do not elect presidents, the states do.   This is an important distinction for children to understand, and older Americans as well.

                America was set up to be a republic in the Constitution.  A republic is a system of rule where the government is elected.   A democracy is form where the people vote for things.   America is certainly a democracy in some ways, but we are a representative democracy, at least at the national level.   We vote for some of our leaders, who then build a government through a system of appointments.   Back in the good old days, Senators were actually appointed by state legislatures, but I digress.    The point is that the people are only supposed to have a certain amount of control in getting their elected leaders into key places.   This is the role of the people in government.   The reason for setting this system up this way is pretty simple.   The people, on the whole, are idiots.

                That’s probably a little harsh.   The people aren’t really idiots, but they are whimsical.  They are also busy.   The people do not take the time to become educated well enough on the issues to be able to effectively run a democracy.  We have to depend on those that we have entrusted to be our leaders that they do educate themselves.  We also have to depend on them to take a longer term view of where our country is going.   It’s too bad that they don’t, but I assure you that allowing the people to vote for everything would be far worse.

                Let’s consider Oregon, the state where I live, although I’m not sure for how much longer.   Oregon is dangerously close to a direct democracy.   It is extremely easy to get measures put on the ballot.   Consequently, we have tons of ballot measures to wade through every election.   Many of them are constitutional amendments.   Many of them are stupid!  We vote for the most ridiculous crap.  Sometimes it’s good; we pass things that I think are good ideas that probably never would have happened in a representative democracy.   Other times we pass stuff that I just have to shake my head and say to myself, “You people are idiots.”    The real problem though is that we have no real foresight.   We pass laws, and worse constitutional amendments, based on the feelings of the day.   We pass them with the bulk of the electorate reading a one sentence summary of the ballot measure and then making a decision.   I’ll take my representative government please.

                The bottom line is that I like living in a republic.   I like the fact that I can vote for my representatives who will, hopefully, make it their job to represent me.   We all need to be diligent in doing our part in how we are governed.   Just like no single branch of government has too much control, the people cannot have too much control either.   We get our chances to have our voice.   We get to send someone to the House of Representatives every two years.   We get to send two people to the Senate every six years, on a staggered schedule.   We get to decide who our state’s electoral votes for President will go toward every 4 years.   We decide our state government along similar lines depending on the laws of the particular state.  This is the control we have.   Use it wisely.