(From the
Washington Post, July 28, 1977]
Initiative, the Populism’
Voguish Darling
(By George F. Will)
Professor Martin Diamond, foremost contemporary
scholar of the Founding Fathers’ thought, believed the principle of
representation to be the rivet securing the republican system. Unfortunately, a
campaign has begun to derogate that principle.
Sen. James Abourezk (D-S.D.) proposes a constitutional
amendment to establish an initiative process whereby citizens could propose and
enact laws. Proposal would be by petitions containing signatures equal in
number to three per cent of the voters in the last presidential election.
The nature of mass appeals, and the fact that the full
text must accompany each petition, means most proposals would be simpler than
most laws passed after full legislative deliberations. Proposals would tend to
be spare declarative injunctions—for or against (for example) nuclear power,
abortion or other divisive matters that cannot be handled prudently with simple
stipulations.
Elected leaders would use the initiative as another
excuse to flinch from leadership. In California, the most important of 23
states that have the initiative, most questions are placed on the ballot by
the legislature. Abourezks amendment would not permit Congress to do that, but
it would enable Congress to duck divisive issues by Insisting that they are
“properly” problems for “the people” to resolve.
Some laws enacted by initiative would require
appropriations from Congress; others would involve revenue losses. (We can
assume the initiative might be used to lower, not raise, taxes.) So the
initiative would violate the principle that the body that decides to spend
money should be responsible for raising it.
It is said the Initiative would be therapeutic for
persons too “alienated” to vote in regular elections. Even assuming that
“alienation” extends beyond persons who use that word, it is unlikely that
those who do not vote for Presidents will be stirred by initiative appeals. And
advocates of the initiative cannot cite particular public desires that have
been neglected by representatives and should be satisfied by Initiatives.
The Initiative proposal Is an Idea congruent with the vague populist Impulse of the
day. Thus Abourezk justifies the Initiative on the ground that “our democracy
is based on the notion that the people can
govern themselves.” But that Is not strictly correct, even when G.K~ Chesterton
says It.
Democracy, Chesterton said, Is not like writing poetry
or playing the church organ, because “these things we do not wish a man to do
at all unless he does
them well. [Democracy Is, on the
contrary, a thing analogous to writing one’s own love letters or blowing one’s
own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them
badly.”
But that is too simple and sentimental. So was Hiram
Johnson, California’s populist governor, when In 1911 he endorsed the
Initiative because he believed in the ability of “the people” to govern. But
“the people” are not supposed to govern: they are not supposed to decide
issues. They are supposed to decide who will decide.
As Martin Diamond put It, there is no source of power
but the people, but the exercise of power Is the function of representatives.
Abourezk says six of the last 10 constitutional
amendments “have In some way extended voting rights,” so the initiative would
be just “a further step In this evolutionary process.” But the initiative would
be decisively different; it would not expand the electorate, it would alter the
function of the electorate. Only the 17th Amendment—popular election of
senators—did that. And the initiative would do so at the expense of the
principle of representation.
Advocates of the Initiative say representative government is “government by elites”:
the representatives and the “interests” who lobby them. But any national
initiative would be dominated by an intense, unelected minority using direct
mail, television commercials and other techniques of mass persuasion.
As Professor Diamond understood, clear, settled opinion
about policy rarely spouts spontaneously from the public. It is best given
shape by representative Institutions, which, unlike “the people,” are
deliberative bodies.
Martin Diamond died last week in his 58th year, minutes after testifying to the Senate against another proposed distortion of the Founders’ system; abolition of the electoral vote system. His death is a. sorrow to his many students and other friends, and a wound to the Republic that was the subject and beneficiary of his scholarship.