RALEIGH – The worst possible reason to vote for an incumbent legislator or member of Congress is the argument from seniority. Unfortunately, we can expect to hear it repeatedly in 2008, as in all electoral cycles.
“Keep me in the capitol and I’ll get you stuff” is a self-serving and appalling pitch. So are late-night TV ads for chat lines, bodily enhancements, and guaranteed systems to make a killing on real estate with no money down. There is a key difference, though. Most viewers have sense enough not to believe that calling 976-BABE will actually put you on the phone with the willowy Miss Tawny reclining by the pool, or that ordering an upsized bottle of upsized pills will, uh, up your size, or that anyone brilliant enough to work out an unbeatable real-estate scheme would be stupid enough to market it to the entire public for $50 a pop.
But many viewers do appear to buy the line that they ought to vote to retain incumbents with whom they disagree so as to maximize the political clout of their district or state. These voters are horribly misguided.
While government spending is a significant – way too significant! – share of the economy, it isn’t predominant. Few jurisdictions have ever made themselves wealthy by securing government grants and facilities. Most people still derive, and will inevitably derive, their income from private transactions in the marketplace. While the federal and state governments can affect these transactions to some degree, it’s mostly to the negative, not the positive. Sure, when government performs its core services well, there can be a net economic gain. Safety, legal stability, and true public goods such as unlimited-access highways are cost-effective expenditures of taxpayer dollars. Also, some regulations are required to protect individual property rights in specific contexts where negotiation and litigation are impossible or problematic, and thus serve to maximize public well-being. Most of what governments tax away our resources to finance, however, meets none of these criteria. Such programs are simply transfers of wealth from those who created to those who didn’t, with a generous shipping and handling charge skimmed off the top by the political class in each capital city – by which I mean elected and appointed officials, lobbyists, campaign pros, and the media.
In theory, if voters could arrange it so that their representatives had enough seniority to ensure that their district is perpetually a large net recipient of these wealth transfers, one might see such an arrangement as in their interest. But this rarely happens in practice, because the seniority argument is employed and often heeded in every political jurisdiction. Seniority is only meaningful in a relative sense. In other words, if just about everybody is doing it, just about everybody is a sucker.
More importantly, even in the few districts that have a track record of scamming large lumps of fiscal largesse by reelecting their doddering incumbents for many decades in a row, the practical benefits turn out to be scant. Defenders of the seniority argument point to West Virginia, which has attracted a disproportionate amount of federal funds and installations. Well, what’s been the result? West Virginia remains one of the poorest states in the country, and is gaining population at a slower rate than most. West Virginians would gain far more from better overall federal governance than they ever would from the current system, which combines what is still a relatively small flow of federal cash from Washington with a much-larger stream of a fouler-smelling liquid.
Voters ought to choose their political leaders based on political ideas, not fanciful notions of outwitting distant climes and bring their money home to the district. Rather than allowing district representation in the General Assembly or Congress devolve into the political equivalent of a pack of wild dogs fighting over the morning’s kill, we ought to elevate it to what the Founders of our state and nation intended: a means of selecting leaders who bring varied views and experiences to the process of adopting sound public policies.
It makes sense to elect representative and senators based on geographic units, rather than in statewide or national slates, because it facilitates electoral competition and political diversity. Unfortunately, district representation brings with it the temptation to play pork-barrel politics and to protect out-of-touch incumbents by touting their seniority in the spoils system.
If you truly believe that reelecting a scalawag is in your interest because he will eventually have enough clout to get your tax money back, you are making a fool’s bet. Indeed, if you still think voting on seniority makes sense, I’d like a moment of your time to tell you about my unbeatable system for winning every blackjack table in Vegas – which I’ll sell you for, oh, $50.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.