Short-Sighted Legislators Wearing I-Glasses

Champagne glasses tinkled as the GOP celebrated the first 100 days of its revolution in Washington.

Conservatives in Spring-field have been doing quite a bit of back slapping after their massive reform of the civil justice system easily passed through both houses of the legislature. Life will be quite different from what we now know it. Welfare reform. Tax reform. Economic reform. Civil justice reform. Bureaucratic reform.

It causes one to ponder: Who really should make public policy? And how should it be determined?

Being elected to public office doesn't necessarily mean the electorate wants that person's values or the fine print contained in his Contract. It means it wants that person to carry out the constituency's goals and desires. Legislators should be motivated by public spirit rather than self-interest.

But how does an elected official do that, particularly when the American public may send inconsistent or even contradictory demands?

I submit it is through rational discourse rather than strategic, self-maximizing behavior.

It is through open debate on all aspects of the issues, not through the blind pursuit of some kind of bogus mandate. It is through an examination of the causes and effects of the social problems being solved, not just on the few, but on the whole.

It is through focussing on long-term solutions, rather than on short cuts. And it is through compromise. Com-promise represents democracy in action.

Now, though, Republicans appear dedicated to crippling the minority party in its efforts to gain long-term control of many areas of American life. And doing it with an air of cavalier disregard.

I found myself in the library taking a book off the shelf that I hadn't read since my seventh grade civics class - The Federalist papers.

A collection of newspaper essays written in the 1780s by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison, it explains the purpose and intent of the Constitution. And it gives Americans some idea of just how public policy should be made in this country.

For instance, James Madison wrote, "[Y]et what are many of the most important acts of legislation but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens?

And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine? Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other.

Justice ought to hold the balance between them."

When the framers of the Constitution gave policymaking supremacy to the legislative branch of government, it could not possibly have foreseen the hold special interest groups would have 200 years later.

These dominant groups obviously exercise public authority.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the outgrowth of these forces became evident in new social regulations such as the creation of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. In the formation of each of these new agencies, a coalition of consumer, environmental, labor and other groups representing broad social interests triumphed over the narrower, more concentrated interests of business in committing the nation to bold new policies.

But now in this age of economic uncertainty, commitment to laudable social goals has given way to a system weighted in favor of what Harry Truman labeled "big money" in referring to the stranglehold of business interests.

And the driving force of these new powerful special interest groups is that the players work to protect and advance their own interests. When legislators grant these organized groups a disproportionate and determinative effect on public policy, democracy takes on a conspiratorial flavor.

This concept became apparent to me after recently talking to one Democratic legislator in Springfield who, although personally disavowing tort reform, nevertheless voted in favor of it. His reason? "Big money" financed his campaign and, therefore, brought him to the dance so that he could work on other important measures such as education, welfare and crime control. Tort reform became the trade-off.

Remember that when Democrats were in power, they were not proactive in changing the rules of the game, but, instead, worked for years to preserve common law rights.

True, politics has become much more competitive in the last couple of decades as special interest groups corner the political market and affect broad social interests.

But if legislators are not to lose the confidence of a public frustrated with its performance, then elected officials must not simply reflect specialized interests or every change in public opinion.

What it all means is that the public deserved better than the short-sighted solutions offered in Washington and Springfield today. In the words of Congressman Henry Hyde, "America needs leaders. It needs statesmen. It needs giants, and you do not get them out of the phone book."