Heather Gerken

 

Recent Posts by Heather Gerken

  • New Agenda for America: Will History Repeat Itself?

    Oct 29, 2009Heather Gerken

    question-mark-150To mark the 80th Anniversary of the Great Crash of ‘29, we asked 15 progressive thinkers to write about lessons learned and what lies ahead.

    question-mark-150To mark the 80th Anniversary of the Great Crash of ‘29, we asked 15 progressive thinkers to write about lessons learned and what lies ahead. Together, their reflections constitute a New Agenda for America — a message of how the ideals of a fair society should apply to the economic and social policies of our time.

    Rahm Emanuel summed up the most important lesson of the Crash of 1929: "never let a serious crisis go to waste."

    The reason is simple. Policy depends on politics, and our democracy is not well suited to getting a lot done quickly. A year ago, many thought that the Obama administration would be able to pass any legislation it wanted because it had so many energized supporters and such an impressive grassroots network. That was a mistake. Electioneering is different from governing. Note, for instance, how hard it's been to convert 'Obama for America' into an equally muscular'Organizing for America'. Elections are the rare moments when voters pay attention; the drama of the race focuses people's attention on the issues, and candidates provide human stand-ins for abstract policy proposals.

    When candidates turn to the workaday project of governing, voters tend to fall away. They stop organizing, they stop volunteering . . . they even stop paying attention. That's a problem if you want to pass something in Washington, where killing legislation is perhaps the ugliest form of blood sport, if only because it's so easy to do.

    The New Deal 1.0 got passed because voters stayed engaged even after Roosevelt moved from campaigning to governing. If that were just because of Roosevelt's personal appeal, then we might think that the charismatic Obama can match his achievements. But the architects of the New Deal 1.0 had a good deal more than a charismatic president. They had the Great Depression. Depressions involve terrible human costs, which is precisely why they have such a powerful ability to concentrate the electorate's mind. The New Dealers used voters' hunger for change to push through massive reform. They didn't let the crisis go to waste. The question is whether historians will be able to say the same thing of the Obama administration.



    Roosevelt Institute Braintruster Heather Gerken is the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale Law School.

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  • Beyond elephants and donkeys

    Jun 5, 2009Heather Gerken

    elephant-and-donkey-200How can we prevent our political system from giving us more of the same?  Heather Gerken recommends methods for holding politicians accountable.

    elephant-and-donkey-200How can we prevent our political system from giving us more of the same?  Heather Gerken recommends methods for holding politicians accountable.

    Let's start by being realistic: Even a wildly popular president elected by engaged and passionate supporters will have trouble getting his program passed when the workaday project of governance begins.  Passing New Deal 2.0 is likely to require what Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter called a “civically militant electorate,” and such electorates are a rarity in American politics once the drama of an election subsides.

    One strategy for creating Democracy 2.0 is to figure out how to maintain a civically militant electorate after the election is over.   Can we scare politicians into believing that if they don’t do the right thing, the electorate will hold them accountable?

    Anyone familiar with the astonishingly high re-election rates in Congress will be deeply skeptical of this approach.  Even when voters want to hold politicians accountable, they often lack the wherewithal to do so.  It’s not because voters are stupid.  It’s simply that refereeing most policy debates requires a level of expertise that few of us possess.

    Voters do have a rough proxy for holding their representatives accountable:  party identifications.  According to Morris Fiorina, while voters don’t know the details of how their representatives vote, they keep a running tally of how things are working under each party and vote accordingly.  Party identification, then, is a decision-making shortcut.  It allows voters to make choices they feel are sensible without knowing every detail about an individual candidate’s positions.

    That won't work for Democracy 2.0.  The problem is that voting based on party isn’t usually enough to put the fear of God into politicians.  Party identification is too rough a proxy for specific issues.  Americans want health care reform, yet they routinely vote for politicians who don’t provide it.  As long as people vote based on general conditions, not specific legislative failures, the status quo remains a pretty safe option for politicians.

    The question is whether we can give voters more finely tuned shortcuts so that they start punishing politicians not just for presiding over a fiscal crisis, but for failing to enact health care reform.  Rankings can sometimes do that, as I talk about in my book, The Democracy Index: Why Our Election System is Failing and How to Fix It. There, I propose ranking states and localities based on election performance.  The Democracy Index provides a better shortcut for voters than partisan identification.  For instance, while a “D” or an “R” might tell voters where a secretary of state stands on issues like felon disenfranchisement, members of both parties are capable of running elections badly.  A Democracy Index would help voters cast a ballot based on what matters to them – well-run elections.

    We can imagine other decision-making shortcuts that voters might use.  A number of scholars, myself included, have argued that we should create citizen commissions to weigh in on policy debates.  Like rankings, citizen commissions would help improve the workaday machinery of political representation.  While citizens’ assemblies may not turn voters into a civically militant electorate, they should give voters a sense of how a civically militant electorate would think about a specific policy issue.  Here again, the citizen commission could provide a useful shortcut to voters, and an alternative to party identification.

    Braintruster Heather Gerken is the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale Law School.

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  • Will "Yes We Can" Become "Well, We Tried"?

    Jun 2, 2009Heather Gerken

    thumbs-up-thumbs-down-200Winning campaigns and running a country are two different things -- and Obama is in danger of losing momentum on the latter. Heather Gerken describes how those of us still mobilized can help keep the country on track.

    thumbs-up-thumbs-down-200Winning campaigns and running a country are two different things -- and Obama is in danger of losing momentum on the latter. Heather Gerken describes how those of us still mobilized can help keep the country on track.

    While it is quite exciting to think about the transformative policies a New Deal 2.0 might bring, it is worth noting that at some point the Obama Administration is going to have to get these policies passed. And coming up with a great idea is often easier than making it a reality. Especially in Washington, where killing legislation is an ugly blood sport, if only because it’s so easy to do.

    Some naively think that the Obama administration can pass anything it wants because the Obama campaign had so many energized supporters and such an impressive grassroots network. That’s a mistake. Electioneering is different from governing. Note, for instance, how hard it’s been to convert Obama for America into an equally muscular Organizing for America. Elections are the rare moments when voters pay attention; the drama of the race focuses people’s attention on the issues, and candidates provide human stand-ins for abstract policy proposals. Politics is what happens when policy gets personal.

    When candidates turn to the workaday project of governing, voters tend to fall away. They stop organizing, they stop volunteering...they even stop paying attention.

    The first New Deal got passed because voters stayed engaged even after Roosevelt moved from campaigning to governing. If that were just because of Roosevelt’s personal appeal, then we might think that the charismatic Obama can match his achievements. But the architects of the New Deal had a good deal more than a charismatic president. They had the Great Depression. Depressions involve terrible human costs, which is precisely they have such a powerful ability to concentrate the electorate’s mind.

    The jury is still out on whether we are entering into anything like a Great Depression, but surely we think that New Deal 2.0 is worth passing, even if our financial troubles start to lift soon. The question is this: How can we create Democracy 2.0 capable of passing it, in the absence of a Great Depression?

    Organizing for America is a step in the right direction. If anyone can make it work, it is the geniuses behind Obama’s ground game. Organizing for America is a new model, redirecting party activists toward governance rather than letting them lay dormant until the next election. The political progeny of Internet 2.0 – MoveOn, Talking Points Memo, DailyKos, and ActBlue – also offers promising new models for keeping voters engaged in the project of governance. Like political parties, they raise issues, frame policy debates and energize supporters. They are capable of sustaining a broad reform platform (in contrast to interest groups, which coalesce around single issues). And they bundle money, votes, and volunteers (again, in contrast to interest groups, which usually serve as vote bundlers, like unions, or as money bundlers, like special interest groups).

    But because these institutions work outside of the party structure, they work outside of the election cycle. They thus may be capable of keeping voters sufficiently involved in the project of governance to hold politicians feet to the fire.

    Braintruster Heather Gerken is the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale Law School.

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