Do federal elections really matter? The answer around the Tenth Amendment Center seems generally to be No. Perhaps a more nuanced way of answering the question would be, in the near term, Yes, but in the long run, No.
The trouble is with the place itself. Washington, D.C., has indeed become ‘ “the asylum of the base, idle, avaricious and ambitious” ’ that New York Anti-Federalist George Clinton predicted it would become (Bill Kauffman, Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet (hereafter FFDP), ISI Books, Wilmington, DE: 2008, p. XIII). It has a culture all its own, and when elected officials go there to serve out their terms of office, that culture has an effect on them.
‘I have smelt/Corruption in the dish, incense in the latrine, the sewer in the incense,…’ (T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral (MitC hereafter), HBJ, New York: 1963, p. 67)
Luther Martin, an Anti-Federalist from Maryland, described that troubling effect this way: ‘ “If he [a U.S. senator] has a family, he will take his family with him to the place where the government shall be fixed; that will become his home, and there is every reason to expect, that his future views and prospects will centre in the favors and emoluments of the general government…. [H]e is lost to his own State.” ’ (FFDP, p. 97)
Why should this surprise anyone? ‘Their paymaster in the federal city, predicted Martin, will absorb their energies and loyalties.’ (FFDP, p.37)
‘…the smell of sweet soap in the woodpath, a hellish sweet scent in the woodpath, while the ground heaved.’ (MitC, pp. 67-8.)
We may get a reprieve every so often…but all too soon the allure of the ‘federal city’ overwhelms the minds of the new arrivals and the independent, reforming spirit is dead. ‘…Only/The fool, fixed in his folly, may think/He can turn the wheel on which he turns,’ Eliot’s Thomas à Becket declared (MitC, p. 25). And today there is hardly a bigger fool than the one who thinks he can ‘change Washington’, rather than merely escape after his term has expired without that city devouring his soul.
‘I…have seen at noon/Scaly wings slanting over, huge and ridiculous. I have tasted/The savour of putrid flesh in the spoon.’ (MitC, pp. 66-7)
For the government in Washington, D.C. has become little more than a ‘death-bringer’ (MitC, p. 66), in some ways figuratively, as with our dignity and our property, but in a growing number of ways, literally, through unnecessary wars or over-regulation of food and medicine.
‘…Rings of light coiling downwards, descending/To the horror of the ape.’ (MitC, p. 68)
You may put away your talisman of elections. It has no effect on the corpse-citizens who perpetually inhabit our rotting, sepulchral capital city, who corrupt the well-meaning from the hinterlands, whose undying, ever-lusting appetites gnaw at their brains and hearts and spleens.
Far better would it be for us, now, to heed the words of Patrick Henry, the words our ancestors rejected in dissolving the Articles of Confederation and replacing them with the Constitution of 1787.
‘We fought then [the War for Independence with Great Britain] for what we are contending for now — to prevent an arbitrary deprivation of our property, contrary to our consent and inclination. I shall be told in this place that those who are to tax us are our representatives. To this I answer, that there is no real check to prevent their ruining us. There is no actual responsibility. The only semblance of a check is the negative power of not reëlecting them. This, sir, is but a feeble barrier, when their personal interest, their ambition and avarice, come to be put in contrast with the happiness of the people.’ (Speech before the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 9 June 1788, http://www.constitution.org/rc/rat_va_07.htm#henry-03)
With today's technology, we have a way to prevent that DC problem in future. First we go back to having a representative for the same number of people a representative represented at the time of the Founding (which vastly increases the number of representatives but brings those representatives closer to their constituents). Second, we return to senators representing their State, and being elected by vote of their State legislature. Third, all congressional business is done via teleconferencing, so that representatives and senators do not need to move from their hometown (again keeping them closer to those they represent). Fourth we let the constituents set the pay for their representatives with the ability to withhold pay for the representative's failure to represent. Fifth, we make it mandatory that each representative make it extremely easy for constituents to contact them. And sixth, and last, we wipe the books of all unconstitutional laws and SCOTUS judgments — if it is not enumerated in the Constitution, it is not allowed for the federal government to do (and that includes repealing all executive orders and reducing the executive branch back to the role it was supposed to have, executing the orders of congress).
We do similar with our State legislatures, and voila, we have government under the control of the governed, once again.
T.S. Eliot on TAC. Sweet!
Not even in the short term do federal elections matter – that is, unless you generally like the way things and believe the 5% of the turf that divided these politicians is really any meaningful ground to gain.
The problem described in the article is even true on the state level. My state, Texas, operates much like Washington, D.C. We have a handful of people driving almost all policy from Austin and trying to be one-size fits all for 30 million people.
I think the state is little different than the federal government is little different than all the governments of the world. It seems that change (real change) in furtherance of liberty and opportunity might only be available through a world-wide cultural shift that will operate much like the "Domino Theory."
What is happening here is not much different than in Greece, Egypt, etc. Of course, our population is generally fatter and more comfortable, and we might be slower to move than they are.
I am with you there!