Podcast Episode 6— Norm Ornstein Is Not Impressed With the Political ‘Realists’
Norm believes increasing voter participation and reducing the role of money in politics are the solutions for our broken politics. This puts him at odds with the ‘realist’ camp of Jonathan Rauch and Elaine Kamarck, who think we need to reassert the place and power of political parties and machine politics. Norm and his co-conspirators EJ Dionne and Thomas Mann also put more blame for our situation on the Republican Party. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote a book late last year with Thomas Mann and EJ Dionne called “One Nation After Trump.”
The iTunes link to Episode 5 is here, or if you want to listen right here in the browser, here’s the audio.
It’s the focus on the need to increase voter participation that really puts Ornstein, Dionne and Mann at odds with the political realist crowd. The realists don’t argue against participation, but they don’t think pushing that direction will solve anything. As Rauch and Wittes wrote in May, “Participation is not enough, and … overinvesting in it neglects other, more promising paths.”
“Organized minorities can and do ‘outvote’ disorganized majorities, and … latent majorities often fail to assemble in the first place … Voting is often less representative of public sentiment than are other, seemingly less democratic ways of making public decisions — for instance, through legislative give-and-take, which can balance many preferences, weigh preferences’ relative intensity and merit, and control the timing and sequencing of key decisions,” they wrote.
And they quoted University of Maryland law professor Maxwell Stearns, who wrote: “This does not mean that direct democracy should play no role in policymaking, but it does mean that it is important to consider the anti-democratic features of direct democracy rather than assuming that the mere fact of electoral voting renders the process democratic.”
This is at the heart of the disagreement between the realists and the other group, sometimes referred to in this discussion as the populists. I don’t know how well I kept the conversation with Ornstein focused on this. But it’s the thread that I think is important to follow. And on some points, Ornstein agreed with some realist ideas. He said he would be fine with Kamarck’s proposal to introduce a pre-primary convention or some other process where party officials and delegates approve and reject those who want to run in their primary. He was, however, skeptical that such a proposal would be approved. The link to Kamarck’s paper on that from earlier this year is in the show notes. Ornstein also said he didn’t think the Democratic Party should get rid of or cut back on super delegates, which I found very interesting. He also said he opposes open primaries, where you don’t have to be a member of a party to help decide who its nominee for any office is. That process, by the way, has been shown to increase partisanship, not reduce it.
So Norm is a believer in some forms of keeping parties in control of certain things. But just as the so-called “realists” don’t think Norm’s focus is the main answer, Norm doesn’t think their focus is the main answer either.
Show Notes:
Opening and closing song: “Mass Appeal” by Gangstarr.
Norm’s book from 2012, co-written with Thomas Mann and EJ Dionne, updated in 2016: “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks Was: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism.”
Norm’s book from 2006, co-written with Thomas Mann: “The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track.”
The paper by Jonathan Rauch and Ben Wittes from May 2017: “More professionalism, less populism: How voting makes us stupid, and what to do about it.”
Rauch & Wittes were responding in part to this paper from June 2015, by Mann and Dionne: “The futility of nostalgia and the romanticism of the new political realists.”
And here’s Elaine Kamarck’s paper from April 2017: “Re-inserting peer review in the American presidential nomination process.”
The exchange between Ornstein and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, at the beginning can be viewed here, and you can read about it here.
My profile from December on Warren Throckmorton, the evangelical professor who turned against ‘reparative therapy’ for gays.
My profile from September on Jemar Tisby, an African-American Christian living in the Deep South whose outlook on racial reconciliation darkened after the election of Donald Trump.
