I was at an engineering workshop in Berlin a few weeks back and was chatting over dinner with the attendees about our main gripes with politicians. Specifically, we focused on their impact on energy policy and government funding of energy research. Now mind you, we were already a bit on edge given that there was a single bartender staffed for 60-70 thirsty participants who had just come from a grueling two hour bus tour of the city(!), so take the commentary below within the context of this suffering.
A common refrain in our group was that election cycles, whether Presidential or Congressional, happen on time scales incompatible with real innovation in fields like energy or water. By innovation, I mean taking technologies that are still a glint in a scientist's eye in academia or national labs and following it through the entire life cycle: prove the science, demonstrate manufacturability, produce first prototypes, start full scale manufacturing, generate first revenue, ... become an industry leader. Such a process may span 2-3 Presidential or Congressional cycles, during which time the project or company may get killed for reasons totally unrelated to the technology or market...the dreaded and uncontrollable political death.
So what can we do about this?: (a) lengthen the election cycle or (b) make every politician a 1-termer? Neither sounds terribly appealing. The former, taken to its extreme, equals a dictatorship or another authoritarian-style regime. The latter might seem to make every politician ineffectual. However, I'd offer the 1-termer approach is far more politically palatable and might, counterintuitively, lead to greater progress in fields like energy.
I think what inhibits real work from being done in Washington right now is the amount of a politician's time that gets devoted to the re-election campaign (at minimum, the latter 18 months of a 48 month first term President), as well as the potentially conflicting priorities/agenda between ensuring re-electability versus doing what you actually campaigned for. Why does the electorate (irrespective of party) constantly complain about how much a politician diverges from his campaign promises? Is there any other way?
If you remove the "stability" of having that second term (I suggest re-elections are a relatively sure bet based on the last 30 years), I think a politician would feel far more accountable for keeping those campaign promises - they will certainly be fresher in the minds of those who elected him/her and they have only one shot at establishing their "legacy".
The other element of "stability" that we should do away with (although I have no proposed mechanism for accomplishing this) is to eliminate that guaranteed lobbying gig that awaits every former politician. Lobbying does have its place, I just don't think it should be a security blanket for an ex-politician. Like any other citizen of this country, have the politician's future employability depend on how well they conducted themselves during their term. Did they meet their metrics or not? Simply having the Presidential or Congressional gig shouldn't be the meal ticket to wealth that it is right now. A pipe dream, I realize...
On this same trip, I recently finished Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat, and Crowded". While I found some of it repetitive, I agreed with some of the sentiments concerning how this country should move on the policy front. One section toward the end really jumped out at me, where he suggested the "China for a day" solution.
"As far as I am concerned, China’s system of government is inferior to ours in every respect—except one. That is the ability of China’s current generation of leaders—if they want—to cut through all their legacy industries, all the pleading special interests, all the bureaucratic obstacles, all the worries of a voter backlash, and simply order top-down the sweeping changes in prices, regulations, standards, education, and infrastructure that reflect China’s long-term strategic national interests—changes that would normally take Western democracies years or decades to debate and implement."
As a case in point, he cites a 2007 degree by the government that shopkeepers across the country would be prohibited from distributing free plastic bags to discourage the mass usage of petroleum-based products; a measure that was to go into effect 6 months later. Contrast this with the 22 years it took us to fully move to unleaded gasoline!
This kind of rhetoric gets you instantly branded as a communist, but we are sometimes too democratic for our own good. I would suggest a slight modification to Friedman's proposal - perhaps we have one day of a scientifically-led oligarchy. A panel of the brightest most apolitical scientists are assembled to decree policy changes that are in our own best long-term interests, that we are unable to implement under our current gridlocked, partisan style of government.
Alas, the rub is we need to ask these same ineffectual politicians for permission to have their power taken away from them for a day. How long do you think that piece of legislation would take to get passed?
