September 20, 2006
From the desk of Piers:So sue me
The unrest in Hungary, after the prime minister said that he and his cabinet lied about the economy for the past couple of years, makes me think again of an idea raised years ago in an Economist leader, that politicians should be given the option of making their campaign promises legally binding and actionable. A sort of opt-in, probably: if you wanted to make a promise that voters could sue you for flouting later, you would add a declaration to that effect. Would that be possible within existing law? What would it take to make it possible? I assume the desirability of it goes more or less without saying.
Posted by Piers at September 20, 2006 1:55 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksDoes any politician make any campaign promise with enough specificity to satisfy contract law?
"I'll expend the job growth initiatives." -> "Hey, I did, if you count my tax cut as a job growth initiative."
"I will NEVER cut health care spending." -> "I didn't cut health care spending, after you account for the phony deflation numbers I just churned out."
Aside from that, I think I understand the purpose of your proposal: to remove ambiguity about intent. I will never happen for the same reason women won't agree to a general declaration of "okay, THIS kind of rejection, from this point forward, for all women, means we REALLY, honest-to-God, want you to stop pursuing us, and anything else means 'keep trying'."
1) It is not possible under the law as it stands because buying votes, with money or promises, is contrary to what judges call "public policy."
2) There's a problem with standing: you can't sue someone unless they've caused an actual injury to you, and injuries to the electorate at large usually don't qualify as injuries to you, personally (at least in federal court). So unless the politician made a promise to you, personally: I'll get you a job, get a contract for your business, etc., then you can't sue. In Federal court, that's a constitutional requirement, so you'd need an amendment.
Besides, Politicians can always claim they didn't "cause" the failure, it was the damn Senate's fault (or whatever.)
3) No, it isn't desireable, even assuming it wouldn't overwhelm the courts with politically-driven suits, which it would. We already worry obsessively about influence-peddling and corruption by big campaign donations. Whom do you suppose would get more super-duper enforcable campaign promises: the powerful or the weak?
The issue of standing can always be addressed in the implementing legislation.
But I don't think that such legislation would be passed, nor should it be. One of the ways some of us evaluate politicians is to see whether they follow through on their campaign promises. This works, but better at the local level than at the state or national level.
But can you imagine the disarray if politicians were held to their compaign promises? Delicious thought.
Worst idea I've heard in ages.
Short terms will accomplish most of the same, with less potential for abuse, and without the insanity of every politician in the country defending himself against class-action-contract-law suits that'll take years to resolve in any case.
The would be equivalent to goverment by initatives (but worse, because less granular), and I'd argue CA has amply demonstrated already why that's a disaster.
What happens when two politicians with mutually exclusive promises get elected to the same body?
Who exactly has the right to sue? Do jilted constituencies file class action lawsuits, or is it left to individuals? Can you sue your representative even if you voted for the other candidate? Would it be better to set up an independent organization to police this stuff? Can we call it the Ministry of Truth?
"What happens when two politicians with mutually exclusive promises get elected to the same body?" Simple, they'd better vote oppositely on the bill. You can't hold a legislator to a promise to actually get a law passed or blocked, but if he was honest (yeah, right!) you would be able to count on him trying to keep his promises.
Is it desirable?
A former colleague observed that as an election approaches, politician's discount rates approach infinity. Which matches with my observations.
Another old saying is that everything is easy to the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
So an oppposition politician can be honestly promising to fix healthcare, thinking they could do a much better job of it than those idiots currently in power, and then be genuinely surprised when they reach office to discover that the whole situation is much more complicated than they thought.
So, politicians have incentives to make promises they can't, and perhaps shouldn't keep. They should resist those incentives, but if they fall then is it desirable to require them to fulfill those promises? If the first saying is right, do you want to really set up a mechanism by which lawsuits could drive a country into bankruptcy? If the second tenet is right, would lawsuits help at all in creating workable policy?
I don't approve of politicians lying to get elected, or get re-elected, or etc. But having campaign promises made legally binding would be dangerous as probably a fair chunk of campaign promises shouldn't be enforced.
"I'll expend the job growth initiatives."
Wow. That IS an honest politician.
It is perhaps instructive to look at the Contract with America. It came pretty darn close to being fulfilled.
A big part of why it was fulfilled was that it was VERY specific (ie, you could really tell whether it was being followed or not), it was very doable (*success* wasn't promised, but rather concrete actions by it's signatories), and it was very popular (no item was included in it that didn't poll at least 70% approval). No matter what you think of the substance of the Contract with America, it is the very model of the *structure* of how to organize a contract with the electorate.
But did the contract with america produce the results that people were expecting from actions. My impression that it was reforms to make the house run more honestly, but the same time they were setting up the K street project. There is more than one way to lie to voters.
Mr./Ms. Anony-mouse -- an unfortunate typo, to be sure ;-)
Joan,
Why should it matter per se? I mean, personally, I think its unrealistic to expect no intended consequences of rule changes, even for legislators.
That said, I'd be impressed enough to see politicians commit to the actual premises of their arguments. Perhaps a swap could be set up with Al Gore in which deviations of the median temperature over the next five years from their historic averages translate to cash payments going bilaterally.
I guess that poor folks would just use the Legal Services Corporation to file their lawsuits, so we'd need a huge increase in funding to LSC alone. Jane, you would get a standing ovation at the ABA convention with this idea...
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