Liberals find democracy a scary thing

Washington Times Editorial:

Liberals have isolated the problem in American politics today: There is just too much democracy. The incessant demands of the unwashed masses are far too distracting for the philosopher kings in the government to get any work done.

North Carolina Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue now claims she was joking when she suggested that congressional elections be suspended to remove the inconvenient pressure of public opinion from the backs of harried legislators. “I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections forCongress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover,” she said this week. “You want people who don’t worry about the next election.”

The governor’s twisted logic aside, any member of Congress can choose to do what he believes to be the right thing and not worry about the next election. Mrs. Perdue wants incompetent legislators to have the opportunity not only to engage in unpopular behavior but never to have to pay a price for it. They get to have their cake and tell the electorate to eat it.

Former White House Budget Director Peter Orszag chimed in this week with his suggestion that to solve the country’s problems, “we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.” Mr. Orszag is attempting to make a virtue out of cowardice, allowing legislators to hand off the hard questions to others while retaining their seats in Congress to hand out favors and make ceremonial proclamations. Despite Mr. Orszag’s romantic pretensions, this escapism is anything but radical; it is an incumbent-protection program.

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Voters are strange when you are a stranger to what voters want.  As Democrats see their policies rejected by voters they want to stack the deck to thwart the will of the people.  That is something despots through out history have wanted.