An op-ed published Sunday by The New York Times calls for the elimination of future midterm elections, just two days before Democrats are expected to lose their Senate majority.
The piece co-authored by Duke University professor David Schanzer, a former Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill and advisor to then-Sen. Joe Biden, argues that the Congress-only election unduly interferes with a president’s agenda and is an unnecessary referendum on the federal government.
“Twitter, ubiquitous video cameras, 24-hour cable news and a host of other technologies provide a level of hyper-accountability the framers could not possibly have imagined,” Schanzer and a Duke student, Jay Sullivan, write. “In the modern age, we do not need an election every two years to communicate voters’ desires to their elected officials.”
To conduct such an election in the present day, they continue, is essentially “to weaken the president” and nothing more.
“The realities of the modern election cycle are that we spend almost two years selecting a president with a well-developed agenda, but then, less than two years after the inauguration, the midterm election cripples that same president’s ability to advance that agenda.”
That opinion obviously depicts Congress as a subordinate body.
Schanzer and Sullivan’s solution is to scrap the midterm elections altogether and elect members of the House and Senate only when the nation also selects its president. House terms would become four years, and Senate terms either four or eight years.
The sentiment is understandable. The financial nature of national politics particularly compels House members to begin raising money almost immediately after an election, interrupting their time spent on the jobs they were elected to do. It’s an obligatory part of the process that affects newcomers and representatives of hotly contested districts, though the number of those in existence has shrunk as House territory has become more partisan and the number of competitive seats fewer in number.
Schanzer and Sullivan only use that critique as a supplementary point, however, basing their position on a broader view that midterm elections trip the lawmaking process and, pouty face, present a political inconvenience to the White House. Especially the current one.
“By Tuesday night about 90 million Americans will have cast ballots in an election that’s almost certain to create greater partisan divisions, increase gridlock and render governance of our complex nation even more difficult,” the op-ed begins, in what can only be interpreted as a lamentation that Republicans stand to do well.
It was only 28 years ago that President Reagan worked with Congressional Democrats to enact tax reform, 18 years ago that President Clinton worked with Congressional Republicans to enact welfare reform, and 8 years ago that the Medicare prescription drug benefit, a central component of healthcare legislation for which Republicans relied on Democratic support, took effect.
Sometimes it’s not a midterm election that’s the problem. It’s the White House that works with the product of the election.
This one doesn’t seem terribly interested. It never has been.
