Maine news, sports, weather | Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

Slow government must evolve in modern age

My last letter mentioned the issue of term limits. Although we live, unconcernedly, in the Post-FDR era of two terms for our presidents, many protest that term limits for our legislators impose unfair constraints on their freedom to remain in office while developing know-how and gaining power to benefit their constituents.

Unfortunately, that know-how and power are exactly the problem. These are career politicians who learn to manipulate the system in order to obstruct, subvert, and clog up the works, while spending more time raising money for their continuous election campaigns than working for the nation. As a result most of them end up beholden to special interests.

I encourage you to read George Packer's August 9 New Yorker article "The Empty Chamber," investigating the current dysfunctional U.S. Senate, a bipartisan overview. George Washington opposed the formation of political parties. He envisioned correctly that they would stifle individuality and force lock-step loyalty while fostering partisanship and a drift toward extremes on both left and right. We're living it today.

The journalist George Will asserts that our government was structured to insure slowness in legislative matters, insuring complex deliberation in decision making. He's correct, and it's something we do not want to abandon entirely -- but we need vast reform.

Consider the world of our "founding fathers." Largely rural. Country roads. No radio, T.V., or telephone. No cars, no airplanes, and certainly no Internet. People and information moved slowly. Most legislators did not live in the capitol, but traveled to and from, sacrificing time and money to serve the nation.

And we needed that slow governmental process to preclude quick power plays by small groups seeking to push through unexamined legislation. Much has changed, and now ...

Abbott Meader

Oakland