Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.comment From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Blackout for a winner Date: Thu, 19 Nov 92 15:23:03 EST Message-ID: \SE G;COMMENTARY \SS (WS) \HD Blackout for a winner \BY Joseph Sobran The biggest winner on Nov. 3 wasn't a candidate. It was the term-limits movement, which won in all of the 14 states where it was on the ballot. Of those 14 contests, 13 were landslides. The national news media have been so busy celebrating Bill Clinton's 43 percent "mandate" that they have hardly reported on the stunning victory of the term-limits initiatives - which passed by margins of 52 percent to 77 percent. The average margin was 66 percent. The initiatives won 6 million votes in California, 3.5 million in Florida, 2.9 million in Ohio, 2.3 million in Michigan, 1.6 million in Missouri, and nearly a million each in Arizona and Washington (the only state where the vote was even close). All in all, term limits amassed, in the 14 states, nearly 21 million votes. That's more than Ross Perot, another barometer of popular disgust with politics as we alas know it, won in all 50 states together. And it's far more than the 14 million votes Bill Clinton won in those same 14 states. The media, for whom bigger government is better government, have chosen to play down this profound expression of voter hatred of the sort of career politicians with whom Bill Clinton has just been huddling and cuddling in Little Rock. The three chief newsweeklies have made only the most glancing mention of the portentous story. No wonder the career pols want to keep term limits off the ballot or, failing that, pressure the courts to declare the whole idea unconstitutional. Last year the Ways and Means Subcommittee of the California Assembly tried to cut the state Supreme Court's budget by a drastic 38 percent in retaliation for its ruling that term limits for state legislators are permissible. Will the U.S. Supreme Court face similar reprisals if it upholds term limits for Congress? Will it have the courage to try? While the pols try to block the people's will, their allies in the print media are offering us a set of flawed arguments against the whole idea. Chief among these is that term limits are "undemocratic." Of course they are! That's exactly why the people want them. The Constitution, after all, sets firm limits on the popular will, because the great majority of us oppose untrammeled majority rule. We are told that the people should have the right to choose their own representatives. True, up to a point. But the guy who represents you also exercises power over me, and I don't want any representative to acquire too much power by holding an office until he thinks he owns it. We are told that term limits would have aborted the careers of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and Hubert Humphrey. That's like saying that republican government has deprived us of the chance to be ruled by an Emperor Justinian, a Queen Elizabeth I or a Louis XIV. It may be heartbreaking to those who enjoy coronations and royal processions, but that's the price we pay. And not everyone agrees that abridging the career of Hubert Humphrey, a chronic big spender and consistent advocate of the Leviathan state, would have been a huge loss. This argument reminds me of the New York Times book reviewer who, assessing Robert Caro's scalding biography of Lyndon Johnson, pointed out that if LBJ hadn't stuffed the ballot boxes in Texas during the 1948 senatorial election, we might not have gotten the 1964 Civil Rights Act. I once heard Gus Hall, perennial head of the U.S. Communist Party, make a similar defense of Stalin. The two big parties have brought term limits on themselves. The trouble with all their arguments is that they assume we are now getting optimum or maximum choices, which we are not. Both parties conspire to keep third parties off the ballot and to maximize the incumbency, to borrow an old phrase, of the two parties. Meanwhile, the media pretend that this is the best of all possible systems and ignore third-party candidates. Now they are also ignoring the fantastic success of the term-limits movement in its first test. Pretty soon they will have to pay attention. Joseph Sobran, critic-at-large for National Review, is a nationally syndicated columnist. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM