Let’s vote for plans, not politicians

We need to get rid of politicians.

The problem with politicians is that they are merely a figurehead. If they look like this, they will get this vote. If they say that, they will secure that vote. If they are into this thing, they will appeal to this group. If they stay neutral on this topic, they will be able to reach this larger group. 

To have a hope of winning the presidency, parties must put forth the most voteable candidate: the person who can stack up on that list and appeal to the widest possible group: the women vote, the Christian vote, the blue-collar vote, the Black vote, the Hispanic vote, etc. If a politician can appeal to the widest possible cross-section of people, they have the widest possible chance of getting elected. 

The result is like hosting a dinner party where everyone at the table has different food allergies: The only meal you can serve is something everyone can ingest but no one really likes. 

Add in the internet and the hyper publicity this person must undergo to get the vote, plus the money they must be able to raise to get the job: Our ideal politician must be reality-show-famous, but willing to pursue the agendas of the billionaires and companies who fund them once they are in office. The only person able to contend for the job is a famous, statistically votable method actor with dubious ethics.

Once this highly votable person is in office—even if they promised this, that, and the other thing during the election—they can’t necessarily make it happen because their plans might be immediately nixed by Congress. Itself comprised of politicians who are also trying to appeal to the widest possible group, they can’t approve this, that, and the other thing if they want to stay in office. 

So they hold the budget hostage, each party requesting money for this, that, and the other thing and threatening not to approve it unless they get it. Which of course is a horrible way to make a budget, and a very easy way to make the whole thing bloated and filled with agendas that add up to more and more debt. The compromises necessary to make anything happen make everything more expensive and less effective. 

At best, we wind up with a bunch of reality show celebrity types in office who are famous enough to get elected but aren’t actually qualified to run a budget or a country. At worst, a particularly power-hungry president might become dangerous, using their power to change laws that will keep them in office. One thing we sometimes forget about totalitarian dictators like Hitler and Putin: once they were in charge it was a quick hop, skip, and a jump to consolidate power.

What are we voting for then? A person, but not their plan? Because their plan might not work once they are in office? And in the end, the person might be incompetent, or worse, dangerous for the country?

Whenever I am voting for the president, I often feel like a venture capitalist making a very important investment in a business owner, but without ever having seen his balance sheet, his budget, or his plan to make the business successful, all while knowing he might not be able to launch the business at all after I invest.

My only option is to vote based on how he looks and the vibe he puts out and the hope that he is diplomatic enough to make the people in our government want to work with him, and diplomatic enough that leaders of other countries will want to work with him, and sane enough not to go to war with another country for no reason, and democratic enough to not to try to overthrow democracy. 

I’m putting a lot of faith in a person and the personality they project in the media, but none in that person’s plan once they’re hired. 

So I have an alternative idea: what if we vote for a plan, not a person? In this case, a group of seven people put together an eight-year plan for the country, complete with a budget and a balance sheet and a plan for why it would be successful. The plan would illustrate exactly how much money the country would earn in tax dollars, and how it would use that money to ensure the wellbeing of its citizens and its country. 

The plan would include an economic plan, detailing how it would invest in certain industries like science and technology. It would detail our energy investments and how we would work with other countries to minimize our environmental impact and help with worldwide migration efforts. It would include a healthcare and education plan and how we would pay down debt. It would detail how much money we will put toward the military and what initiatives the military would pursue and how much money it would spend. 

In other words: it would look an awful lot like a business plan for the next eight years of the country.

These plans could go through a vetting phase, where a board of prominent economists and government experts do their due diligence to narrow them down to the top three business plans that would be most successful while remaining constitutional and in the long-term best interest of the country. These three plans would then go out to the public where thinkers and writers like ourselves can debate the merits of each plan. 

As voters, we get to review the top three plans put forth and vote for our favorite one in ranked choice order. The winning plan is put into place, and the team who came up with it is given the budget they requested and set about making it happen. As a model for this team, I would borrow from Switzerland, which is governed by a council of seven members who serve as the collective head of government. No single member is considered the head of state, and together they govern the country like a C-suite might do.

The country is now run like a company, with an approved budget and business plan, a C-suite of individuals putting it into action, and a cabinet of people helping them do it. If addendums need to be made along the way, the seven can come to a vote between them to determine which course of action will be most closely aligned with their goals, with the Supreme Court acting as a board of directors to ensure the best interest of the public and adherence to the Constitution. 

If we vote for a plan instead of a politician, there are no celebrity figureheads, no well-intentioned plans that can’t make it through Congress or don’t get enough money to succeed, no bloated budgets filled with conflicting agendas, and no power-hungry individuals who can make a power grab.

But I’d love to know your thoughts. Join us in the literary salon for further discussion. 👇🏻

Thanks for reading, 

Elle Griffin

Marginalia

Here are a few notes from the margins of my research. 

According to

Robert Reich

, politicians aren’t normal people. He says a politician needs to be a narcissist, an extrovert, and a method actor with thick skin. 

Joe Cook

points out the political sorting that takes place. 

We are quite sorted by race: for Democrats, nonwhite voters make up 40%; for Republicans, nonwhite voters make up 14%. We are sorted by geography: landslide counties where 60% of the vote or more went to the winning presidential candidate in 1992 represented 39% of voters in the nation; by 2016, 61% of voters lived in landside counties. Extreme landslide counties (where the winning candidate won by 50 percentage points or more) had just 4% of the electorate in 1992, but increased to 21% in 2016.

The result is what

Ivan Vendrov

calls “the tyranny of the marginal user.” 

Matthew Yglesias

points out that politicians have ideas but no plans to make them happen.

The book Half Earth Socialism also makes a case for plans over politicians.

“Linear programming and other planning tools could be a part of basic education, giving citizens the opportunity to pore over… plans and understand for themselves how the world works… An informed citizenry would be well equipped to choose among the competing plans devised by the planners. Indeed, it would not be hard for citizens to draft their own rough blueprints, which could also be put to a vote…

“Such clarity is empowering in two senses: first, because it allows everyone to be a part-time planner and participate meaningfully in political discussions; and second, because one can see one’s own work as a small but necessary component of the general intellect and labour of a unified humanity. This is what democratic control over production looks like.”

I loved “How Congress Was Saved,” a fictional letter from the year 2039 about how we changed our political system for the better. 

“In 2029… the Democratic majority updated the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, which had locked in the number of representatives at 435 for a century, to set the number of representatives at 1776. That gave each house member a district of about 200,000 people, making it much more common for members to represent coherent communities. (It also has the happy side effect of making the Electoral College much less distortionary. California now has around 225 electoral votes to Wyoming’s 5—still skewed in favor of the smaller state, but only slightly. From now on, only in the case of a historically close race could there be a divergence between the popular vote and the electoral count winner.”