By William L. Kovacs
Kakistocracy, a term describing what our government has become: a government controlled by “leaders” who are the least able or least principled citizens.
Over the last five-plus decades the kakistocracy transformed our federal government from one of limited powers to one of immense power. Most troubling, the transformation occurred without any changes to the Constitution. This decades-long transformation dramatically limited the powers of Congress, produced an extraordinarily powerful executive, and allowed the courts to become super-legislatures. These changes directly impact how each branch of government is able to fulfill its most essential role as a check on the powers of the other branches.
How did this transformation occur? First and foremost, Congress, our primary law-maker delegated massive amounts of authority to the Executive, which very gladly accepted all the powers delegated. The Executive using the bureaucracy and regulatory authority, implemented the delegated authorities to accumulate immense power over most aspects of society.
The courts not satisfied deciding just real disputes between adversaries; accumulated more powers than given them by the Constitution or Congress through rulings that extended their authority from the parties before the court to broad-based policy decisions and nationwide injunctions. The National Environmental Policy Act, (“NEPA”) is an excellent illustration of how the courts create legal rights never authorized by Congress. This six-page statute requiring federal agencies to consider the environmental implications of their decisions was judicially expanded to provide environmental groups the right to bring lawsuits against any agency to force proposed environmental impact statements to be more and more comprehensive, sometimes thousands of pages. NEPA alone can stop any project in the nation.
Another example is the transformation of the Clean Air Act, a law designed to regulate specific, powerful pollutants harmful to human health, into a law that governs almost any industrial activity in the country.
The result of the transformation of our government is decades of policy failures, harmful
wealth inequality, a health care system costing two times more than in other industrialized nations, more than a few undeclared wars and the imposition of such massive amounts of debt that citizens will eventually live in involuntary servitude to the federal government. The share of the debt owed by every citizen of this country is approximately $64,000, and for every trillion dollars of new debt accumulated by our government, each of us will owe another $3000.
Reforming the kakistocracy will not be an easy undertaking in a politically divided nation. Presently most members of the kakistocracy give their loyalty to the political party that put them in office. Unfortunately, by them giving more loyalty to a political party than to the Constitution and the branch of government in which these individuals serve, they have destroyed the ability of the respective branches to be both a constitutional check on each other and reasonable adversaries working to find solutions to the problems of the nation.
Our Constitution does not even mention political parties which are nothing more than associations of individuals, organized to take control of our government. However, our Constitution clearly states the responsibilities of the three branches of government and requires every officer of the United States to take an oath to the Constitution. Taking such oath means every official must act as a fiduciary to the Constitution and the branch of government in which they serve and not to the political party that supported them.
The most fundamental change now needed to control the kakistocracy is for members of Congress to abandon their abiding loyalty to the two major political parties and work as fiduciaries to the Constitution, and the institution of Congress, in addressing the issues facing the nation. This approach requires conforming the
actions taken by Congress with the constitutional limits imposed on it. By acting as fiduciaries and not as political parties, Congress will function as an institution to do the peoples’ business rather than as a political club doing the bidding of the special interests. This change opens up ways for Congress: to address the federal deficit; reduce the massive regulatory structure created to manage the administrative state; ensure there are no more wars unless declared by Congress and to devolve to the states many of the powers taken from them, by the federal government, over the last fifty years.
As citizens, we must always be mindful of two facts. First, we elect individuals to run our country, not political parties. Political parties are special interests, not fiduciaries. Why do we trust them to run our government? The alternative is for individuals to seek election on the promise to serve as fiduciaries and we could elect them.
Second, it is the natural tendency of government and those who benefit the most from it, to continuously grow it. The more government grows, the more resources are available to those in control for redistribution to the beneficiaries of their choice. The only way to control government is to streamline it, a process that will have many positive benefits. Less government means it will need less of our money to function. When the government has less money, lobbyists and politicians will have less interest in government since there will be less to take from it.
Citizens cannot expect the government to control itself. In a democracy, it is only citizens who can control their government by determining who runs it. The brilliant part of our Constitution is that it allows us to participate in a legal, political revolution on a regular basis. This legal process, called voting, makes it possible for us to completely replace the “leadership” of our
government in a four to six-year period. Its time citizens elect citizens who commit to serving as fiduciaries to the Constitution and the institution in which they serve; not politicians whose loyalty is to a political party.
This article is adapted from William L. Kovacs’ recent book Reform the Kakistocracy: Rule by the Least Able or Least Principled Citizens. William L. Kovacs has been active in national policy issues for over forty years, serving as a senior vice president for environment, technology & regulatory affairs for a major business trade association, a chief counsel on Capitol Hill, chairman of a state environmental board and a partner in several Washington, DC law firms.