Throw [Every Last One Of] The Bums Out!

April 29, 2009 4:45 PM

ThrowTheBumsOutFilter: What would be the foreseeable political, economic, and/or social consequences of EVERY incumbent congressional candidate losing his/her seat in 2010?

I'm trying to expand upon an idea I have for a story about a grassroots campaign in the USA that succeeds in unseating every member of congress (both houses). Obviously, such an upset would be a logistical nightmare on Capitol Hill, but for the purposes of this story, I'm interested in how the nation would be affected by an all-rookie congress-- politically, economically, and socially, short- and long-term.

For the purposes of this question, assume that yes, this crazy, nearly impossible situation actually came to pass, but that everything else is bound by reality (i.e., no speculations that involve the supernatural, science fiction, etc.).

posted by Rykey to law & government (28 comments total)

One hell of a committee set up task?
posted by Freedomboy at 4:47 PM on April 29

The staffers would remain, so nothing for sure changes. But if you want to speculate on a new centrist party forming itself around some big money and then suddenly taking over, which could easily happen given our voting system (coupled with disatisfaction for both parties) then that would be something interesting. But the people still elect them and we don't change our preferences faster than politicians do.
posted by Brian B. at 4:54 PM on April 29

Don't forget that not all of the Senate is up for election at the same time. It would take three election cycles to get every last one out: 2010, 2012, 2014.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 4:55 PM on April 29 [3 favorites]

The institutional knowledge left in DC would be concentrated in the lobbying firms, who would rapidly hire many of the recently thrown-out bums. The lobbyists would run everything for at least a few years.
posted by mr_roboto at 4:56 PM on April 29 [2 favorites]

Only 1/3 of the senators are up for election at any given time, so it's actually totally impossible.
Actually though, the founding fathers meant for the House of Representatives to have much more turnover than it has today.
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 4:57 PM on April 29

On a general level, the best outcome would be that many established interests that work against citizens' rights by pushing rent-seeking or unreasonable moralizing legislation would get thrown out. The worst outcome would be that a bunch of pressure groups elected the new members of Congress and they formed new single-issue blocs, resulting in the coalition-style passage of bills that represent relatively minor portions of the citizenry and have immense negative repercussions for everyone else.

I'd say it's a wash - the expected return is is [1 + (-1)] / 2 = 0.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 5:06 PM on April 29

All those hapless new legislators might just end up as pawns of lobbyists, staff members, NGOs, agency staff, and other more permanent Washington players.

(Oh, on preview, what everyone else said.)
posted by salvia at 5:11 PM on April 29

You could look at how term limits have affected California.
posted by sien at 5:12 PM on April 29

OK, I should clarify (sorry).

The grassroots movement in question would not be the result of a new party's formation, or a gravitation to an existing 3rd party. It would just focus on the idea that incumbent X was part of The Problem, so vote for one of his/her challengers (in his/her party).

Part of what I'm curious about is what the absence of experienced politicians and their respective lobbyists, pet projects, and networking would re-shape or redefine. I'm also wondering how "pressing reset" in Congress would set a precedent for future campaigns (I'm guessing a total upset would put the fear of Jesus into politicians anticipating their next term).

Finally, I wonder whether such an upset would give citizens a new feeling of "empowerment," and how this might play out on the activist front.

Highly speculative questions, to be sure. But I'm askin'.
posted by Rykey at 5:16 PM on April 29

Nobody knows how anything works -- especially the rules and procedures that so very much effects what legislation comes up for votes --, so the staffers and lobbyists who do know capture the entire process by hoodwinking/"helping"/suborning the greenhorn legislators.
posted by orthogonality at 5:18 PM on April 29

And true about the election cycles (stoopid me). So let's say that, even more impossibly, the campaign succeeded in unseating every incumbent in 3 cycles.
posted by Rykey at 5:23 PM on April 29

I think it depends largely on who the new 435 Members were. Presumably, if many were formerly state or local legislators (many Congressmen are before they're elected to the House), the parliamentary procedure problems wouldn't be as vast as people think.

My hunch is it would be a very similar system, assuming that most people would be elected by similar demographics to the ones that elected their predecessors, and raised money and took advice from their party apparatus. Also, our political process has become so executive-focused in the last 75 years that the President sets much of the agenda (even if not from the same party as the one controlling Congress). I'd imagine this to be even more true if there were a fully freshman Congress.
posted by j1950 at 5:27 PM on April 29

There would probably be a wide-open election for Speaker, Minority Leader, Whips, etc., and it would be freaking nuts. The notion of "seniority" would also go out the window. There would be a lot of ruthless, nasty stuff going on intra-caucus as they all jockey for power, but the current system whereby being old as hell --> power would be over with.

On the other hand, I do not believe we can assume the staff would stay the same. Are the incumbents all being replaced by regular-ass people? It is most likely that they'd be replaced by "lower-level" electeds (legislators, county commissioners, etc.) who already have loyal staff. Much of the committee staff might stay the same, but that wouldn't be a given (they are ultimately hired or retained at the discretion of the Chair).
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 5:31 PM on April 29

Part of what I'm curious about is what the absence of experienced politicians and their respective lobbyists, pet projects, and networking would re-shape or redefine.

What do you mean by "their respective lobbyists"? The lobbyists are not associated with individual members of congress, and will presumably still be around to lobby the new members. If you look at examples from some states that have instituted term limits for their state legislatures, lobbyists have taken on an increasingly powerful role because they maintain the institutional knowledge necessary to understand and author legislation.
posted by mr_roboto at 5:31 PM on April 29

At best you'd get Huey Long. At worst, Hitler. Rule of law would go out the window, and you get cronyism, corruption, and finally corporate control.
posted by orthogonality at 5:32 PM on April 29

The consequences are whatever you want them to be in your story. Anything between "they enact a totalitarian theocracy or start World War III and end the world" to "and everyone lived happily ever after."

Part of what I'm curious about is what the absence of experienced politicians

To be clear, then: you don't just mean that they lose. You mean that they lose to rank amateurs who have no legislative experience.

respective lobbyists

Do you mean that you're kicking everyone out of Congress and killing off everyone with lobbying experience in the country?

In any case, the short answer is that you'd have a Congress at a deep, systemic informational disadvantage, and that you'd get the policies that people with the informational upper hand (bureaucracies, the President, whatever interest groups you haven't killed) want.

I'm also wondering how "pressing reset" in Congress would set a precedent for future campaigns (I'm guessing a total upset would put the fear of Jesus into politicians anticipating their next term).

If that's what you think, you should expect slavish devotion to parochial district and state interests at the expense of national policymaking.

Finally, I wonder whether such an upset would give citizens a new feeling of "empowerment," and how this might play out on the activist front.

It would not, unless you think that the residents of California feel especially empowered.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:54 PM on April 29

If you threw 80% of the bums out, then both their replacements and the "survivors" would be a lot more responsive to the voters.

If you threw 100% of the bums out, then everyone would realize that the voters had merely replaced an irrational attachment to incumbents with irrational hatred of incumbents, and politicos would be smart enough to rule through a series of figureheads in the future.
posted by roystgnr at 5:55 PM on April 29

Maybe do some reading up on Italy in the early 1990s? The end of the Cold War led to the end of the Communists as a major force, and corruption scandals led to the implosion of the Christian Democrats and centrist parties (with prosecutions). The political landscape was realigned with new parties (a stronger democratic left versus Berlusconi /Northern League with a small centrist rump plus a few unreconstructed Communists).

Maybe look to that or other democracies in transition as models as to how this sort of thing plays out ?
posted by plep at 5:58 PM on April 29

For example - new parties consisting of a democratic socialist left party versus a weathy demagogue with media interests on the right aligned with regional separatists. A small rump centre party. Just to expand on my comparison ?
posted by plep at 6:12 PM on April 29

Gridlock. Much of the work in Congress is done on the committee level. Committee chairs and positions are determined in no small part by seniority. If no one has seniority, then there's no obvious way to decide who gets to run what, and let me tell, you the chairs of certain committees are incredibly powerful, as they can decide whether a bill ever makes it up for a vote. So with all of the choice committee positions up for grabs, I'd be surprised if Congress were able to function at all.
posted by valkyryn at 6:22 PM on April 29

It would give power to the Republicans as anytime you turnover you take power away from the incumbents and right now that is the Dems.

I have come to believe that the term limits so popular a decade or so ago are perhaps a good way of limiting the influence of money and graft. When you don't have a career to protect you are less influenced by money. Limit it to two terms for a Senators and four for Congressmen. Now if you could somehow impose the same limits on party bosses especially at the local level then that would be fantastic. Here in NJ the really corrupt people are the city and county party bosses. They are not subject to most of the laws on politicians and influence, but they have effective control because the pols don't get to be pols without the boss's permission. It is truly amazing how many contracts their family members get for consulting on bid preparation. What's up with that?
posted by caddis at 6:33 PM on April 29

If there was no third party involved then one immediate result of every single incumbent losing his seat to the challenger would be a reversal of the present balance of Republicans and Democrats. There would suddenly be no Democratic representatives in New England. The southeast and the prairie states would be a giant swath of Blue on CNN's map with only small looking Republican urban areas.

Or perhaps you'd like to imagine that the incumbents were largely overthrown in primaries to avoid a bunch of pro-life representatives of New Yorkers or gay marriage loving representatives in Alabama. In that case you'd have to come up with a rational reason why both political parties decided to tear themselves apart by challenging all of their most powerful members. Looking at the situation Arlen Specter was facing before his party switch might help.
posted by Quizicalcoatl at 6:37 PM on April 29

If there was no third party involved then one immediate result of every single incumbent losing his seat to the challenger...

It would just focus on the idea that incumbent X was part of The Problem, so vote for one of his/her challengers (in his/her party).
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 6:41 PM on April 29

I'm not too sure of the consequences, but I wrote a story a couple years back about a guy trying evict all the representatives from the house. Tim Cox, I think, with Goooh. Interesting guy, interesting idea. Might be worth looking into to see what he thinks would happen should his idea actually work.
posted by Jehosophat at 6:42 PM on April 29

"Rule of law would go out the window, and you get cronyism, corruption, and finally corporate control."
but i think he asked, What would change?
posted by dougiedd at 9:31 PM on April 29

"Rule of law would go out the window, and you get cronyism, corruption, and finally corporate control."
but i think he asked, What would change?

All this happens markedly more so than you have now.

At least, that is our experience in a state where term limits recently came into place.

Lobbyists are the only ones who have been around long enough to figure out how to work the system so there is a definite, strong power shift towards them and away from the elected officials, who are all novices until they are term-limited out & replaced with new novices.

Also, lots of legislation that is just sort of crazy and incoherent--in the sense of ambiguous, unclear, poorly drafted, and with all sorts of unintended consequences. You lose your congress members with real, long experience in drafting laws and who have a deep knowledge of the existing laws and practices (yes, you'll still have staff and various lawyers helping out but it's just not the same).

Again--you get some of this now--but you would see a lot, lot more of it with all the old hands gone.

The third thing we find with term limits that might be interesting to explore, is collegiality and bipartisanship is lessened. The reason is, if you know you're going to be working with someone from the other party for possibly the next decade or two or three, you're more inclined to try to get along--partly because you know your party is in power now, but in the long term other party is likely tol be in power sooner or later and you're going to need friends in that party to get anything done at that point.

With term limits, you know both you and the other guy are going to be gone in just a few years so why take time to develop friendships or collegiality? Everything devolves much quicker into a simple grab for power.

With a sudden change of all members of Congress you won't have quite that dynamic--but something similar in that all existing friendships & collegiality, both within & across party lines--will suddenly be gone. Could be some interesting consequences from that . . .
posted by flug at 10:49 PM on April 29

Or perhaps you'd like to imagine that the incumbents were largely overthrown in primaries

Simplest somewhat convincing way would be some incident got everyone really ticked off and started a movement that led to the passage of a national term limits law or constitutional amendment. The quick turnover in congress would be built into that law somehow.

For double the fun it could be some unintended consequence of the wording--say, the wording was supposed to mean the scheme started in 2012 but a series of court cases interpret it to mean "all current members of congress must be replaced by 2012."
posted by flug at 11:02 PM on April 29

There's been much talk of the increased power of lobbyists above, but one additional thing you might take into account (which would probably exacerbate that) is that many of the deposed congresspersons are likely to become lobbyists, likely for interests they were friendly to when they were in Congress. For the purposes of the story, ask yourself, what are the ex-congresspersons doing now? It's not like they disappeared off the face of the earth.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 4:31 AM on April 30