Bullhorn: Former CT Gov Weicker on Reelection Obsession

To help us launch It’s A Free Country, we reached out to politicians, academics, cultural thinkers, and activists to help us define our mission. The question we asked is simple: “What’s Broken in Politics, and How Do We Fix It?” This is former Connecticut Governor Lowell Weicker’s answer.

Weicker represented Connecticut in the House of Representatives from 1969-1971, and in the U.S. Senate from 1971-1989. He then left the Republican Party and was elected Governor of Connecticut as an Independent in 1990.  He served one term, oversaw the creation a state income tax in Connecticut, and did not run for reelection.

What do you think is broken in politics?

I think what’s broken is the failure of anybody to communicate in a civil way.

When I was in the Senate and the House of Representatives, there were huge differences of opinions between Republicans and Democrats. Nevertheless, the fact is those differences occurred on about ten percent of the issues. Ninety percent of the time we all agreed as to what ought to be done. I suppose a good example of that was my two closest friends in the United States Senate were Ted Kennedy and John Warner – one a liberal, one a conservative Republican. And yet the three of us used to meet all the time, discuss issues, and most of the time, we came to some sort of agreement--and then there were a few times we went to the mat. That doesn’t occur anymore. Everyone just assumes the fact that they need to get reelected and that the way to do that is to yell at the other person and not to find agreement. That’s a hell of a way to legislate.

What do you think is driving that change?

The whole quest is not for better government. It’s for reelection. And that starts literally the day the person gets elected. Now, out of fairness here, I’m not absolving the American people. I think that the disinterest that they show in their own government is so monumental as to allow the politicians to do whatever they want to go ahead and do. I hold the American people to account. You can’t have 30, 40 percent of the people voting and then expect to have a good government.  What you’re getting really is government by a minority.

Let me ask specifically about what’s been happening in Connecticut and the historic budget shortfalls they’ve been grappling with. What do you make of how state political leaders have handled that?

Obviously we’ve got a problem of historical proportions here. When I took over the state in 1991, we had a billion dollar deficit. The deficit is now $4 billion, and double that again for the next couple of years. So what are you going to do? I don’t really have an easy answer to that, except to say you’re going to have to cut the hell out of spending and obviously, you’re going to have to raise some revenues. People say that’s impossible in politics today. Well it may be impossible, but if you spend the money, you’re going to have to go in and finally ante up.

We got to where we are by virtue of an irresponsible Democratic legislature and a lackluster performance by a Republican governor. And between the two of them, you’ve really seen the state slide into the problem it now has.

How do you counsel current office holders on how to make these politically unpopular decisions?

There’s a handful of people, from both sides of the aisle, that can form majorities that effectively handle the problem. In 1991 it was a handful of Republicans and a handful of Democrats that coalesced to form a majority that passed the income tax [in Connecticut]. Most of them gave up their political careers to do that. But they figured that was their duty, the trust placed upon them, to run a solvent government, and that came ahead of their own reelection. Nowadays, reelection has become the name of the game, not good government.

How much do you blame the political parties for that?

Oh, very much so, both political parties. There’s no question in my mind if you had election laws that permitted for more independent runs, that would create an honest broker scenario, and it would bring everybody to the table and we’d have a far better end result. But independents are frozen out in the public financing schemes. They’re frozen out when it comes to getting on the ballot, so it makes it very difficult for an independent to run and an independent to win. Hey, it’s no different than our economic system. We all boast about the fact that in free enterprise, competition gives you the best product at the lowest price. Well, the same holds true in the business of ideas. You’d have better ideas, more effective ones, if you had more competition. You don’t. You have a duopoly of the Republicans and Democrats.

Do you feel worried?

Oh, I feel very worried. I feel very worried not just for my own state, but also for the national government. Again, if there’s no dialogue, if there’s no getting together on our major problems, then I don’t know how long we are for being a major power or how long we are for being the wealthiest state in the Union. Either way, it’s going to take people getting together and laying the politics aside.

You’re back living in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Do you ever feel a pull back into the action?

(laughs) Yeah, the answer is I do. That said, I’m almost 80 years old, and my mind may be okay but my legs sure wouldn’t take the campaigning. I just have to face up to the reality of the matter.