The day after Montana Congressional candidate Greg Gianforte reportedly body-slammed a reporter to the ground, breaking his glasses, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) was asked about whether he would seat Gianforte if the candidate won his special election. After condemning Gianforte’s behavior, Ryan stated, “If he wins, he has been chosen by the people of Montana who their congressman is going to be. I’m going to let the people of Montana decide who they want as their representative.”
Now, it’s likely that the Supreme Court forbids Ryan from refusing to seat Gianforte. In 1967, the House of Representatives initially refused to seat Rep. Adam Clayton Powell (D-NY) on grounds of corruption; he sued, and the Court found that unless the elected official violated age, citizenship or residency requirements, he would have to be seated. If Congress wanted to expel a member, they could vote to do so with a two-thirds majority. This makes sense — otherwise a majority in Congress could simply refuse to seat anyone in the minority, without any rhyme or reason provided.
With that said, even if Ryan had the power to expel Gianforte, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t for the same reason that so many voters will vote for Gianforte even if they find his Macho Man Randy Savage routine repugnant: they don’t want to be political suckers.
Thanks to a citizenry that has routinely ignored disgusting and criminal behavior from its elected officials, voters are afraid of being left out in the cold. We’ve created a political prisoner’s dilemma: no one wants to be the voter who stands up for virtue, but ends up losing a Congressional seat to an opposing party that ditches virtue for convenience; thus, all voters tend toward ignoring the sins of their prescribed candidates. Here’s the map of potential outcomes, with 10 being ranked the best for your side politically, and 0 being ranked the lowest. Obviously, if you don’t trust the other side, you’ll end up voting to win — if you vote for values and the other guy votes to win, you end up with nothing, he ends up with everything.
VOTE FOR VALUES | VOTE TO WIN | |
VOTE FOR VALUES | 5, 5 | 0, 10 |
VOTE TO WIN | 10, 0 | 2, 2 |
It would be better for the country for both parties to vote for values — then we’d have a choice between two non-garbage human beings. But out of fear of being the sucker, everybody has an incentive to vote to win.
This is how we end up with elections between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Now, this chart of potential outcomes is a short-term chart. It doesn’t take into account the fact that if you win without values, you’re undermining your own credibility — it’s possible that a long-term outcome chart would put that “10” outcome far lower (for example, the election of Richard Nixon to the presidency over Hubert Humphrey did Republicans few favors).
The chart of potential outcomes also doesn’t take into account your moral standing. It’s possible that you think that it reflects on you to okay bad behavior, and that you don’t have the credibility or moral standing to create a better culture — a culture that will lead everyone to work together to vote for values — if you continually vote to win.
But these considerations obviously take a back seat these days. We’ve decided to vote to win.
Which means that the only way to prevent this constant race to the bottom is for elected Republicans and Democrats — most of whom presumably have an interest in not sitting next to bad people every day — to come to an agreement, signed, sealed and delivered: any person who is convicted of a serious crime (to be defined, obviously, but it should include crimes of violence) should not be seated. This could be done legally with a simple bill; it could also be done with an agreement to vote against the seating of a member of your own party (the chances that the opposing party will vote to retain that member are low). The American people should demand this sort of action from Congress, so that the playing field is made level on both sides: force a pre-commitment to virtue so that the choice in favor of convenience is out of everyone’s hands.
The only other choice is a restoration of civic virtue. That needs to happen anyway, but Congress could help get it started.
Yeah, right.