Stephen Erickson’s Long March

The Story Behind Citizens Rising and Our Mission to Abolish Politics as a Profession

Years ago I decided to save America by fixing our political system. How hard could it be?

I was working on a PhD in Early American History at the College of William and Mary in 1993 when I realized something essential about founding father James Madison and his vision for the American government he did so much to create.

Madison was obsessed that the structures and incentives in our political system promote the common and long-term needs of the American people, and resist narrow and short-term special interests, which he called “factions.”

It was abundantly clear to me, even back then, that it wasn’t only that Madison’s vision for the political system of the United States had been compromised. No, it was far worse than that. The vision of Madison and the other founders has been completely reversed.

Rather than protect and promote the common good of the American people, over time our political system has become so corrupted that every incentive does exactly the opposite of what the Founders intended, by favoring service to the selfish interests of professional politicians and the moneyed interests that maintain them in power.

I wondered, why weren’t we having a national conversation about this?

I became convicted that something needed to be done. I made Madison’s obsession my own.

The 1990s was the time of the term limits movement, which sought to periodically compel politicians to leave elected office. I left graduate school and took a job as Resident Scholar at US Term Limits, a nonprofit organization that had successfully fostered term limits on members of Congress in all 23 states that legally permitted the people themselves to make their own laws directly through petitioning and referenda.

I was on the steps of the US Supreme Court shortly after all those citizen-inspired laws were shot down in US Term Limits v. Thornton, which killed off the possibility of term-limiting members of Congress without amending the constitution.

I believe I was the first to publish that Madison supported term limits and why. In the heady days of our term limits revolution, my article was read into the Congressional Record, which in fact no one ever bothers to read. There is some symbolism in that. It’s something that sounds important but is utterly meaningless.

In later years, from 2010 to 2016, I launched an effort I called “The Clean Government Alliance.” Realizing that partisanship was the first big obstacle that needed to be addressed, I worked to bring credible leaders on the Left and Right to the table to negotiate a comprehensive clean government amendment to the US Constitution.

The idea was to agree ahead of time that we would accept the favorite reform of each side, term limits for the conservatives and a clean elections system for the liberals/progressives. We would throw in a solution to stop gerrymandering for good measure. The details of this comprehensive clean government amendment to the Constitution would be decided at the negotiating table. We’d then take our final proposal to the American people.

While I got powerful, wealthy and influential people on the Left and Right in the room together, I could never bring them to the table. They refused to collaborate, even when that collaboration would have clearly furthered their supposed missions. What would happen to a big progressive organization like Common Cause if it worked with notorious conservatives? Many of its progressive funders might abandon them, that’s what.

I learned the hard way that self-serving partisanship and money corrupts not only politics and government, but political reform itself. I chronicle the story of my quixotic effort during this period in my book, What Would Madison Do? The Political Journey Progressives and Conservatives Must Make Together.

That book is now dated. Everything has grown worse and more dangerous since then, and I no longer believe that the main solutions I once championed are sufficient.

In the 21^st Century we are experiencing catastrophically bad government. The list of horrors grows endlessly: Iraq, Covid, the national debt and its looming consequences, the Jeffrey Epstein case . . .

These are products and signs of terrible systemic failure.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the problem is not on the Left or the Right. The political extremism we are experiencing is downstream from systemic political dysfunction. The American people are decent, moderate and reasonable. The problem is that our “leaders” don’t really represent us.

In fact, they and their allies in the media are manufacturing political hatred among us to benefit themselves.

I believe what we face is not only a political crisis; it is also a spiritual one. Our political system has morphed into something malevolent. Is there a better word for a system that promotes hatred in service to selfish interests?

The larger questions are these:

Do we wish to live in a world of hate and perpetual conflict, or one of love and constructive cooperation?

Can we continue to tolerate a political system that prioritizes the selfish wants of career politicians and the interests that maintain them in power?

The only way to fix what is going so horribly wrong in politics is to do deep structural reform, which means the abolition of politics as a profession and the massive expansion of representative democracy.

Here on Substack, I am making the case and describing a realistic way forward. For an overview, START HERE.

We have the choice, as Lincoln said, whether or not to follow our “better angels.” To do so means working together to fix our broken democratic republic and save the country we love.

Subscribe and we will explore the possibilities together.

Stephen Erickson

Founder, Citizens Rising