They weren’t part of the Founders’ vision, and in many ways, they undermine it.
They weren’t part of the Founders’ vision, and in many ways, they undermine it.
C alifornia is enduring a recall election right now, and that’s unfortunate — not because Gavin Newsom is a good governor, but because recalls are a bad idea.
As a general rule, if a political institution were a good idea, James Madison would have thought of it. And the idea of recalling elected officials before their terms are over was floating around in Madison’s time, but it didn’t make it into the Constitution.
Article V of the Articles of Confederation decreed that, “Delegates shall be annually appointed in such manner as the legislature of each state shall direct, to meet in Congress . . . with a power reserved to each state, to recall its delegates, or any of them . . . and to send others in their stead.” Once it became clear that the Articles of Confederation were inadequate, the Constitutional Convention was held, initially with the intention of improving on them, rather than replacing them. The idea of the recall popped up at the Convention in the Virginia Plan, which envisioned a bicameral legislature with a popularly elected lower house whose members would “be subject to recall.”
When the Virginia Plan was proposed, the Convention still broadly saw its mission as improving on the Articles of Confederation. Once its focus shifted to writing a new Constitution, the recall didn’t attract much attention in its debates. The Convention’s first draft of a constitution didn’t include any recall provisions. Instead, it contained the mechanisms we know today for removing federal politicians from office: Congress can expel its own members, and it can impeach and remove from office any federal official.
While it didn’t feature heavily in the Convention itself, the idea of a recall power became an issue in the debates over ratification of the Constitution that resulted. Specifically, some anti-Federalists raised the Constitution’s lack of such a power as a reason not to ratify it. In a June 25, 1788, speech, the anti-Federalist Melancton Smith made a case for recalls that, ironically, is an excellent argument against today’s version of the practice.
Smith supported allowing state legislatures, originally charged by the Constitution with appointing U.S. senators, the power to recall them. His speech was meant in part to counter the argument that senators subject to recall would not “possess the necessary firmness and stability,” since they would be afraid of the state legislatures. Smith answered that state legislatures would not “possess the qualities of a mob,” but would instead be relatively prudent in exercising the recall power, which he didn’t support giving to the people. “I know that the impulses of the multitude are inconsistent with systematic government,” he said. “The people are frequently incompetent to deliberate discussion, and subject to errors and imprudencies.”
The modern reincarnation of the recall indulges the impulses of the multitude that Smith inveighed against: In the name of direct democracy, it empowers citizens to whip up a populist frenzy and scavenge for signatures until they’ve accumulated enough to make everyone have to vote again.
As it stands, no federal officials may be recalled, and only 19 states have seen fit to allow state officials to be recalled. Even in those states, the power’s use is rare. Newsom is only the fourth governor to ever face a recall election. The first two, North Dakota’s Lynn Frazier in 1921 and California’s Gray Davis in 2003, were successfully removed from office. The third, Scott Walker, famously was not. Only 39 state legislators have ever faced recall elections, and only 22 of them were removed from office. Yet despite its rarity, the recall is prone to being dusted off and used in frenzied spurts when the public takes on “the qualities of a mob.” There were three recall elections from 1913 to 1914 and four from 1994 to 1995 in California. Seventeen recall elections were held from 2011 to 2013, 13 of which were in Wisconsin, where Walker’s conservative reforms touched off a fierce, years-long war of attrition over the state’s future.
Most voters, in their heart of hearts, probably recognize that such epic fights are unnecessary and unhealthy. One of the glories of American democracy is that we have fixed terms and regularly scheduled elections that happen no matter what. You don’t need to circulate petitions to get a chance to send a crummy politician packing, because you’ll get your shot to throw the bum out soon enough. And this is no accident. As Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 72, there is an “intimate connection between the duration of the executive magistrate in office and the stability of the system of administration [of government].” Too long a term risks tyranny, and too short a term risks a lack of resolve to make tough decisions. In Federalist No. 71, he argued for a four-year term for the executive because “between the commencement and termination of such a period there would always be a considerable interval in which the prospect of annihilation would be sufficiently remote not to have an improper effect upon the [executive’s] conduct.”
Voters should not be able to interrupt that interval, which is not to say politicians should never be removed from office before their term is up. We’ve all seen scandal-plagued politicians resign under public pressure. Legislatures can expel their own members, and every state except Oregon has an impeachment process for public officials. No one would argue against the existence of such mechanisms. But voters shouldn’t be able to call a new election in the middle of a politician’s term simply because they’ve developed buyer’s remorse.
Gavin Newsom is not being recalled for any particular unpopular policy move. He is being recalled for being Gavin Newsom, more or less. California voters knew, or should have known, what they were getting when they elected him.
He was mayor of San Francisco, for goodness sakes. He first gained political office by schmoozing Willie Brown and being appointed to the august post of parking and traffic commissioner. While he was lieutenant governor of California, he had a TV show that filled a time slot vacated by Keith Olbermann on a cable channel partly owned by Al Gore. Lieutenant governor is a pretty easy job with few actual duties in most states, but people who hold the office usually at least pretend they’re governing. Newsom never bothered.
In short, no one should be surprised that this man is in way over his head as the chief executive of a state with about as many people as Canada and more economic output than India or the United Kingdom. His incompetence and pomposity were plain for everyone to see when, in 2018, he won a four-year term as governor with 62 percent of the vote. The people of California shouldn’t be allowed to punish him for their own error before those four years are up. If they’re now regretting the — again, entirely foreseeable — consequences of their decision, they should have to wait until 2022 to rectify it.
Instead, they will go to the polls in September. If a majority of them approve recalling Newsom, the really serious candidates, such as Caitlyn Jenner, Larry Elder, and retired correctional officer Chauncey “Slim” Killens, will compete with 43 other contenders on the same ballot, and one of them will win the job of governing the most populous state in the union.
It would be easy to dismiss this circus as a problem for Californians alone. But conditions are ripe for recalls to become a wider phenomenon in the states that allow them, and if they do, the results will only get more ridiculous. The Internet makes it easier than ever to gin up support for recall petitions, and it provides oxygen for celebrities to run vanity-project campaigns. Political tribalism makes it easier than ever to find signatories, and petition drives empower the loud minority of political junkies fueled by social-media echo chambers. We don’t need the kind of people who get really jazzed about collecting signatures to have more influence over government than they already do.
Satisfying as it is to watch Gavin Newsom squirm, we conservatives shouldn’t let our schadenfreude blind us to the long-term dangers posed by the effort to remove him from office.