Need Honesty In Government? — Get Honesty Bond

Americans are frustrated with the seeming impossibility of electing candidates who follow through with promises in place of honesty. The sad fact is today accepted as true.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. —  “Hi, I’m from the government – I’m here to help you.”

“Of course I will respect you in the morning.”

Sex will probably never change. But we can no longer accept dishonesty in politics.

Americans are frustrated with the seeming impossibility of electing candidates who follow through with promises in place of honesty.

The sad fact is today accepted as true.

It is true today and was true in the early 90s when the idea occurred to me to promote what I called the Liberty Pledge. The idea was to inject accountability into the electoral system by allowing candidates to sign a pledge to their potential constituents assuring voters they would keep their campaign promises.

I was then helping working on a campaign for Dolores Bender White, Republican candidate for 20th State Senate in California. Dolores’s introduction to politics had come two years before. She lost, but learned a lot; Dolores was a quick study. She was determined to win, filing for the same race in the wake of the resignation in November, 1991, of long time State Senator Alan Robbins. Robbins had agreed to plead guilty to charges of racketeering.

Dolores filed for the special election that followed early in 1992. This time she faced a different incumbent. David Roberti, the god-father of gun control in California had, on paper, moved into the district. Roberti’s war chest was huge and not surprisingly, the barnacle-encrusted incumbent won handily.

The recall campaign qualified in April of 1994, just months before the regular primary.

It had been my pleasure to write nasty, but funny, attacks to amuse, delight, and motivate conservatives and libertarians. They outraged liberals. Dolores ran the successful recall campaign against Roberti, the first in California in 80 years. Dolores was incredibly hardworking and persistent. Others have claimed credit, but unjustly.

The idea for the pledge came about because of my experiences in the same district. I had run against Robbins myself as a Libertarian in 1982 in a four way race.

You could not be involved in politics there at all and not know how dishonest office holders really were. I was reading the pot holder with Robbin’s name on it when it occurred to me that things could be different if politicians had to keep their promises. The pot holder was rather ragged, sort of like American political honor.

“What if they had to resign if they failed to keep their promises?” I thought.

Never one to let grass grow under my feet I wrote up the Pledge, made some literature, had a banner made and took them with me to the next Republican Convention. I intended to take up the project in earnest immediately thereafter. The death of my sister Anne of a heart attack in Japan intervened.

At the convention I shared the idea with an old friend of mine named John Fund. He asked me for a piece of the literature. I was delighted to share.

The story would end there except for events that took place years later.

By 2000 many things had changed. I had discovered that John Fund was honesty challenged, like so many politicians He had lied to me about his relationship with my daughter. She and I had gone through a period of alienation that had ended when I discovered she was telling me the truth about Fund and her relationship with him. Many revelations, large and small, had been forthcoming. One minor, amusing, point had come when she told me Fund had used my idea as the basis of what later became the Contract with America.

Initially, I did not mind. However, when it became clear that it was a contract on America this changed. Newt’s version contained no enforceability. It was just aPR campaign to take the House in 1994, rhetoric never intended to enact change. Newt is at it again today. This time spinning himself as an exemplar of good Christian values while married to yet another much younger woman, having dumped the wife who made his success possible.

Decoupling the accountability from the potential for profit became a trademark for the NeoCons as they converting the rhetoric of Libertarianism into the newest justification for corporate profit. It was a sad end to what we believed would be a real revolution.

I discovered in 1997 Fund’s reputation for stealing ideas. I was not particularly surprised; many young policy thinkers had been urged not to send him their unpublished work. The boy friend of another one of my daughters, then working at Reason Foundation, shared this insight with me.

Accountability and how to enact it acquired ever more importance for me over the next years.

I was busy as the full-time caretaker for my eldest son who had suffered two major brain injuries, the result of first a motorcycle accident and then a suicide attempt in which he shot himself through the brain. I considered many approaches for redressing this frightening trend in politics. One afternoon I unearthed the original artwork for the Liberty Pledge.

Recycling time.

Holding politicians accountable had even more appeal to me than it did in 1993. Thus was born the Honesty Bond.

The Bond is intended to provide voters with a way to enforce fulfillment of the promises flowing so lavishly from the lips of candidates before they are transformed into elected officials. The Bond provides a means for removing lairs from office. If applied vigorously Honesty Bonds could turn the tide of dishonesty in American politics.

Politicians will not like the idea, a sign it would work.

This is really for their own good. Some candidates are honest people who’ll be relieved there is a means to defend their honesty. Others will appreciate the opportunity to win support over candidates who refuse to be accountable for their promises. These will be nudged into honesty, then forced to deliver.

Motives matter not. A tool will have been placed directly in the hands of voters who desperately need a way to call government to account.

An Honesty Bond is a bond taken out to ensure a candidate for office complies with the promises made while running for election. It remains in force the entire time the elected official is in office. It is a bond like those maintained routinely by professionals such as accountants, brokers, insurance agents, and house cleaners. The candidate pays for the bond themselves, accounting transparently for the source of the funds. The money is produced and the bond guaranteed at the demand of the constituents.

Installation is up to us.

The amount paid out to create the bond would be enough to remove the honesty-challenged elected official from office.

I feel very good about recycling this idea and denturing it with the teeth I intended it to have in 1994. I hope you agree and start putting teeth in your own local group. Insist your candidates become bonded. Do not vote for any candidate unwilling to stand behind their word, putting their money where their mouth is. This way they will respect us the day after they are elected.

Get Honesty. Bond them today.

Links:

http://honestybondusa.info

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/20/us/state-senator-from-california-facing-racketeering-charges.html

http://www.apj.us/sc20010904connolly.html

http://pillsburyjustice.info