The DC elections and the referendum on the Attorney General

Sometimes I write recommendations, some times I don't. Generally, a lot of the people up for office--well, I'd rather there were other choices, or at least good choices, and there aren't in many instances so I'd rather not make recommendations, because when the people who are in office stay in office, you've lost your ability to have any access to them.

As far as the two major offices go, Mayor and Council Chair, often it's an opportunity to register a protest vote by voting for the Statehood Green candidate, if they are reasonably credible (the Mayoral candidate for Statehood Green isn't that credible in this election cycle and I wasn't up for voting for the Socialist Workers Party candidate).

For At Large Council, there are three good candidates, well one is a protest candidate, and the other two are proven: Phil Mendelson (Democrat) and David Catania (Independent, formerly a Republican) have served ably on Council for many years and are some of the only independent, thoughtful voices serving; and David Schwartzman, professor at Howard University, is the candidate for the Statehood Green Party.

In the Ward races (Ward 1, 3, 5, 6), well I out and out favor Tommy Wells in Ward 6, although I live in Ward 4 so maybe people don't care what I think. Mary Cheh in Ward 3 could be a little more innovative rather than thinking that new laws are the answer for everything, but then, she is a lawyer who believes in the law, so we can't hold that against her. The other wards, maybe I'd like to see new blood, maybe not, but those Councilmembers have particularly good, elephantine memories when it comes to politics. The Republican Party has a ways to go before we can claim that their candidates, except maybe in Ward 1, offer a worthy alternative.

For ANCs, Greater Greater Washington has been doing yeoman's work sussing out the candidates and making recommendations. I refer people to those recommendations for more.

I do take offense to Georgetown Dish's recommendation against the proposed charter amendment for creating an elected Attorney General. See "Editorial: Vote No on Top Cop Opp." It falls into the Washington Post camp that creating the potential for a separate power base is a bad thing.

The AG position anywhere is a classic boundary spanning position (see Lazarus, Richard and Susan Folkman. Stress. Appraisal, and Coping.
New York: Springer, 1984), with the extremely difficult task of having to balance the public interest--in theory the system of governance derives from the people--vis a vis the government interest, in particular the Executive Branch. Due to the Iron Law of Oligarchy as posited by Robert Michels, you can't always rely on the "government" (although Michels was writing about political parties technically) to represent the public interest in democracy equally and in a superior position to other self-interests.

That's why an elected AG is good policy, a check on the increased distancing in democracy of the public from the executive.

Where the AG is appointed by the Mayor (the Executive Branch) but with the sometimes conflicting responsibilities of having to represent the Mayor, the Executive Branch, and "the people," when push comes to shove, only the gutsiest person (people like Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus) is going to buck the chief executive in favor of the people.

Hence, my belief that the AG position should be an elected, not an appointed position, to better ensure that the people's interest remains superior in the face of likely and potential conflicts.

For the same reason, I think that the U.S. government cabinet position of Attorney General (also serving as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Justice) should be popularly elected separate from the President and Vice President as well.