Body Politic is the wrong term. The more accurate and more descriptive term is the Social Fiber Repair Mechanism, SFRM. The SFRM operates at a gut level in most people, definitely not at a conscious level.
I gave the classic example of SFRM in an earlier blog. It occurred when Mayor Willie Brown of San Francisco damaged the electoral mechanism by bribing every potential candidate who could run against him not to run. Two weeks before the election, a write in campaign was launched that generated 44,000 write-ins for a candidate whose name was hard to spell: Ammiano. Willie won the run-off as a humiliated man. The electorate proceeded to deal an additional capping blow to the mayor by defeating every one of the mayor’s hand picked and well financed supervisorial candidates.
Other non-election actions by SFRM include the 10,000 person riot that occurred when a court announced a trivial prison sentence for a politically heinous murder. SFRM finally solved the whole institutional miscarriage of justice problem with the suicide of Dan White, two years after he got out of prison.
White had served the brief and fraudulently arranged sentence of five years for the double 1st degree murders of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and the first gay supervisor, Harvey Milk. Dan White was not the suicidal type, he had been an eagle scout, a fireman, a policeman, a city supervisor and was married with two young children. The SFRM got him to take his own life in ways that may never be understood.
Still another SFRM were the statewide riots that followed the jury verdict in the Rodney King case; the case was tried in Simi Valley. An all-white jury in Simi Valley was used to try and find innocent three Los Angeles County police for a beating that was recorded on TV. L.A. County, like most counties, was institutionally incapable of trying its own police. The SFRM finally found a solution: the U.S. Attorney was pressured and a Federal trial was held based on civil rights violations.
Gray Davis will be defeated tomorrow by ten points and Arnold will be elected governor by more than five points, as I predicted in late July. The SFRM is at work.
What Institution was damaged that the SFRM needs to repair it?
It turns out that two institutions were damaged. One was the initiative process. In 1996 the citizens of California voted to reinstate a voting system called Cross-Filing, that had been discontinued after 1960. Cross-Filing was the source of Calfornia’s great government because everyone could chose, when they arrived at the polls, which party they wished to vote for in the primary. As a consequence, both parties were forced to elect moderate, middle of the road candidates for all elective offices. When Cross-Filing was originally defeated in 1960, it was replaced by vicious party warfare and extremist party-centered candidates.
Californians, in an election where both political parties condemned the Cross-Filing initiative, instead voted to reinstate Cross-Filing by a two to one margin. The political parties, in revenge, then proceeded to take the election to court and eviscerate the result.
That was damage number one, which was compounded last year by damage number two.
Gray Davis used his Democrat Party funds, raised for use in his General Election campaign, to attack and destroy the only Republican who could have easily defeated him, Richard Riordan. Davis spent Democrat money in the Republican primary, to defeat Riordan and make sure no viable candidate would run against him in the General Election. This insidious tactic had never been used before.
The SFRM is now setting things right. We can expect, with the election of Arnold, that the group of political science academics who put the Cross-Filing initiative on the ballot in 1996, will put it on the ballot again in 2004. As a result more moderate people, like Arnold, can get elected and the Gray Davis form of satanic tricks can’t be used again in a primary.
