If NPR station manager Caryn Mathes had her way, the upcoming mid-term election would be meaningless. And if President Obama’s pre-election analysis of his party’s troubles is correct, it should be.  For America’s governing class, the scariest day of the year isn’t Halloween, but Tuesday, November 2—the day we cast our ballots.

In response to recent calls for NPR’s federal funding to be cut or eliminated, Mathes, general manager of WAMU in Washington, DC, argued: “I would hope that it reinforces how important it is for funding sources to be firewalled from editorial decisions. Whatever government funding a station gets needs to be protected from the vicissitudes of emotion and passion over a particular issue.”

What if President Obama is right: “Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument do not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country’s scared.” In such a case, it could hardly be right to force NPR stations to supply their own funding like just any other radio station.

The problem with politics, in other words—and especially elections—is that it involves under-evolved people whose fears disrupt the march of progress. Too bad we can’t all be like the President, who himself seems to have avoided the “hardwired” reaction to reject “facts and science and argument” when afraid—or perhaps has managed to avoid fear altogether.

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While a growing plurality of the American public rejects the specific initiatives of the Obama Administration (health care reform, the stimulus bill, “too big to fail”), the President and Democratic Congress have earned their high disapproval ratings largely by ignoring the fact that a government cannot be for the people if it is not administered of and by the people. As a result, we may be on the verge of another “reform” moment in American politics comparable to the post-Watergate elections of 1974/76 or the 1992/94 elections that made Bill Clinton president, Newt Gingrich speaker, and Ross Perot a regular on “Saturday Night Live.”

The problem with “reform” as a mantra and as a movement, however, is that its primary impulse is to “throw the bums out.” Not-D (or not-R) is not a governing philosophy, and the smattering of positive proposals that are generated by such movements usually owe more to surface populism than serious principle. Complaints about Rs and Ds and the special interests they cater to are certainly both common and plausible today, but there is no reason why these must lead to a more limited or responsible government.

Reformers and special interest warriors in the past have had a hostile or, at least, uneasy relationship with conservative principles. From Nader and Perot to Republican “maverick” John McCain, they have generally embodied a politics heavy on personal integrity, light on ideological consistency, and filled with “common sense” reforms that leave intact the sine qua non of special interest politics: a bloated federal government. Consider: how many Washington lobbyists have closed up shop since the passage of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance “reform” bill?

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Nowhere in the Constitution is the job of the president defined as “growing” the economy, getting re-elected, implementing a party platform, maintaining his approval rating, doing “big things,” impressing foreign dignitaries, or fulfilling the people’s wishes, whatever the intrinsic merits of any of these activities. It is, rather, as the presidential oath states, “to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” You can’t do this if you don’t know the Constitution or aren’t willing to submit to it.

It was the duty of the Old Testament kings of Israel to administer justice according to the law that God had given to Moses. Embedded within that law, long before any king actually reigned in Israel, was the following command: “And when he [the king] sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law…. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes.” (Deut. 17:18-20 [ESV]) We are not explicitly told why he had to write out his own copy. Surely a king has better things to do. What are scribes and secretaries for, but to relieve those they serve of such onerous tasks?

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