On will and energy: A project intended to instill productive conversations
The end-of-the-year holidays are a time for celebration and reflection. And also a time for contemplation and renewal.
With that in mind our editorial board has prepared a series of commentaries intended to spark conversations about issues that have been the source of difficulties for our state or our nation in the past, and that require bold innovation to resolve in the future. Some call for state or federal constitutional revisions. Some seek legislative or congressional attention. All aim to initiate or expand discussions.
When writing about specific issues at a specific time, we often hope our editorials will provide encouragement for — or dissuasion from — some course of action. But for the series of editorials that will begin tomorrow and carry through Friday, Jan. 2, we have no illusions about immediacy. Of course, we hope our ideas will lead to action in the directions we describe, but our more realistic hope is that they will stir some conversations that aren’t being held often, or often enough, now.
That description doesn’t precisely apply to the first topic we will address — Fair Maps. For more than a decade, we have been advocating for an amendment to the Illinois Constitution that would constrain politicians from drawing partisan congressional and legislative district maps that increase the influence of one party and diminish that of the other, disenfranchising the voices of large voting constituencies. Although some efforts are struggling to get under way, that movement has largely stalled, now nearly two-thirds of the way toward the next census. Moreover, the Texas response to a call from President Donald Trump ignited a frenzy of mid-decade redistricting shenanigans in states across the country in the past year. If we’re going to talk about ways to make our state and our nation more democratic, getting action on redistricting is a natural place to start.
But there’s more. For instance:
- Redistricting is not the only issue distorting the will of voters at large. We need to take a closer look at how our election system operates.
- President Trump has seriously abused the pardon powers of the president, but he is hardly the first. Indeed, nearly every president of the last century has taken the issue of pardons beyond the bounds of what the founders would have envisioned.
- Federal government shutdowns have become near routine political circuses, with consequences for public services, the economy and more.
- Illinois government has made some important strides toward gaining control of its pension crisis, but the issue that created the problem — governments avoiding their pension obligations as a political expedient to get out of financial trouble — remains unaddressed.
- Moreover, the Illinois legislature has made a mockery of its budgeting and of the notions of transparency and debate by routinely allowing the manipulation of legislation in a way that gets around constitutional intent.
Issues like these have festered so long in Illinois and federal government operations that we have nearly come to accept them as the natural course of business. But it is an insult to our system and to us as a people to simply shrug our shoulders and assume nothing can be done.
Something can be if we have the will and the energy. Our editorials over the next week aim to stir those conditions. We hope you and our political leaders will reflect on our ideas, expand on them and engage in conversations that may start out as just talk, but ultimately lead to distinct improvements in the way our government and our democracy operate.
• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on X at @JimSlusher. His book “To Nudge The World: Conversations, community and the role of the local newspaper” has been named Book of the Year by the Chicago Writers Association and is available at eckhartzpress.com.