Running Scared; Why America's Politicians Campaign Too Much and Govern Too Little

xi, [1], 244 pages. Tables. Includes Acknowledgments, Introduction, Notes, and Index. Also includes chapters on Three Politicians at Risk; Why American Politicians Are Vulnerable; How They Came to be Vulnerable; Why Their Vulnerability Matters; A Case of Fright: The First Oil Shock; A Case of Paralysis: The Budget Deficit; A Case of Fraud: The Wars on Crime; More Democracy, More Dissatisfaction; and What, If Anything, Might Be Done? Anthony Stephen King FBA (17 November 1934 - 12 January 2017) was a Canadian-British professor of government, psephologist and commentator. He taught at the Department of Government at the University of Essex for many years. From 1969, he was Professor of Government at Essex, where he also led a Wednesday brainstorming class of selected bright students from the Department of Government. He also taught at Princeton and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He regularly appeared on election results programming and analyzed their implications. For each UK General Election from 1983 to 2005, he was BBC television's analyst on their election night programming.[2] On a monthly basis, he analyzed political opinion polls on voting intentions for The Daily Telegraph.[2] He also wrote many books on politics and was co-editor of the Britain at the Polls series of essays. During the latter part of his life, his research focused on: the changing British constitution; the British prime ministership; American politics and government and the history of democracy. In this penetrating and provocative look at the American political scene, Britain's most famous political scientist, Anthony King, casts a friendly eye across the ocean to point out something we take for granted at our peril: we have more elections, more often, than any other country on the planet. There is no year in the United States--ever--when a major statewide election is not being held somewhere. As a result, American politicians are extraordinarily vulnerable. They single-mindedly worry about their electoral futures to the point of "hyperdemocracy"; in essence, the American system is too democratic. Our term of office for members of the House is the shortest on Earth. We are virtually the only country where most incumbents regularly face primary challenges. Indeed, we are alone in having any direct primaries at all. In this book, the history, causes, and consequences of American hyperdemocracy are all examined in engaging detail. Anthony King appreciates America's many strengths--but he warns that until the subject of hyperdemocracy can be honestly faced, our deep political malaise will only continue. Derived from a Publishers Weekly article: Do members of Congress skew their political activities toward self-advertisement, credit-claiming and often meretricious position-taking? According to British political scientist King, U.S. politicians continuously worry about getting reelected, thanks to America's combination of short terms, prodigiously high campaign costs, direct primaries and candidate-centered elections with weak party support. The result, King charges, is that America's elected officials live in constant insecurity, wasting time and scarce resources on nonstop campaigning and fund-raising. This state of affairs, he suggests, helps explain the American system's paralysis, its inability, for example, to tackle budget deficits and crime. King's prescription: lengthen representatives' two-year terms to four years, extend senators' to eight years, and hold these elections concurrently with presidential elections; select candidates by state and local conventions and caucuses instead of primaries; allow political parties to contribute more funds to their candidates' campaigns. Written with acid wit, this is an eye-opening comparative look at American democracy in action, and inaction.…