The Optimistic American - Audio Edition

Jun 7, 2023

In this episode of The Optimistic American, Paul Johnson sits down with Katherine Gehl to discuss the profound challenges in the American political system and the real solutions for a system that benefits everyone. Katherine is a business leader, entrepreneur, speaker, and author of The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy.

• Katherine starts the conversation by describing what inspired her to write a book on political innovation.
• For Paul, politicians are not necessarily bad people. Often, they are good people in a bad system that provides the wrong incentives.
• Paul and Katherine agree that a politician’s primary goal is to get re-elected. However, we live in a world where there’s no connection between solving people’s problems and getting re-elected.
• Katherine explains why we need to change the way people get elected.
• It’s very unfortunate that elections in America today are about choosing the lesser of two evils.
• Paul describes how parties make it impossible for independent candidates to run for office by forcing independent candidates to collect 10 times the signatures, and making it harder for independent or non-party voters to vote.
• Katherine reviews the duopoly of political parties. They no longer serve their customers' needs, but they don’t have to because they have no real competition.
• In the existing system, the political parties use fear to terrify the American voter on the dangers of the other side.
• Paul talks about how our negative bias and preaching the dangers of the other side is far more effective than selling your vision to voters.
• Katherine talks about the reform effort of eliminating the partisan primary, having all candidates run in an open primary where every voter can choose the top 5 candidates to go to a runoff. Then you can vote for your first-place choice, second place, third place etc. This is called the Final Five voting system and why it’s effective.
• Paul and Katherine discuss the benefits of having a single open primary and how it ensures nobody wins the election on primary day. In the partisan system because of gerrymandering 90 percent of all races are decided in the primary. Most voters don’t matter.
• In partisan primaries, people are more persuaded by the negative message about the opposing candidate, but in an open primary with multiple candidates going to the runoff, it is more difficult to go negative and incentivizes candidates to give more positive information about what you will do for them.
• According to Katherine, the most important reason we want to change the election system is to get better results for the community from the government.
• Election reforms should not be designed to change who, or which party wins elections. They should be designed to change what winners do and on whose behalf they’re doing it.
• The problem with American elections is not with the voters or the politicians. Paul believes it’s with the system of how we elect our representatives.
• For Katherine, it’s easier for a camel to get through the eye of the needle than for a problem-solving politician to get through a party primary.
• Katherine would rather lose something that, if she won, would make a difference than win something that, having won, wouldn’t make any difference.

Mentioned in This Episode:

optamerican.com

Addictive Ideologies: Finding Meaning and Agency When Politics Fail You by Dr Emily Bashah and Hon Paul Johnson

KatherineGehl.com

Follow @katherinegehl on Twitter

The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy by Katherine M. Gehl