A Solution To Disloyalty: A Performance Bond

Disloyalty is a real problem in politics, and this year has seen more than its normal share. Political opportunists, egomaniacs and vindictive jerks enter primaries in bad faith, with no intent of accepting defeat. If the other guy wins, they break from the party and run as an independent. No one seems to know what to do about this. I do.

Disloyalty is a long time problem, and it’s a problem for both sides. This year you’ve got Crist in Florida and Murkowski in Alaska both thinking that they are too important to disappear onto the ash heap of history, and unwilling to try for a different office. In 2008, it was Joe Lieberman. These egomaniacs simply cannot accept that the public doesn’t want them and they are going to do anything they can to make sure they keep that job, no matter what the consequences.

Others have different motives. Some are opportunists who simply want to make a name for themselves in the hopes of getting famous. These want book deals or television deals, some will change their politics overnight to make this happen. Others simply want to sabotage their parties. A classic example of such a saboteur was John Anderson running for President against Reagan. He despised the shift in the GOP from non-ideological, blue blood permanent minority to ideologically conservative. He knew he couldn’t win, but that wasn’t his point -- if we’re being honest. He wanted to hand Reagan a defeat to “prove” that conservatives cannot be elected in America.

So far, no one has come up with a way to deal with these traitors. Allow me to suggest the following:

Any candidate who enters into a primary will be required to post a $1,000,000 performance bond, much like criminals post bonds to assure that they will show up for their hearings. The terms of the bond will be simple: if you leave the primary and run on any other party’s ticket, or if you endorse anyone other than the winner of the primary, then you lose the bond. The proceeds of that bond would go to the winner of the primary.

Other professions do this with non-compete clauses and forfeiture provisions for warrants, stock options or salary claw-back provisions. So why not politicians?

Admittedly, there are some flaws with this system. First, many will complain that this keeps out anyone but rich candidates -- obtaining a million dollar bond would require significant amounts of collateral; criminals usually need to post 10% of the cost of their bonds and find a large portion of the face amount in collateral. But I’m not sympathetic to this argument because politics is an expensive game and you don’t lose this money unless you violate the bond. Moreover, if you are so untrustworthy that your family and friends aren't willing to put up their houses as collateral to support you, then maybe that tells us something important about you.

Secondly, this won’t stop candidates from very publicly refusing to endorse the winner, but they would run the risk of being found in violation if they stray too close to the line. You could require them to endorse the winner, but I think that would be a mistake because (1) it doesn’t stop obviously faked-endorsements and (2) it would make candidates subject to the allegation that their endorsements are made under duress.

Third, this doesn’t stop jackasses like Tom Tancredo in Colorado who didn’t run in the primary, but then jumped in as an independent when he didn’t like the candidate the Republicans chose. But I see this as a small risk because the real danger is from the people who thought they would win the primary and then didn’t.

This system isn’t perfect, but I think it would seriously cut down on the risk of disloyal candidates destroying their party’s chances for whatever egomaniacal or vindictive reasons they may have.

What do you think?