Scott Howell Quotes

The diagnosis is clear, but changing the status quo has proven difficult, because often those who are elected do not govern, and those who do govern are not elected.

The thing about American politics, as I've learned, is there is no choice.

Debate is almost non-existent and no one is apparently accountable to anybody apart from their political party bosses. It is bad news for democracy in this country.

Our political system is losing its ability to even explore alternatives …. I hope we will demand judgment from our leaders.

Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be.

There is nothing wrong with our country, there is something wrong with our politics…

To me, 'the establishment' means people who are out of touch with the people they're elected to represent.

Having a representative democracy requires the confidence of the voters in the system. And if voters lose confidence in the system they can make some very bad decisions.

We are being held hostage by the people we elect.

As constituents, we've become lazy in terms of what we want and how to get it. If we, as a constituency, don't like what Congress is doing, but 90 percent of incumbents get reelected every year, that's a problem.

Many good people serve in Congress. They are patriotic, hard-working, and devoted to the public good as they see it, but the institutional and cultural impediments to change frustrate the intentions of these well-meaning people as rarely before.

The job of elected officials is to answer to the people who sent them to Washington - not to scorn them, not to demean them, not to mock them, and not to sell their jobs and dreams to the highest bidder.

Far too many of our elected officials are chained to an ideology that is rooted in the past. They are keepers of normalcy who embrace things as they've always been.

When you go to our political system, I feel like it's intentionally kept in the last century. In every other facet of life, we turn to social media for instant response time, complete transparency.

I'm against bureaucratization, corruption, seeing the same people in power.

That's what representative democracy is about, is members going to Washington but coming home and answering the tough questions.

When you look at every government, they're our elected officials, and you have to have some form of respect for them.

The first thing I would like to say is that I don't think folk at Westminster - or for that matter at Holyrood - constitute an elite. They are representatives who are elected and who are at the service of voters who can fire them.

If we can be sure of anything, it's that the immense challenges faced by our country and our nation cannot be solved by the same people in the same offices, casting the same votes for the same failed policies.

I think democracy is on the decline in the West. Ruling parties are the same: neo-liberalism at home and wars abroad.

The conventional wisdom in an election year is that nothing will get done until after the election.

Billionaires and corporations buy and sell politicians, while citizens struggle to exercise their right to vote or hold their elected representatives to account.

The career politicians down in Washington don't want to be held accountable.

However flawed democracy is, it is still the only answer.

We need term limits desperately in this country.