There is a temptation to think of elections as a reset button. If the next election produces a major shift in Congress, perhaps we can simply reverse the damage, restore the programs that were cut, and get government functioning again.
But rebuilding a government is not that simple.
In a recent conversation, we discussed what we would want to see if voters deliver a major political shift. The answers varied, but they shared a common theme: restoration is necessary, but restoration cannot be the end goal.
The first priority would be restoring funding for institutions and programs people depend on: Medicare, Medicaid, FEMA, NOAA, the FDA and other agencies whose purpose is to protect the public. When healthcare disappears or disaster assistance is unavailable, the consequences aren’t theoretical. People suffer. Homes don’t get rebuilt. People go without care. Public health is put at risk.
But that creates an uncomfortable problem. If the next Congress spends its entire term simply putting back what was taken away, we will have spent years returning to where we started.
Restoring normalcy is not the same thing as making progress.
We should be capable of doing both.
Stop the damage—and start building
One proposal was to end the current war and reassert Congress’s authority over military action through the War Powers Resolution. Another was to investigate the conduct of the current administration and make the public record as complete as possible.
That last point matters enormously.
Americans cannot hold their government accountable for information they don’t have.
Throughout American history, there have been moments when officials decided that the public either didn’t need to know everything or couldn’t handle the consequences of knowing it. The result is predictable: facts emerge years later, long after elections have been decided and political consequences have disappeared.
That approach needs to end.
If there is evidence of wrongdoing, release it. If an elected official has acted improperly, tell the public what happened. If Congress votes to protect that official, make the vote public and make those legislators defend it.
The goal shouldn’t be partisan revenge. The goal should be an informed electorate.
That distinction is critical. Transparency is not about helping Democrats or Republicans win the next election. It is about giving citizens enough information to decide for themselves who deserves their vote.
The problem is bigger than one election
A political wave can change who controls Congress, but it cannot immediately repair a damaged government.
Breaking institutions is easy. Building them is hard.
As one of us put it during the discussion, a five-year-old could break things and call it progress. Building functional systems requires planning, oversight, agencies, personnel and sustained effort.
That means voters need to be patient without becoming complacent.
If a new government begins rebuilding damaged institutions, some of the work will be invisible. Some decisions may not produce immediate results. Some priorities will conflict with what individual voters want.
That doesn’t mean nothing is happening.
At the same time, patience cannot become blind faith. Politicians still work for us. They should be given room to govern, but they should also be held accountable for whether they actually deliver.
And right now, one of the biggest missing pieces of accountability is the ability of citizens to remove elected representatives who consistently fail the people they were elected to serve.
There is no general mechanism for American voters to recall members of Congress.
That should change.
We need more than a political victory
There are plenty of other reforms worth pursuing: term limits, making Election Day a national holiday, strengthening local and state-level political organizations, and building political platforms that actually reflect the needs of individual communities rather than assuming the same message works everywhere.
But perhaps the most important reform is cultural rather than legislative.
We need to start paying attention.
Too many Americans treat elections as the moment when our responsibility ends. We vote, then we go back to our lives and assume someone else is watching what happens next.
That is backwards.
Politicians work for us. We put them in office. Their authority comes from us. They should never accumulate so much power that they become effectively insulated from the people they represent.
And that responsibility belongs to everyone.
The constant political battle between left and right distracts us from something much more important: whether government is actually working for ordinary Americans.
We don’t have to agree on every policy to agree that we deserve functioning institutions, honest government, competent leadership and meaningful accountability.
A political wave might give us an opportunity to begin that work.
But the wave itself isn’t the solution. It’s the starting line.
Rebuilding what has been damaged could take years. Creating something better will take longer.
The question is whether we are willing to stay engaged long enough to do it—and whether, once we restore the power of government, we are finally willing to build the mechanisms necessary to keep that power accountable to the people.
Because ultimately, we’re not supposed to work for them.
They’re supposed to work for us.
ChatGPT was used to reformat our discussion into a blog-post format.
