Comment & Debate
James Boyle. “The initiative and referendum: its folly, fallacies, and failure.” (1912): “The greatest of our American authorities Prof Oberholtzer says in the new edition 1911 of The Referendum in America that it will make officials timid shambling ineffective men.”
James Boyle. “The initiative and referendum: its folly, fallacies, and failure.” (1912): “Men like Washington and Lincoln Daniel Webster Henry Clay and John C Calhoun were not the products of any political system in which bodies of mediocre men with hobbies robbed the legislature of its dignity and authority and subjected executive legislative and judicial officers to the fear of recall when they pursued a course distasteful to some fraction of the electorate. Only timid shambling ineffective men can come out of a system which strips public office of character and authority and makes it directly subservient to popular whim.”