Enforcement and Citizen Action

For the Integrity Pledge to work, we need to flip expectations in Washington on their head. The race to the swampy bottom must become a collective effort toward effective, accountable governance. Congress should not be dominated by the lawmaker-influencers who raise the most money, but by those who deliver real benefits for the American people. If the Pledge and its commitments take hold, I see real congressional heroes in our future.

I hear an interrupting voice in the back of my head: Okay, Pollyanna, get on with it. What does the Pledge actually do?

First: it creates a common framework to begin to address the dysfunction in Congress. It gives the voters—both Democrat and Republican—a shared vocabulary to ask important questions of their leaders. Are you an honest, dedicated, and hard-working public servant? Do you represent the People with honor and integrity? Are you looking out for our interests, not yours or your campaign donors’? Before we can really begin to fix Congress, we need to categorize and crystallize the problem, give it real shape and definition, and then create measurable standards to assess deficiencies and promote progress.

Second: the Pledge puts candidates and representatives on the record. It should be recited and signed in public, thereby making lawmakers’ commitment to integrity unambiguous and concrete—no wiggle room, no post hoc “interpretations,” no retroactive excuses. And if a lawmaker refuses to take the Pledge, then we, the voters, learn so much about their priorities.

Third: it creates new incentives in Washington. It requires representatives to work to dismantle the corrosive, antidemocratic system described above and embrace real, bipartisan, and effective governance. The Pledge will serve as both shield and compass. It will protect Congress members who seek to change the culture of representation. And it will guide lawmakers toward the kind of legislative behavior and decision-making that best serves the country.

Fourth: the Pledge asks lawmakers to “create and join a bipartisan, legislative working group dedicated to upholding” the Pledge’s principles. Members of this working group will not only hold each other accountable to the standards outlined in the Pledge but will also begin to bring bipartisan bills to the floor and pass effective legislation for the People. This work will be rewarded by the voters as expectations become clearer and integrity becomes the measure of political acumen.

Fifth: the Pledge gives the public a ready tool for demanding more from their representatives. Constituents can ask candidates and existing lawmakers to sign the Pledge—at town halls, campaign events, online forums, in one-on-one conversations, etc. Local civic groups, PTAs, unions, book clubs, religious organizations, and community boards can publicly endorse the Pledge and motivate their representatives to sign it. Newspapers and other outlets can ask candidates whether they’ve signed the Pledge—and if not, why not. Debate moderators can open with it, setting clear ground rules for honest and civil debate. And then we all vote for integrity candidates. As former Senator Snowe explains: 

We are a representative democracy, and we can get the government we want. It’s important to provide political rewards at the ballot box to those who search for common ground and penalties for those who don’t.[FN20]

As our expectations become clearer, lawmakers will find it harder to ignore them, and the political cost of refusing to sign or uphold the Pledge will begin to outweigh the benefits of participating in the current, antidemocratic system.

Sixth: it is my hope that a bipartisan, not-for-profit organization that closely follows Washington politics will take up the task of creating an Integrity Scorecard (example in the Appendix below), a simple, nonpartisan, publicly available tracker evaluating how well each signatory upholds the Eight Pillars in practice. Did they tell the truth under pressure? Did they work across the aisle on a bill that mattered? Did they show the courage to break with their party when integrity required it? This type of Scorecard would cut through the noise and show voters, at a glance, whether a lawmaker is walking the walk—or sliding back into Washington’s race to the bottom.

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Breaking Congress’s toxic and calcified patterns will require strength in numbers. As more representatives commit to independence from Washington’s deleterious influences—and more voters throw their support behind the Pledge—the political cost of ignoring integrity will begin to outweigh the benefits of playing the old game. Indeed, only a clear, collective declaration of raised expectations will give lawmakers the cover they need to pivot away from the ineffective dishonesty, division, and spectacle that dominates today’s politics and toward an era of serious governing. Integrity cannot remain a lonely act of conscience; it must become a collective practice and, eventually, a new norm. But we need an avalanche, not a snowball or two.

Most critically, if we all vote for integrity, We the People will begin to dismantle the corrupt machinery hindering our great nation’s democratic processes and kick off a new era of truly good governance.