Voters are mad as hell, and they aren’t going to take it anymore.  Everywhere you turn, anger permeates the election.  Across the political spectrum, from the left and the right alike, everyone agrees on one thing: government is broken.  And for voters here in New York, the dysfunction in Washington pales next to the impotence of Albany.

At both national and local levels, the Tea Party has come to embody the torch and pitchfork wielding masses.  The emotionally motivated rage that is desperately seeking a focal point.  The everyman voters who are fed up and are demanding change. Change to what?  Who cares?  Something.  Anything.  As long as it’s different.

It is exactly this anger that has fueled the primary elections of candidates like Sharon Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Rand Paul, and Carl Paladino, among others.  They are all running as outsiders with little to no political experience.  They are deemed qualified by the very fact they are not.  By and large they are running on promises to disrupt the very institutions to which they are hoping to be elected.  They are not running on a platform promising to do, but rather to undo.

My own informal discussion with several people seems to indicate folks are well aware of what electing candidates like this to office would do.  The essential desire is to put a fresh blade in the legislative blender and lean on the frappe button.  Voters have given up on empty promises of incremental change at each election cycle.  There’s a palpable mood of vengeance in the air.

Aside from the emotional satisfaction of tossing a loose cannon into the political mix, there is some validity to the strategy of inserting someone with radical ideas into a stolid and inert organization to shake things up and make people think.  However, our particular form of government makes this strategy fraught with dangers as well.

Remember that individual Senators have the ability to issue legislative holds.  This means that any given Senator can effectively stop any given piece of legislation, or conceivably all of them, for any reason or no reason at all.  What keeps Senators from doing this constantly is only the fear of having their own bills stalled by others in retribution.  But if your agenda is just to be a wrench in the works rather than proactively accomplish anything, then there’s no disincentive to issue holds.

Similarly, the chief executive, whether President or Governor, has the ability to veto legislation.  Again, this is the power to stop progress, and it is only checked by the need for some future cooperation from other officials.  But there is no check if there is no need for that cooperation.

The core rules of our government are well adapted to limiting change, but they are ill-suited to prevent anarchy.  Instead, they enable it easily, but assume anarchy is an untenable political outcome which no politician would risk.  This played out nicely in 1995 when Newt Gingrich and the Congress played chicken with President Clinton by threatening to shutdown the government.  Ultimately Congress blinked because they feared voter backlash.  But imagine if instead the Congress had been elected for the purpose of bringing the government to a halt.

It’s hard to remember sometimes, but we do live in a country where largely “the trains run on time.”  For all its faults, the government pays our soldiers, pays for the medical care of our seniors, keeps our airports open, paves our roads, educates our kids, and keeps our food supply safe and plentiful.  That is not to say there are not significant problems. and dysfunctions in government.  Rather, it’s a caution against throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.

There’s an understandable temptation to just toss the current government and start over.  But the reality of that revolution would be messy and disruptive in ways beyond our comprehension.  Shooting ourselves in our collective foot isn’t really going to help.  Therefore, especially for the 2010 and 2012 election cycles, it may be extra important to be careful what you ask for.