The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
Series 3 – September 17, 2013
A Series of Lectures for People Who Prefer Pondering to Pandering
Winston Spencer Churchill was widely quoted during his years as the Prime Minister of Britain. He has been even more widely quoted since his death in 1965. His observations about a plethora of subjects were always piquant, pungent, and pithy.
For example, On Alcohol: * All I can say is that I have taken more out of alcohol than it has taken out of me. * When I was younger I made it a rule never to take a strong drink before lunch. It is now my rule never to do so before breakfast. * No one can say that I ever failed to display a fit and proper appreciation of the virtues of alcohol. On Alliances: * How much easier it is to join bad companions than to shake them off. * If we are together nothing is impossible, and if we are divided all will fail. On Animals: * Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you. Give me a pig. He just looks you in the eye and treats you like an equal. And so on, all the way from A to Z. Z: On Zionism: I am a Zionist. Let me make that clear. I was one of the original ones after the Balfour Declaration and I have worked faithfully at it.
One of Sir Winston’s most famous declarations was what he said about democracy. “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other forms that have been tried from time to time.” That is the idea we shall be exploring in this lecture.
Democracy is indeed the worst form of government except for all the others. Democracy can drive teetotalers to drink. It can force idealists to become cynics. It can turn the loftiest of optimists into the lowest levels of the pessimists, it can suck enthusiasm out of the finest of human beings and transform them into ogres of irascibility, it can lead people who are the epitomes of altruism into exemplars of apathy.
For all its faults, however, democracy has had an irresistible pull on the heartstrings and headstrings (if such there be) of a growing percentage of people for the past two centuries since it began to gain an increasing impetus throughout the world. You and I have lived during an epoch in human history where more people have become citizens of more new democracies than ever before. In the past forty years most Latin American countries have gone from being military or plutocratic or oligarchic dictatorships to being democracies. To be sure, some of these nation-states are more democratic or stable or solid than others, but literally hundreds of millions of people in Central and South America have cast aside governments of fear, repression, and heartlessness for governments where the people’s representatives are honestly trying to build new foundations for democratic institutions. When I was a young man, I would never have dreamed there could be such an astonishing transformation in most of our neighbor nations to the South.
Up until 1989, the most pivotal year of the 20th century, even though there were several other very important years, it appeared as though the Cold War would continue indefinitely. Some observers would say no, there were signs that Soviet communism was collapsing from within, and that sooner or later it would plummet into oblivion. If so, those signs were very well disguised. Then, in 1985, after there had been three different General Secretaries of the Soviet Communist Party in just three years, a man named Mikhail Gorbachev became the supreme leader of the USSR. Mr. Gorbachev was surely not a closet supporter of democratic government when he came into office, and he might not even pass muster now by American standards as a genuine champion of democracy. Nevertheless, he knew that the traditional Soviet form of autocratic government was hopelessly sclerotic, and that for the good of the greater Soviet Union, it had to be jettisoned. However, he also knew that could not happen overnight. Nevertheless, it was Mr. Gorbachev who had the courage to declare a surrender in the 40+-year Cold War.
The beginning of the end of the Soviet Empire came in 1989 when the citizens of East Berlin, after having been penned up by the Berlin Wall in their own section of the city since 1961, started crossing the danger zone behind the wall by the thousands. In one grand evening of opposition to the regime, they tore down great gaping sections of the Wall, and literally overnight Berlin was reunited as one city. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” President Reagan had said. He didn’t, but they did. Within two years the Soviet Union itself had evaporated. The satellite states of Eastern Europe became independent, and all fifteen republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics also became independent.
By now, a slim majority of the satellite states and the former Soviet republics have become functioning democracies. The degree of democracy varies considerably from one nation to the next. However, few of these former Soviet-dominated states still have the kind of dictatorship which was characterized by the communist government of the USSR. When given the option between authoritarian and democratic governance, most people of most nation-states choose democracy. Nonetheless, in those nations where there has been no history whatever of democracy, and only unending authoritarianism or heavy-handed monarchy, democracy is sometimes an extremely difficult transition for a people to make. That has proven to be the case, for example, in Russia itself, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Khyrgystan.
Russia may the most clearly indicate for us the difficulty of establishing democracy, because we are more familiar with its history than with any of the other states in the former Soviet bloc. Although Mikhail Gorbachev represented the potential for true democracy, he was unable to fashion anything close to a real democracy in his few years as the head of state in Russia. When he was overthrown in a bloodless coup by Boris Yeltsin, small indications of democracy began popping up. But Yeltsin was more a bull in a china shop than a gifted leader, and little happened during his tenure truly to promote democracy. Then, under Vladimir Putin, it initially appeared as though some democratic reforms might be instituted. When Putin could no longer serve as President of Russia because of a clause in the new constitution, he turned over the office to his hand-picked lieutenant, Dimitri Medvedev. Medvedev might have had two or three slightly more democratic notions assaulting his autocratic spirit than Vladimir Putin, but it didn’t really matter, because Putin, the Prime Minister, was the power behind the Presidency anyway. And now, unfortunately, Putin again is President.
Sad as it is to say, Americanski, many Russians are very skeptical of democracy. It is totally foreign to them. Not only have they had an unbroken history of autocratic government, it has also been almost entirely a history of iron-fisted autocrats. For many centuries the czars ruled Russia with a heavy hand, and Lenin’s and Stalin’s blatantly ballyhooed dictatorship of the communist party was even more brutal. People who have known only toughness may not be able to comprehend political negotiation and constant bi-partisan tussling. Under the current system in Russia, Mr. Putin makes no pretense of democracy. He, the old Soviet spymaster and spook, thinks democracy only impedes what needs to be done in a closed political system.
The Arab Spring began very unexpectedly in Tunisia in December of 2010 when a street vendor terminally ignited himself to protest the policies of the Tunisian government. By the time the dust had cleared, there were mass demonstrations over the next several months in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan. Leaders were replaced by the strength of the demonstrators in Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen, and three times (at the most recent count) in Egypt.
By no means were all protests in all those states initiated over the same issues. In some cases, the primary problem is religious differences, often between opposing Sunni and Shiite Muslims. In some cases the essential complaints are economic.
I had a history professor in college who believed that revolutions tend to occur not when things are at their absolute worst, but when they are getting better. Some people think, however, that things aren’t improving fast enough, and so they take to the streets. That is especially true where the middle class in previously underdeveloped states is growing quickly. The American sociologist Barrington Moore confidently declared, “No bourgeoisie, no democracy.” Perhaps a large middle class is either a or the necessary ingredient in a recipe for democratic government.
To some degree, a desire for more democracy has been a major factor behind some or all of the protests of the Arab Spring. Only one of these Arab states, Jordan, is close to being what we would consider a democratic government. Even it, however, is a monarchy, and the monarch, King Abdullah, is the main man in Jordanian politics. Anyone who thinks otherwise is looking through distorted lenses.
How do you go from very strong monarchies or one-party rule to genuine democracies in the Arab world? - With great difficulty, as it turns out. Again, because we are most familiar with its situation, Egypt provides the best laboratory test for how hard it is to institute real democracy when there has been no such thing in Egypt since the time of the pharaohs. Egypt has had self-rule for much of its 5000 years of history. From time to time over the past 1300 years other Muslim regional rulers have controlled Egypt, and since Napoleon, westerners have governed it for a few decades. But at no period in that long and illustrious history has there ever been anything like democracy, even under the late, great, and somewhat saintly Anwar al-Sadat.
The Arab Spring has taught people how to take to the streets in protest, but it has not taught them how to govern democratically. Many of the most vociferous demonstrators don’t like it when they realize that others have other equally strong but opposing ideas of how to run a democratic country. Again, Churchill was right: Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried.
From the Greek, the word “democracy” literally means “rule by the people.” When the people take over the government, it can be and often is very messy. Exactly who should do the taking over? How should they take it over? Should there be two houses of the legislature, or one? Should there be a parliamentary system of government, with a prime minister elected by the members of parliament from his political party, or should there be a president as the head of state, who is elected by the people? Is the British or the American system better, or some other system altogether? What kind of constitution should be adopted, if any, and by whom? What sort of court system should exist? From 1781 to 1787, the United States of America was wrestling with those questions, and they have not been answered to everyone’s satisfaction even to the present moment.
You may disagree with what I am about to say, but of course, I being I, that doesn’t give me one millisecond of pause for saying it. By my very rough estimate, half the world’s population live in nations where there is a reasonable level of democracy, and half live in failed states or in states where autocrats or outright dictators or in rare cases strong monarchs rule. Whether or not my guesstimate is accurate, it is undoubtedly true that fifty or a hundred years ago far more than 50% of the people of the world lived in non-democratic states. Democracy, like time, marches on, and in the 20th and 21st centuries, more and more countries are either slowly or rapidly becoming democratic. It is one of the most extraordinary features of the time in which you and I are living. Truly it is. In fact, despite the revered Mr. Churchill’s sardonic observation, this trend is the most important development in world politics over the past hundred years.
On a recent Sixty Minutes re-run, there was a Leslie Stahl interview with a woman who is apparently the number one real estate mogul in China. Her name is Zhang Xin. She has become a multi-billionaire in the process. The segment focused on the huge real estate bubble which has developed in the Middle Kingdom, and that was the real focus of the interview. However, Ms. Zhang was asked what she thinks is the one thing the Chinese want most. I would have guessed she would say two chickens in every pot and a car in every garage, or some such materialistic thing, but that wasn’t it at all. She answered with one word: Democracy.
What an absolutely revolutionary idea! What a totally different world it would be if the People’s Republic of China became a genuine democracy! But it isn’t really the People’s Republic; it is the party’s republic, “the party” being the communist party. China is now vastly different from the Bad Old Days of Mao Zedong, but it is a far cry from being anything close to a liberal democracy. Yet we may be certain of this: were the Chinese Communist Party to lose its grip on the Chinese government, and something similar to any of the 100+ democracies which now exist on our planet were to come into being in the Middle Kingdom, the entire globe would be both much safer and much more chaotic. Democracy is safer than autocracy, but it is usually also more chaotic. And why? - Because democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other forms that have been tried. Chaos exists where politics exists, any kind of politics. But it is frequently appallingly evident wherever democracy is the form of government.
When the people truly do rule themselves, via their elected representatives, they usually want to maintain something akin to the status quo in their countries, whatever a particular status quo might represent. Changes are always in the air in democracies, but instituting those changes can be maddeningly difficult. Most of us think it is better to keep the benefits we have rather than to risk throwing all of them over for some better, but also less certain, benefits. Better the devil we know than the devil we don’t know. And so nearly everyone, liberals as well as conservatives, prefers to go slowly in making changes. It is safer that way, we conclude.
However, democracy is sometimes much more chaotic than autocratic government, because it entails far more variables. For example, what if American Republicans become more conservative than usual, or Democrats more liberal than usual? What if the two parties represented in Congress decide to allow the other party to achieve nothing of substance in their agenda, and both parties are able to pull off that distinctly undemocratic two- or four-year plan? How does such chaos get resolved using the democratic process? In an autocracy, such things generally don’t happen. The autocrat, or the oligarchs, will see to that. But in a democracy, all kinds of cockamamie things are allowed to transpire, because democratically-elected politicians can get away with it. In a recent New Yorker cartoon, a king is glowering down on his angry subjects from the castle. His chief adviser says to him, “If they don’t quit complaining you could threaten them with democracy.”
Before looking more closely at democracy in the United States of America, let us take a gander at Egypt, simply because it has been so much in the news lately. No one would ever accuse Hosni Mubarak, the former President of Egypt, of being an aficionado of 20th century democracy. When General Mubarak took over the Egyptian government after the assassination of General Anwar al-Sadat, he seized as much power for himself and his presidential office as he dared. That represented a huge amount of power, far greater than any genuinely democratic head of state ever had. The Arab Spring resulted directly in Mr. Mubarak being overthrown. There were too many people in the streets to quell the unrest, just like in Berlin in 1989. After the President’s expulsion, however, there was a period of military rule, as there had been after King Farouk was ousted and Gamal Abdul Nasser took over. Then when Nasser unexpectedly died, the same thing happened again; the military stepped in to maintain order. The military has long had far more power in Egypt than in most other countries anywhere in the world, be they democratic or autocratic. Whether they have been an uncontestable military dictatorship is something you might want to contest, but they certainly weren’t Col. Klink and Sgt. Schultz.
How do you establish a democracy when you never had one before? It may be happening in Burma/Myanmar (take you pick) as we speak, but it would be well not to hold one’s breath it will happen quickly. It happened, to a degree, in the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, but only to a degree. Democracy took root remarkably in Poland, Czechoslovakia, then later in the Czech Republic and Slovakia (and that division tells us something important as well), and in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Things in Hungary, Ukraine, and Belarus have not gone smoothly at all, and it is not at all obvious whether or how democracy shall survive in those troubled lands.
But, lest you fall into despair far too quickly, consider how unsettled the political landscape was in our nascent nation after the Revolution had been won. The Articles of Confederation were a disaster, leading nowhere fast. The entire federal government at the time could actually have fit into the broom closet proposed by that noble American patriot, Grover Norquist. And Grover would have been deliriously happy in the chaos of 1781 to 1789, along with our former junior US Senator and others of that ilk. It takes years, decades, or even centuries to create viable democracies in some places, and for a great variety of reasons. Democracy will always be far more difficult to nurture and nourish in Russia, China, Viet Nam, and similar countries and societies than in places like the United Kingdom, Italy, or France. And when you ponder what Japan was until 1950 or so, and realize that democracy has flourished there since that time, it is not only possible but perhaps likely that democracy shall eventually characterize every government everywhere on earth -- not at the same time, likely, but over time.
Democracy is like crab grass or dandelions: once it really takes root, it is hard to stamp it out, even for those who seriously try. That is because its very nature is constantly self-correcting. If this doesn’t work, the people somehow figure out how to do something else that does work. In democracies “the people” are not fundamentally stupid, even though sometimes they do very foolish things in the voting booth. Once “the people” have tasted democracy, very few of them long to go back to the old days of demagoguery and dictatorship.
Where democracy seems very hard to institute as the established system of government (in Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Congo, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc.), the political process they have can be very dismaying and disheartening. However, in some of those places things could be, and have been, much, much worse than they are now. Nonetheless, democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried. Some states have known nothing other than monarchy, autocracy, or dictatorship for their entire histories. Still, once they get a taste of democracy, however fleeting or brief or minimal, there is something about this frequently flawed form of government that makes many people, and perhaps eventually the majority, want to strive for more and wider expressions of what constitutes the rule of law and the rule of the people.
Cyber technology in the contemporary world is not necessarily all it’s cracked up to be. It may create as many problems as it solves. Nevertheless, increasing hundreds of millions of people living in autocracies understand via the Internet how democracy operates elsewhere. And, despite the flaws they see, they much prefer flawed democracy over the governments they have been forced to endure for their entire lives. Likely the Arab Spring would never have transpired were it not for the widespread usage of Internet images flashing for hours every day onto monitors from Morocco to the Gulf States. For better or worse, cyber technology has become an instruction manual for how to inaugurate democratic reforms.
This is not to say democracy is without major drawbacks. Take the United States of America in 2013, for instance. American Alzheimer’s seems to have taken control of our government. Far too little of good governance is being accomplished at any level of our federal system. A young President who began his first term with such promise in 2009 appears to be floundering in the first months of his second term in 2013. Congress, whose poll ratings have steadily been falling for many years, is held in contempt by many of our citizens. A couple of months ago the Supreme Court rescinded electoral procedures which were instituted by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and it is fairly certain many Americans will be unable to vote in upcoming elections because of barriers which will cynically be set up to prevent certain kinds of voters from going to the polls.
American elections have become a farce, except that they are increasingly a tragedy. In almost all cases, the candidate with the larger campaign fund defeats the candidate with less money to fund the election. Incumbents are far more likely to win re-election than challengers are to oust them, in large part because incumbents usually have much more money in their war chests. I read recently that in the first two or three decades of our nation’s history as an independent democracy, challengers were far more likely to win elections than incumbents. Back then the electorate apparently felt it was good to “throw the rascals out” every few years.
And where does the money come from to fund elections? From individuals and corporations, certainly, but especially from organizational lobbyists. Lobbyist contributions have become a cancer constantly gnawing away at our body politic. It is not only acceptable but advisable for people who represent special interests to make those interests known to our legislators. However, they should not be allowed to contribute any funds at all to any candidates for election. Our Supreme Court has stipulated that such contributions represent freedom of speech, and thus they have been ruled constitutional. What they actually represent is a clear and unmistakable corruption of the electoral system of our democracy, and they should be outlawed. In a democracy, however, even a Supreme Court can become corrupted. And ours has been.
But who will outlaw huge campaign contributions? Not the Supreme Court, who have made known their politicized views. And certainly not the members of Congress, who benefit from these contributions in every election, and who therefore want to keep them coming. The President might use the bully pulpit to seek campaign contribution limitations, but with all the other fish he has to fry, he is unlikely to do so. And so we go on, year after year, and seats are ordinarily openly bought and paid for by Senatorial and Congressional candidates who garner the greatest number of dollars for their campaigns. Undoubtedly there would be disadvantages if the government should provide a limited number of dollars to every candidate on an equal basis, but what we have now is far worse than it would be to take the steps to change our system. American democracy is being very poorly served by our current electoral dysfunction.
Then there are the two political parties themselves. It has become very dissatisfying for thoughtful American voters to be truly enthusiastic about either party.
For most of our history, we have had essentially a two-party democracy. The two parties have changed their names, character, and constituencies often over the past 224 years, but there have usually been just two major parties at any one time. Whenever third-party candidates have emerged (usually for the Presidency rather than for other federal offices), they have not succeeded at the polls, though they have occasionally helped to engineer major political changes by their efforts when either or both of the two major parties adopted some of their ideas.
The problem at the present time is that both parties seem utterly unwilling to work with the people in the other party to effect legislation for the benefit of the whole country. Since none of us has lived for longer than two centuries, no one can definitely declare on the basis of our own experience that Americans are more partisan in our politics now than we have ever been. However, probably most of us who are advanced in years can truthfully opine that we are more partisan than we have been in the lifetimes of those of us who are in our eighth, ninth, or tenth decades.
Where are the moderates in either party? The sad irony is that anyone from either side willing to talk to those on the other side is labeled a turncoat by many of those on their own side. Tea Party types rail at Republicans who refuse to shut down the funding of the entire government unless Obamacare is first shut down. It is almost as amusing as it is appalling that people like Lindsay Graham, John McCain, and Lamar Alexander are being called moderates by the extremist zealots in their own party. If they are the moderates among the Republicans, then who must the conservatives be: every other rabid Republican serving in Congress?
But the same lethal trend exists in the Democratic Party Members of Congress as well. Whenever a piece of social legislation is proposed, it sails through the Senate, which is controlled, barely, by the Democrats, and it is summarily killed in the House, which is controlled by the Republicans. House Democrats talk very little to House Republicans, supposing it is of no use. Of no use? They all are supposed to be working on our behalf! But they are not working on our behalf; far too many of them are all working solely on their own behalf to get re-elected!
I realize I am doing what any vociferous citizen in a democracy tends to do: I am exercising free speech to disparage our elected representatives, and I am doing so with many unsubstantiated broadsides. Nevertheless, I am convinced my primary observation still stands; at present we have a do-nothing Congress which seems unwilling to try to find new ways to do the new things which desperately need to be done.
I used to think that being a politician was one of the noblest vocations there is. Now I think politics should not be a vocation or profession at all. It is not beneficial in a democracy to have anyone serve in office as a lifetime or half-a-lifetime job. As able as anyone might be, are our interests truly well served by someone who is in the Senate or House for thirty or forty years? We have term limits for the President: two four-year terms at most. There is a reason for that. We do not want a chief executive who becomes entrenched in office. Yet we allow scores of entrenched Senators and Congress people on an ongoing basis. If we cannot achieve terms limits constitutionally or legislatively, which apparently we can’t – or won’t --, then let us do so by means of elections. On principle we should prevent any Senator from being elected more than twice and any Member of the House from serving for more than four terms.
The objection is often made that it takes time for new Members of Congress to learn the ropes. It is said, obviously in jest, that months may be required for people just to find out where the Congressional rest rooms are in the capitol building. If so, that says something about the quality of some of the people we send to the capitol building. The brightest and best can and do learn the system rapidly, and we should keep rotating in new folks on a regular basis to prevent anyone from becoming a Congressional old-timer. Congressional short-timers: they are what we need to keep our democracy from becoming a plutocracy or a kleptocracy.
Do elections really matter all that much in the US of A? Sometimes, sadly, no. Once candidates manage to get elected, they are likely to be re-elected for as long as they wish to remain in office. The framers of the Constitution never intended that, and said as much --- frequently. They definitely thought we should have amateur politicians, not professionals. What we have evolved into is a Congress composed largely of professional office-holders. Thus we have turned elections into entitlements for those who serve in our national legislature. To the victors go the spoils, and many past victors generally get the spoils every time they run in any election.
Does it therefore matter whether or not we vote? It matters immensely! But it matters only if we do vote. The United States has the lowest electoral turnout for those eligible to vote of all western democracies. For decades we hovered at slightly above 50% of eligible voters actually casting ballots, but in the last few years we have moved up to about 60%.
But why don’t more Americans vote? Many insist it doesn’t matter. Others stay away from the polling places because – quote – “Voting only encourages the blighters.” (When they refer to elected officials, they may not actually say “blighters.”) Others do not perceive the importance of the ballot, while still others feel ill-prepared to cast an intelligent vote. That, tragically, is probably true in far too many cases. But ignorance of the real as opposed to the most frequently ballyhooed issues does not prevent millions from casting straight-line party votes just as their daddy and momma and granddaddy and grandmomma before them did. Democracy does not weed out intelligent from ignorant voters. Anyone who is on an election list can cast a ballot, whether or not they do so thoughtfully and with due consideration.
Voting in autocracies has no impact at all, although in many autocracies, and even in a few democracies, all the people are required to vote. But when the people of long-term, strong democracies begin to conclude that their vote doesn’t actually matter, democracy in such a state may already be in decline. Possibly it may have gone to seed altogether.
Does that characterize the United States of America in the early 21st century? We surely hope not. Nevertheless, too many Americans are faced with too few elections where there are two good candidates, either of whom might win. Instead, we are ordinarily confronted by one candidate who in most instances is almost assured of an electoral victory. In the first place, the re-districting of Congressional districts after the census every ten years is intended by the majority party in the state legislatures to guarantee triumph for the candidates of their party. In the second place, as I have previously suggested, most incumbents have far more money in their campaign coffers, and thus are far more apt to win the election based solely on that fact. Too often the people we elect are bought and paid for by the somewhat suspect system which has evolved over two-and-a-quarter centuries of American democracy.
When I was a senior at West High School in Madison, Wisconsin, and Mr. Kreider was teaching us a course called Problems of Democracy, democracy seemed much more manageable and much less problematic in 1957 than it does in 2013. Or maybe I just wasn’t listening closely enough. Or perhaps I have just gotten more cynical in my old age, which is probably true. In my opinion, anyone who lives for 75 years without acquiring a healthy dosage of cynicism along the way hasn’t been paying close enough attention. When Dwight D. Eisenhower was President, however, things seemed much more stable than they do now when Barack Obama is President. Part of the reason for that may be because who would have guessed in 2008 or 2013 that we would have a President named Barack Obama? The passing of time inevitably changes political conditions in any country anywhere. But then, considering what the nation had gone through from 1941 to 1945, who would imagine having a President with the surname of Eisenhower?
We are a nation of immigrants, as many, but not all, of us are happy to declare. I myself am the offspring of Canadian immigrants. Most of our Presidents up to now have had British names. In the future, however, we shall have Latino and Eastern European and Asian and probably more African monikers represented among our Presidents. That’s what happens in an immigrant democracy, even when the children of immigrants try to exclude other immigrants. Who knows: within a few years we could have a Rubio or Jindal or Cruz or Booker or Castro living in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
It is not easy to integrate large numbers of immigrants into any society, but the USA has done as well as any, and better than most. However, any form of government is tested by an influx of people from many other nations. Still, our democracy is much stronger than otherwise it would be because we have such a smorgasbord of nationalities.
Some of you may be thinking that the United States is not truly a democracy. Technically that is true, if by “democracy” you mean the equivalent of the old New England town meeting, where everybody votes on everything. We are a republic, and from our beginning we made no pretense of being a true democracy. No nation-state with more than a few thousand people or so could even contemplate being a democracy. But we are a democracy in the sense that we elect our representatives, and they govern on our behalf.
The State of California is democratic (with a small “d”) like no other State in the Union. (With a big “D” it is also like no other State in the Union.) California allows referenda, which it calls “Propositions,” to be voted on by the electorate on almost every issue anyone is sufficiently motivated to push. In 2008 California voters passed Proposition 8, a gay-marriage ban. Two years later a California district court ruled it unconstitutional. The governor and attorney general agreed with that ruling, and thus did not appeal. The California Supreme Court said the original proponents of Proposition 8 could argue their case in federal court. Several months ago, however, the US Supreme Court said the voters who passed Prop 8 had no standing in a federal court, so they said the district court’s decision stands. Thus, said the US Supreme Court, same-sex marriage is legal in California, by way of the district court decision. It isn’t legal everywhere, that decision declared, but it is legal in California.
Does all that sound democratic to you? Is it is tad confusing? Too bad. Democracy is often confusing, and convoluted, and confounding. But that was one of the two US Supreme Court decisions which declared same-sex marriage to be legal, unless it isn’t, in which case it becomes confusing, convoluted, and confounding.
Have you ever heard of the Raisin Administrative Committee? Probably not. It was instituted in the 1940s by the Agricultural Department to decide each year how many raisins the American market will support. It tells all raisin growers they can only grow only so many raisins, but it doesn’t pay them for any extras they may produce, and it doesn’t really decide the matter until after they have produced them. In 2003 growers has to forfeit 47% of their crop, and 30% in 2004. Iyla Shapiro of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, says the Agriculture Department is creating cartels by such weird measures. The US Supreme Court was asked to sort this out. Is democracy a great idea, or what?
Last March President Obama withdrew his nomination of a federal judge whom most observers agreed was eminently qualified to become a member of the US District Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia. It is the second-highest court in the land, just behind the Supreme Court. There was a majority of Senators ready to confirm Caitlin Halligan, but they couldn’t get the 60-vote majority necessary to get her nomination to a vote on the Senate floor. Is democracy a great idea, or what?
As Churchill implied, the trouble with democracies, or any other kind of government, is that governance requires politics, and politics can be a dicey and even dirty business. Political scandals can emerge anywhere at any time, as we have seen all too often. Almost certainly, however, most autocracies have far more corrupting scandals than most democracies, because “the people” can always vote out the culprits is they think their culpritude warrants it, whereas in dictatorships you’re stuck with the crooks you have. That’s why they’re autocrats.
Unless we are to plunge into bottomless pools of cynicism, we who are citizens of the strongest democracy in the Americas must make our peace with the necessity of politics in our government. To alter Mr. Churchill a bit, politics is the worst way to run a government except for all the other alternatives which might be tried, of which there are really no other viable alternatives. You may not like politics, but you’re stuck with it. So the best you can do is to study the positions taken by your elected representatives, and then cast your Yea or Nay in every subsequent election. And if you don’t, in fairness to everyone else you need to button your labial muscles, because voting is the clearest and cleanest way for people in democracies to register their support or displeasure of the politics which is pursued at any given period of time.
Maybe I have become too cynical, as I have previously indicated. But it seems to me that for the first half of my life, politics and politicians appeared much more reasonable and honorable than in the past three-plus decades. The low esteem in which politicians in general are held these days should genuinely alarm us.
I happened to be reading an article about the Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa. Five hundred years ago this year, Balboa became the first European to view the Pacific Ocean from land in the Americas. He stood on top of a small mountain in Panama and gazed upon the Pacific stretched out below him.
The man who led the writer of the article to the particular spot where Balboa stood happened to be the mayor of Panama City, and the man who likely shall be elected President of Panama in next year’s election. His name is Juan Carlos Navarro. In their trek into the Panamanian rain forest, Mr. Navarro pointed out a certain kind of fig vine which attaches itself to other species of vegetation, much like Spanish moss does in coastal South Carolina. He said, “I call this fig a politician tree. It is a parasite, it’s useless, and it sucks its host dry.”
That is quite a caustic observation from a professional politician. Realistically, that is what many of the citizens of both democracies and autocracies believe about those who govern them. If a strong majority of people in any kind of nation-state believe that about their politicians, their states may be in a very precarious condition.
To conclude this essay about the nature of democracy, I want to say something that may surprise, or shock you. But I feel very strongly about this, which is why I am ending with it. When “the people” elect their representatives, I believe it is the duty of those elected officials to do what they think is best for “the people,” rather than what they think the people think is best.
In other words, politicians should not base their legislative or executive decisions on what poll numbers tell them about particular issues on which “the people” have voiced opinions. Instead, the politicians should do what, in their hearts and heads, they think best serves the people toward achieving their best ends, even if “the people” might strongly object.
Most politicians in democracies don’t do that, nor do most politicians in autocracies do that. (In autocracies the leaders inevitably do what they think is best for themselves, and the people are left to take the hindmost.) In democracies, however, the politicians do what they perceive the people want done, whether or not the politicians agree with it. And they do it for two reasons. First, they think that’s what democracy is all about. Secondly, they want to get re-elected, so they try to butter up the electorate by granting them what they think they desire.
Democracies operate most effectively, however, where the elected leaders pass legislation or take positions they know may be unpopular, but which they are nonetheless convinced are the things that need to be done. Our democracy has functioned at its peak when our politicians did what we needed but also what “we the people” might not want.
If “the people” disapprove what the politicians do, in a democracy they can vote them out in the next election. But if leaders depend on “the wisdom” of “the people,” too little progress shall be made, because “the people” are often poor judges of the kind of courageous decisions which genuine statecraft requires.
But would not this philosophy of politics lead to an oligarchy of officials who consider themselves to be mental giants? Not at all. If “the people” suppose politicians either to be mental midgets or totally deaf to their wishes, they can remove them by ballot in the next election.
What I am promoting here is not classic democracy as it has been understood for over two centuries. Instead I am making a plea for democratic leaders who lead, often despite the wishes of their followers. If the followers choose not to be led by them, they can display their displeasure by means of the ballot, and not the bullet, as in autocracies.
The USA is currently suffering from an appalling shortage of courageous politicians. There are too many “politician trees” who selfishly cling to the body politic. And thus democracy is absolutely guaranteed to be the worst form of government, except for all the other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Chris Lehane served as an advisor to Bill Clinton and Al Gore. He made this very telling observation about politicians: “Politicians very rarely lead, despite the fact that they talk about leadership in every speech. They typically follow.” And so they do, friends; so they do. It is etched deeply into their political DNA.
What would happen, if we, the voters, courageously chose what we hope might be courageous leaders? It would be interesting, and exciting, to try such an extraordinary form of democracy. Well, there is still time, fellow citizens; there is still time.