“Democracy is messy.” I didn’t originate that, my old boss Don Rumsfeld did when the U.S. was first trying to put Iraq back together again. But, it applies to democracy in general. And, that is because democracy is a process, not an end. We cannot look forward to a “thousand year Reich”, a “withering away of the state,” or any other future state of nirvana.
We just have a set of principles sent down to us by the Founding Fathers in the form of:
- a Declaration of Independence;
- a Constitution that lays out the six bases upon which “We the People” joined together (The Preamble);
- the process and form it would take (the body);
- and finally a series of hedges around which we will not allow government or the people to cross (The Bill of Rights and the remaining Amendments.)
That, and the Federalist Papers, is all they gave us. If Ronald Reagan had been at the Constitutional Convention he would probably have called the Constitution a document that was based on “trust but verify.”
It was fragile from the beginning. At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation by a lady standing outside who asked: “Well, Doctor, what have we got — a Republic or a Monarchy?” The good Doctor Franklin is said to have responded “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
It is all we have. No more. It is based on trust in and by the people for defined periods of time limited by those messy periodic reviews called campaigns and elections.
Winston Churchill once remarked, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” He is also said to have mused, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
And then, there’s President Warren Harding’s frustration with it all. As a group was leaving the Oval Office, he turned to a friend and lamented, “John, I can’t make a damn thing out of this tax problem. I listen to one side and they seem to be right and then… I talk to the other side and they seem just as right, and here I am where I started. I know somewhere there is a book that will give me the truth, but hell, I couldn’t read the book. I know somewhere there is an economist who knows the truth, and I don’t know where to find him, and haven’t the sense to know and trust him when I find him….What a job!
That could have been said as easily this past year as it was nearly a century ago. But, as has often been remarked ‘legislation is like sausage: it tastes better if you don’t watch it being made.’ One time when I was on a U.S. Senate staff I witnessed a couple of Senators carrying a Senate colleague onto the floor so he could vote. He was too drunk to stand up by himself. Messy democracy.
This whole process is what my professor at USC, Charles Lindblom (actually a guest professor from Yale University), a world-renowned economist called “the science of muddling through.” It was his contention that we are individually irrational and self-absorbed; and therefore, democracy succeeds not through rational planning and far-sighted engineering, but somehow it works anyway. It operates on a principle he called “partisan mutual adjustment” where all sides jockey for what they want and end up with what they are willing to accept.
And so, as we look at all the turmoil, gridlock, anger, shortsighted arguments, petty “politics of personal destruction,” and confusing partisan maneuvering, we just want it to cease. It seems that if they can’t win on the issues, they try muddling the facts. If that doesn’t work, then they go after the individual himself. It reminds me of the movie “Back to School” where the main character’s sidekick remarks that his high school was so tough that once they sacked the quarterback they went after his family.
The central question that Americans have to face through all this is: are the issues you believe in worth fighting for?
- If you are opposed to abortion is it worth fighting for? If you support the right to abortion is it equally worth fighting for?
- If you believe that your taxes are too high, that the money is just being wasted on government bureaucracy, and people ought to pay for their own problems anyway, isn’t it worth fighting for? What about if you believe that in this wealthiest country in the world we ought to have better schools, provide better health care for everyone, and take better care of our seniors — and that those who are getting the most from the system can afford to pay more – that they should do so?
- Or, do you believe that America is the last hope of civilization, and has an obligation to use that power to extend freedom and opportunity to all nations where we can including the use of our military forces? Conversely, how important is it to you to get our troops home where they belong with their families, and let the people in foreign countries fight their own battles — and to use those hundreds of billions of dollars we are “wasting” on unwarranted overseas adventures here on our own people?
If none of these issues — or same sex marriage, or government regulation of drug use, or the right of private property vs. government regulation or . . . or . . . or . . . is important enough to you to fight for what you believe is right; then, I don’t have any way to influence how you think about the process.
But, if you feel passionately about any public issue enough to vote, contribute, attend a meeting, write a letter, or argue with family and friends, then you should understand that those engaged in actively trying to influence the outcome of elections (because issues matter to them passionately) will do so however loudly, obnoxiously or irrationally they present their case because they, too, believe they are right. They also believe that if they do not win the public argument, then their vision of America (and America’s place in the world) will fail. And, they take that very personally; that includes office holders, office seekers, campaigns and political parties, bureaucracies, interest groups, lobbyists, foreign governments and interests, taxpayers, benefit recipients, and all of the other “none of the above” named individuals and groups that enter into the very messy process called democracy.
So, accept democracy with all its faults. Don’t get disgusted and tune out all of the confusing voices, or the harangue on the nightly news (actually now 24/7), or the cluttering of signs, billboards, junk mail, email spam and all the other annoying noise being sent your way. It’s democracy in process. (Go ahead and complain, though, we all like to do that.) It’s Franklin, and Washington, and Madison and Jefferson and all of their contemporaries with their ideas and prejudices still raging and echoing — along with today’s equally imperfect politicians grinding the sausage of public policy that we are expected to eat. (It has been said that the definition of a “statesman” is a dead politician – and that we don’t have enough statesmen.
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So, let’s have at it. Bring it on. Bore me. Frustrate me. Enlighten me. Because, I hope that it is also you and me doing some of the grinding of the sausage in whatever way we can to see that our voices are also echoing in the halls of the mighty for those things we hold passionately dear. And, as Bette Davis (playing Margo Channing, the aging Broadway star in “All About Eve” in 1950) challenged: “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.” But, man oh man: what a night!
