Op-Ed: Weighing America’s Democracy on History’s Scale (Part Two) by Tom Timberman

“In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” Thomas Jefferson

Introduction

In “Part I: What makes America Great? It’s the Constitution, Stupid,” democracy as a human creation for ordering people’s lives, was reviewed as a historic phenomenon. This survey clearly illustrated that other, stronger human urges, e.g. ambition for wealth and for power-over-others have eventually defeated democracies since 500 BC. Part I ended with two additional lessons:

Representative or direct democracy is not a natural human organizational default because it requires people to relinquish to others, often strangers, some authority over themselves.  Therefore, democracy cannot be assumed as a given. History’s warning is clear:
democracy is vulnerable to countervailing human forces and thus needs to be nurtured and defended.

In Part II, the health of America’s democracy as experienced by Americans over the past 60 years and particularly during the on-going 2016 Presidential Election, will be weighed against the Framers’ intent in the context of its 2500 year history. The objective: to suggest whether some prescriptive relief is needed to guarantee America’s unique constitutional democracy continues to serve the will of the people for another century or two.

America’s Constitution

Thirty-eight Americans, from different states and backgrounds gathered over the summer of  1787, to address the clear inadequacies of the Articles of Confederation. After weeks of arguments, private discussions, impassioned speeches, and backroom deals, they compromised, collaborated and produced an historic document: the U.S. Constitution. Its bottom up, not top down concept of governance and the inclusion of Enlightenment values as enforceable citizen rights were extremely radical for the 18th Century. For practical reasons, they chose a representative (not direct) democracy, framed as a republic.

These thirty eight men were successful, experienced farmers, landowners, lawyers and businessmen who understood human flaws. While all men may be created equal, they knew they were not all equally endowed with nobility, morality, honesty, generosity and good intentions. Mechanisms were therefore inserted into the Constitution to protect the people’s power from individuals with overweening ambition to rule America singly (tyrant) or as a group (oligarchy). These measures included: one man, one vote; checks and balances, three co-equal branches of government, a Supreme Court to adjudicate alleged Constitutional violations and regular national, state and local elections.

Real Political Polarization

Americans in 2016 are repeatedly told that today’s Congressional dysfunction (also present in some state legislatures), is caused by political polarization between arch conservatives and left-leaning liberals, both unyielding. That’s an easy, but not accurate explanation of the legislative gridlock, as the remainder of this article will attempt to show.

When two starkly different concepts of the core nature of democracy and how best to protect it, confront each other, it’s called real political polarization. The liberal/conservative divide was dramatically displayed publically when Tom Paine, author of the 1776 pamphlet Common Sense, published The Rights of Man in 1792. It challenged Edmund Burke’s earlier conclusions in his “Reflections on the Revolution in France.” (1791)

Burke, a prominent, upper class British Whig statesman and political philosopher believed government institutions, honed over many years in the traditions of Western civilization and led by sound people, held societies together. Thus, a revolution against these institutions was abhorrent and fatal to a viable, democratic society. The brutality and destructive nature of the French Revolution shocked him and was offered as a grim example of his beliefs.

Paine, a tradesman’s son, argued that a people revolting against the power of a government and a class with a long-established pattern of violating their natural rights, was “…a natural continuation of a new Era that began with the American Revolution, in which men applied newly discovered Enlightenment values. “

For Paine, the U.S. Constitution was the only document in existence whose Enlightenment values animated a truly democratic government and society. He defined those natural rights in his 1776 Common Sense, which Thomas Jefferson incorporated more eloquently into his masterful Declaration of Independence. Its second paragraph captures the meat of “Enlightenment values”.

However, for the purposes of this article, the most significant right enumerated is: “… governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..”

Consent of the Governed

The Founding Fathers, the Framers and early American leaders accepted the Enlightenment values and natural rights as the moral underpinning of their Constitution. They also knew a democracy demanded the people exercise their power through elected representatives. However, they and their successors down to the present time were deeply suspicious of the power of the masses. They distrusted those with no substantial stake in their country to make wise decisions favoring those who did. Therefore, in the early days of the Republic, and thereafter, steps were taken to constrain the common man from exerting too much influence on matters of importance.

The “consent of the governed” during the early decades of the new republic was conditioned, as it was for the Ancient Athenians and is to a lesser extent in 21st Century America. Only certain members of the population were eligible to vote. The electorate early-on was limited to white, 18 year-old males who owned a certain amount of real property or could prove sufficient other wealth. After Emancipation (1863), the Southern elite focused on preserving their dominance in the community by disenfranchising and discriminating against the blacks: poll tax, literacy tests, Jim Crow, segregation, KKK, even murder.

In 2016 women and African Americans can vote and there is no “wealth” requirement. However, women still experience glass ceilings, the Equal Rights Amendment failed and some Southern and Western states still try to deprive minority segments of the electorate (Blacks, Latinos) of their right to vote. They are also victims of discrimination and violence.

Somewhat ironically, 21st Century technology would allow more and more frequent consultation with the governed,to listen to them, to understand their complaints and respond to them with laws, programs and support. Quite the contrary is the case in 2016.

Rise of the Oligarchy

Disparities of personal wealth and class existed in 1787, but grew apace as the US moved from a small agricultural, more rural economy to an increasingly urban industrial one and now to a technology-dominated, semi-industrial service economy. The share of

America’s wealth held by the richest citizens peaked in the 1920s, then fell by 50% over the next 30 years, but by 2016 had returned to 1928 levels. Now, the top 10% of Americans have annual incomes nine times those of the other 90% and the 0.1% receives 184 times that of the 90%. Or put another way, the average annual income for the bottom 90% is $33,068, for the top 10%, $295,845 and for the pinnacle 0.1%, $6,087,113. Globally, 0.5% of the population owns 37% of its total wealth.

The flirtation of very wealthy Americans with politics and politicians had been for most of the 19th and 20th Century a more ad hoc, non-systematic, more personal matter of “influencing” government decision-makers. The rise of labor unions, growth of the middle class and the control/discipline political party leadership then exerted, tended to inhibit greater power accruing to the incipient oligarchs.

However, in the 1980s a political marketing industry formed and quickly grew to serve wealthy interests, whether corporate or family, by swaying a range of legislative and executive decisions. Today, this multi-billion dollar lobbying sector is quite successful. A parallel political effort to lessen or remove election laws and regulations also took place largely through judicial or legislative action.

Over time, the corruption-sensitive, legal limits on private investment in political parties and their candidates, weakened and the richest Americans as a group were able to assert more authority over politics and elections – particularly down-ballot contests. In 2010, the Supreme Court in Citizens United, equated political contributions to free speech and gave them the same 1st Amendment protections. The flood gates of money were opened to flush into US politics.

The American oligarchy was empowered.

The 2016 Presidential Election: A Perfect Storm of American Political Problems

Candidates, Money and Chaos – Since summer of 2015 when 20 candidates from the two major parties registered for the Presidential race, they have generally flaunted their un-tethered ambitions and their complete disregard for the traditional behavioral norms and practices of presidential elections.

They have openly displayed an avaricious pursuit of the increasing millions of dollars required to disparage, insult and defeat their competitors. Presidential wannabes were not shy as they courted billionaire oligarchs, who helpfully hosted luxury auditions.

One well known politician with great wealth announced he was considering entering the race as an independent candidate and was willing to commit $1 billion of his own fortune to the campaign. He subsequently decided not to enter the scrum.
Political Party Impotence

Most depressing perhaps, is the inability or disinclination of party organizations to control or manage the confusing, convoluted, overly-long elimination round (primaries and caucuses) which they organized. Or even more damaging, to display the total absence of any process aimed at filtering out the emotionally unbalanced, unqualified or otherwise clearly unsuitable applicants for the most powerful position in the world.

The leaders of the majority party in both houses of Congress failed to build a successful Potemkin Image of Unity. Their party’s deep fissures began many years ago, but have worsened substantially since the emergence of their presumptive candidate: a hyperbolic, hypochondriac, billionaire armed with demagogic powers, performance skills and a keen sense for exploiting the emotional grievances of the party’s base – among them pervasive racism and jingoism.

The other major party selected as its presumptive candidate a tough, experienced, highly qualified, globally known establishment woman with character challenges. She eventually defeated her dogged competitor: a passionate, charismatic senator with great appeal to younger voters. He recently endorsed her.

Vulnerable Disgusted Electorate

The estrangement of millions of angry voters from their apparently distant, uncaring, unresponsive politicians was regularly manifested this past year as they voted repeatedly for someone who promised to shake up the ill-defined Establishment or preached a revolution. Politicians have evidently been too easily distracted from listening closely to increasing national rumbles of discontent.
The 24/7 manipulation of and pandering to, the American electorate by candidate organizations and their allied PACs, led many voters to disconnect from politics. It is not surprising, then, that 38-39% of the electorate is now registered as independent or non-affiliated.

Diagnoses of the Health of American Democracy

The U.S. Constitution cemented personal citizen rights into its foundation and constructed a governing architecture with security mechanisms to prevent democracy’s historic tendency to surrender to determined, powerful and ambitious individuals. The framers also erected road signs directing voters and their representatives toward goals of fair, participatory, effective governance based on the rule of law.

They set standards of performance based on assumptions concerning how democratic office holders would perform their duties, i.e. conscious of their ultimate responsibility to advance and secure the interests of all Americans, they would argue, compromise and form consensus decisions and legislation.

In 2016, the United States remains the richest, most powerful and envied country in the world. However, its legendary Constitutional democracy after 230 years, not surprisingly, needs some attention.
Enlightenment values and personal rights, without good lawyers, money and the patience to persevere through the judicial process, remain regularly violated. The dysfunction increasingly obvious in the US Congress (and some states) has nothing to do with political polarization, but with the disappearance of compromise and collaboration and their replacement with rigid demands and threats. At the state level, citizen benefits are sacrificed to dogmatic purity.

National elections have become chaotic, unmanageable and unnecessarily long. Gerrymandering has ensured many House and Senate seats resemble “rotten boroughs of 18th Century Great Britain. An American oligarchy of great wealth exerts considerable political influence in local, state and national elections; also reminiscent of upstairs/downstairs days. And in-between ballots, their lobbying machines operate 24/7.

A coarseness and license has invaded America’s democratic processes. Today, racism, religious and ethnic bigotry, verbal abuse of the vulnerable, incitement to violence are present….. and tolerated. Superficiality and bumper-sticker thinking are OK too

It seems clear the US Constitution and the expectations of its drafters are no longer automatic points of reference for citizens and their elected officials and representatives.

Lost in the twists and turns of Constitutional drift is American common sense.

Tom Timberman is an expert on military policy and now lives on the Eastern Shore. Among his many assignments with the US Department of State, he has headed a provincial reconstruction team, embedded within a combat brigade in Iraq. He has also helped implement a new counterterrorism strategy in South East Asia as Senior Advisor for South Asia in the Office of Coordinator for Counterterrorism.