Democracy Under Siege

I

At perhaps no time since the Progressive Era, lasting from the late 19th century until the onset of World War I, have prosperity and a general sense of well-being so sharply contrasted with worried, negative diagnoses of the state of our democracy. The new American dilemma presents the picture of a highly prosperous, explosively inventive nation alongside one with a new, or updated, critique of the contrasts between contemporary euphoria and certain less satisfying realities. There have of course been times, in particular the ‘60s, when prominent writers and activists pointed out dramatic inequities masked by the complacency and apparent prosperity and self-celebration of the ‘50s.

At certain moments in our history, some voices get through, and on even rarer occasions, they affect policy. One thinks of Lincoln Steffens, whose writings led to reforms in the meat-packing industry, and Ida Tarbell, who contributed to the movement to break up Standard Oil and other monopolies. During the early ‘60s, Michael Harrington got our attention and his work led to the Kennedys’--in particular Robert Kennedy’s--focus on trying to improve the lot of the poor. Also in the ‘60s, Ralph Nader’s writing and political activities led to unprecedented legislation to provide federal protection of consumers, beginning with requirements for safer automobiles. All of these people were revolutionaries of sorts, revolutionaries who were focused and productive. More diffuse perhaps, the civil rights movement and its leaders--with Martin Luther King Jr. its most articulate voice, of course--forced America to face its racial hypocrisy. But perhaps at no time before has our nation enjoyed such a state of well-being while at the same time such basic questions are being raised about the fundamental fairness and workings of our political and economic systems.

Moreover, though we’ve enjoyed nearly 225 years of remarkable political stability (the Civil War an exception, of course) we still haven’t resolved one of the most fundamental questions about our democracy--a question that underlay the debates of the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia. What does representative democracy really mean? Thomas Jefferson, who gave such expression to liberty as to affect world history, feared the effects of government over man, while his great friend James Madison worried about trusting man with almost unfettered self-government. (Thus, Madison’s “If men were angels . . . “ in the Federalist Papers.) Jefferson, serving as ambassador to France at the time, was concerned that the men in Philadelphia were giving too much power to a federal government--and his friend Madison wrote to reassure him. (At the same time, Jefferson was very slow to see the lethal implications and incipient anarchy of the French Revolution.)

The debate continues: To what extent should a democracy be governed by representatives of the people or directly by the people themselves? And, as will be seen through one of the books under review here, it isn’t a purely theoretical issue. From the beginning of the Republic (“If you can keep it,” said Benjamin Franklin), we have transferred power peacefully, and the individual American enjoys a remarkable amount of personal freedom. (A threat to this freedom may come from the misuse of new technology.)

Yet Americans have an increasing--and well-founded--sense that our democratic system isn’t working as it should. Washington is increasingly paralyzed. Our politicians spend more time playing the angles than resolving national issues. The ever-growing role of money in elections has corrupted our political system to the greatest extent in the modern age, has contributed to that paralysis, and places a large thumb on the scale when decisions are made as to who benefits from the federal government. This, too, isn’t a theoretical matter. It affects people’s daily lives in numerous ways--whenever the Congress passes a tax bill, an appropriations bill, not to mention stacks of bills that obviously benefit the highest bidders or the contributors as opposed to the general public. And it affects people’s daily lives when the Congress, in irons, fails to act on some of the preeminent issues of our time.

In the past, we had politicians openly on the take; we had Mark Hanna and Mark Twain’s “The Gilded Age.” But in the mid-’70s (after Nixon), the nation decreed that our politics should be cleaned up and the Congress passed a far-reaching campaign finance reform act. That’s the baseline. Our politics are more corrupt now than ever because of the ever-growing pervasiveness of the use of money to affect legislation--and executive actions as well.

If our representative democracy isn’t working as it should, are there constitutionally valid--and wise--ways to deal with that? If the inequities in our society are beyond acceptable, what is to be done? Three recently published books address these questions, in different ways and with different degrees of helpfulness.

II

David S. Broder, the eminent Washington journalist (and a longtime friend since our early days at Congressional Quarterly) has written the most narrow-gauged but, per word, the most valuable of the three. In “Democracy Derailed: Initiative Campaigns and the Power of Money,” Broder has thrown the spotlight on the increasing use of statewide initiatives to circumvent the legislative process. In so doing, he addresses the fundamental issue of what is meant by representative democracy and raises troubling questions about a growing phenomenon.

He shows us how initiatives to set state policy--and, the sponsors often hope, have a radiating impact on national policy--get on the ballot (by proponents gathering signatures, often for pay) and are pushed by the interests behind them or are opposed by threatened interests, often through phony arguments and at an escalating cost. In a cogent statement of the problem, Broder argues that this “new form of government” is spreading and “is alien to the spirit of the Constitution and its careful system of checks and balances.” He shows how, ironically, a reform favored by the Progressive Movement as “a cure for special-interest influence . . . has become the favored tool of millionaires and interest groups that use their wealth to achieve their own policy goals.” And how it has become “a lucrative business for a new set of political entrepreneurs.”

He makes clear that so-called intrastate issues have become pawns of and profit centers for out-of-state idea peddlers and political consultants. He demonstrates that some of the “issues” are bogus--manufactured (as are some issues before Congress) by the consultants, who have developed an industry of ginning up faux “grass-roots” opinions and also profits for themselves. The voters subject to these fights, he points out, aren’t the agents of change that the Progressives once envisioned but actually the pawns in other peoples’ political struggles and money-making schemes.

Broder spends considerable time on some of the great battles in California--the king of initiative states--such as Proposition 13 in 1978, which revived the initiative in the modern era and rolled back property taxes, and Proposition 226 in 1998, which dealt with so-called paycheck protection, actually designed to break the power of the unions. (A lobbyist told Broder during the “paycheck” battle, “What you have is a lotta little lies fighting one big lie.”) In this case, the opponents--unions--greatly outspent the proponents and won.

Broder’s critique is essentially on target. Propositions are a substitute for doing the hard work of pushing a legislature into action and often reflect the passions of the moment. (Term limits are a recent example.) Clearly, this isn’t what the drafters of the Constitution had in mind. They deliberately made democracy indirect rather than direct and placed obstacles in the path of hasty action. If those obstacles have become too great, the answer is to struggle to work through them, fight to remove the added roadblocks--frustrating as that may be--rather than go around them through often misleading quickie campaigns.

The dilemma that Broder’s critique presents is that we can’t pick and choose--can’t disapprove of initiatives except for the ones we consider worthy. His book is stronger on the problem than on what to do about it. But his merely--and thoroughly--laying out the problem may be something of a curative in itself. His account makes it clear that states that conduct initiatives--there are 24--should have laws requiring the disclosure of spending on them. It’s doubtful that there’s a constitutional--or effective--way of truly eliminating out-of-state spending on these ostensibly state issues (just as there isn’t in federal elections). But Broder’s book is a highly valuable starting point for thinking about the implications of this side-stepping of democracy and should be of national interest as well as receiving the attention of all thoughtful Californians.

III

In an original and brave analysis of where we are as a nation, political essayist and author John B. Judis argues that the current prosperity has not led to what should be the concomitant social reform because of the decline of disinterested elites as mediators in our society. Unfashionable as it is to praise--or even not castigate--elites, Judis in “The Paradox of American Democracy” points out the critical role such institutions as the Ford Foundation, the Brookings Institution and the Committee for Economic Development played as balancers, as sources of disinterested wisdom, in the post-World War II period. He then demonstrates how some of these institutions, as well as some significant publications, then adjusted their role in the face of a conservative onslaught. Moreover, he argues, funds poured into the creation of new conservative institutions, and all of these think tanks “began to think of themselves as businesses that were marketing ideas,” competing with each other for “customers”--politicians and reporters who would purvey their ideas--”and measured their success by their sales (ranging from the number of books sold to the number of mentions in the press).” I would add their success at getting their idea peoples’ names on television producers’ Rolodexes and faces on the air. And he rightly mourns the growing shallowness of increasingly celebrity-dominated political discussion.

He knocks Alexis de Tocqueville chic--ideas of the anachronistic chronicler reverently cited by both Newt Gingrich and President Clinton and many others for his insight that democracy depends not only upon election by the governed but also on myriad political and civic organizations. But, Judis points out, “liberals and conservatives who cited Tocqueville did so on behalf of a theory of contemporary democracy that was wildly inappropriate”--a theory that with the rise of computer automation, post-industrial America was becoming more like the America that Tocqueville visited in 1831 and (in a non sequitur) that this argues for less central government and more emphasis on voluntary and local institutions. (As the Church Lady would say, “How convenient.”) Judis points out that in the America of Tocqueville’s visit, 10 out of 11 Americans still lived on small farms and there were only a few large businesses, whereas 160 years later, “the top 55 manufacturing and mining firms accounted [for] 82 percent of all sales in the United States.”

Judis draws attention to the much-under-acknowledged activities of door openers such as Henry Kissinger, whose contribution to society, once they have served in government, is to get very rich by introducing their former contacts, mainly foreign potentates, to American business potentates. (One might add to the list James Baker, George Bush and Dick Cheney.) He illuminates the multifaceted activites of such lesser-known figures as C. Boyden Gray, a member of the Bush White House, heir to a tobacco fortune and an attorney with a major Washington law firm. He shows Gray’s ubiquity as a lobbyist who frequently appears on television, ostensibly as a dispassionate analyst. Judis, rightly, suggests that the television identifications of the likes of Gray be more informative. When Kissinger gives us his analysis of relations with China, shouldn’t the audience be told that he has clients with business in China?

Because Judis’ treatise is skewed from the left, it underplays the left as co-culprits. Yes, the insurance industry played a large role in bringing down Hillary Clinton’s health-care plan, but so did Hillary Clinton--by proposing such an elephantine plan and then refusing to compromise. Had she been more flexible, she could have won congressional approval of a health plan. His narrative about the struggle between Bill Clinton and Gingrich breaks little new ground and overlooks the extent to which Gingrich inadvertently revived and even saved Clinton by handing him juicy budget issues such as education and the environment and forcing him to move toward a balanced budget (a factor in our prosperity). He blames Washington’s dysfunction on domination by “lobbyists and irresponsible elites backed by conservative Republicans”--as if Democrats bent on having an issue, teachers’ unions and other liberal lobbies have no role in the paralysis. He pays little attention to the role of money in the skewing of priorities toward less government and against the less advantaged.

Judis admits that “it’s hard to imagine measures that might inspire civic responsibility” and “a disinterested elite,” but I think (or perhaps hope) he might be too pessimistic. We’ve seen people, such as the remarkable John Gardner, a former foundation head and cabinet official now based at Stanford, create new institutions and ways to improve civil society. There are others--if not enough. There may not be “measures” to create more such people, but societal pressure (and books such as Judis’) might inspire more of them. Some of the aggregators of the vast new wealth from the new economy are looking for ways to give portions of it away. Judis and others might help them. He makes useful suggestions, such as further slowing down the revolving door between business and government and requiring more disclosure of lobbyists’ activities. He calls for greater rewards for public service, affirming the importance of government work to keep people involved longer and lessen the temptation to get out and clean up financially from their government service. That this suggestion goes against fashion makes it all the more important.

With its cogent analysis, historical sweep and courage, Judis’ book is one of the most thoughtful and potentially helpful approaches to the new American dilemma that I have seen.

IV

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of Carl Boggs’ “The End of Politics: Corporate Power and the Decline of the Public Sphere,” an angry indictment of our current political state. Boggs makes several valid points about the dangers inherent in the large communications company mergers; about the lack of serious efforts to deal with grave ecological dangers; about the banality of much of our political dialogue.

But though Boggs does offer us things worth thinking about, his overwrought polemic overstates and sometimes gets it wrong. He asserts, for example, that the Commission on Presidential Debates is dominated by corporate interests that keep out third-party candidates, whereas there’s no evidence of this malignant grip on the debates. He asserts, without evidence, that the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration--which have in fact achieved real improvements in the quality of air and the safety of the workplace--are “often effectively restricted by their symbiotic relations with business and military interests.” He’s correct that Clinton narrowed the differences between the two parties (he misquotes Clinton on “the era of big government”), but he attributes this to his theory that “Democrats, like Republicans, are thoroughly enmeshed in the all-consuming interests of Wall Street and the multinational corporations,” whereas it appears to have had more to do with Clinton’s desire to win and then stay in office. He misconstrues what’s wrong with the campaign finance system by repeatedly citing PACs, or political action committees, but they aren’t the largest problem. (Soft money--unrestricted contributions by corporations, individuals, and unions--is.)

That the American political system has problems, some of them deeply rooted, is a certainty. But it also has possibilities, and more good people--even some noble ones--in it than is commonly thought. Serious Americans outside the system are giving serious thought to both the problems and the possibilities. And there have been glimmerings of late--as in the McCain campaign--that there are millions of Americans who have a pretty good sense of what’s wrong and want to see it fixed. There are constitutional ways to rid the campaign finance system of its worse abuses. In fact, politicians are more responsive than most people think; the greater the demand that politicians act rather than play the angles, the more likely that is to happen. It’s not yet time to give up hope.