You hear people of various political stripes saying apocalyptic things about how the country is going down the tubes, or WILL go down the tubes, if this or that faction is or is not elected, and so forth.
I started my adult life with a sort of fatalistic attitude that caused such warning to sound far, far too late. In college, I took so many history electives that shortly before I graduated I realized to my surprise that I was within reach of a double major (the other major being journalism). There was no plan; I had just had a lot of room in my schedule because I had tested out of a number of courses others were required to take — foreign language, and math — and took things that interested me. And that tended to included history courses concentrating on the early decades of the United States. (I also took a few courses in Spanish and Latin American history and political science, but that has little bearing on my point today — aside from instilling in me a deep appreciation that for all our country’s flaws today, it was built on a far better foundation that those others.)
I was particularly impressed by the wisdom of those who chose to establish a republic, and resisted the fatal temptation to fall into the madness of pure democracy. And then, as I read on, I watched it seem to fall apart. There was the election of Andrew Jackson for starters, and then… well, we have simply come to accept, even demand, “leaders” who govern with all ten fingers in the wind, like the master of an old sailing vessel seeking to squeeze maximum advantage of whatever winds prevailed.
To question pure democracy today is to seem unAmerican. When, in truth, this experiment started in a different place altogether. (Oh, and before some of you start in about how it started with blacks and women and the propertyless having no say, you know that’s not what I’m talking about. We’re talking about parallel phenomena, not factors that are dependent on one another. It’s not about upper-class white male leaders with their hair tied into queues. It’s about thoughtful, restrained leadership of vision, regardless of the demographics of those providing it. Frankly, I think Barack Obama has it in him to provide the kind of leadership that the Founders envisioned, unlike anyone who has thus far gotten much press on the GOP side. He has the ability to rise above the popular passions of the moment and see beyond them — which is one reason why so many of the most passionate today despise him so.)
Anyway, that introduction was longer than I intended. I just wanted to call your attention to a David Brooks column from a couple of weeks back — one which I missed, but which was called to my attention today by Kelly Payne via Facebook (she brought it up in a context I didn’t quite follow, but I was glad to see it nonetheless). An excerpt:
… As Kristol points out in the essay, the meaning of the phrase “public spiritedness” has flipped since the 18th century. Now we think a public-spirited person is somebody with passionate opinions about public matters, one who signs petitions and becomes an activist for a cause.
In its original sense, it meant the opposite. As Kristol wrote, it meant “curbing one’s passions and moderating one’s opinions in order to achieve a large consensus that will ensure domestic tranquility.” Instead of self-expression, it meant self-restraint. It was best exemplified in the person of George Washington.
Over the years, the democratic values have swamped the republican ones. We’re now impatient with any institution that stands in the way of the popular will, regarding it as undemocratic and illegitimate. Politicians see it as their duty to serve voters in the way a business serves its customers. The customer is always right.
A few things have been lost in this transition. Because we take it as a matter of faith that the people are good, we are no longer alert to arrangements that may corrode the character of the nation. For example, many generations had a moral aversion to debt. They believed that to go into debt was to indulge your basest urges and to surrender your future independence. That aversion has clearly been overcome.
We no longer have a leadership class — of the sort that existed as late as the Truman and Eisenhower administrations — that believes that governing means finding an equilibrium between different economic interests and a balance between political factions. Instead, we have the politics of solipsism. The political culture encourages politicians and activists to imagine that the country’s problems would be solved if other people’s interests and values magically disappeared…
Brooks is concerning himself with rather prosaic, although nevertheless important, issues such as spending (“The democratic triumph has created a nation that runs up huge debt and is increasingly incapable of finding a balance between competing interests”). And doing so rather from the position that we do too much of it. But there are broader themes in what he’s saying, and those are what appealed to me.
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That self-restrained world where people worked more or less within the system was shattered by the events of the 1960s. The dishonesty of Lyndon Johnson, followed by Richard Nixon brought about the demise of our trust in the so-called “leadership class”. Too bad because I believe Obama should be trusted in the old world sense. On the other hand it was good not to have full trust in George W. Bush. I guess we have to accept the good with the bad on this apparent sea change to the political environment.
“Oh, and before some of you start in about how it started with blacks and women and the propertyless having no say, you know that’s not what I’m talking about. We’re talking about parallel phenomena, not factors that are dependent on one another. It’s not about upper-class white male leaders with their hair tied into queues. It’s about thoughtful, restrained leadership of vision, regardless of the demographics of those providing it.”
Oh, please. *You* simply don’t know what you’re talking about. Insofar as there was a coherent “Founders’ vision,” it was precisely one of a propertied elite seeking to hold on to its prerogatives–not simply against the unpropertied, but against those of small property–the ambitious small farmers and petty entrepreneurs who were ultimately primarily responsible for pulling the whole jerry-built edifice down. Among those property rights, BTW, was the right to hold people as property; slavery and republicanism were thus joined at the hip. Why else do you think the Founders in their great wisdom couldn’t deal with it? All that rhetorical folderol about a “natural aristocracy” in disinterested pursuit of the “public good”–or “thoughtful, restrained leadership of vision” as you put it [and, yes, to the Founders it was *all about demographics*] went the way of all flesh pretty early on–not least because the Founders themselves were in fundamental disagreement about what the “public good” entailed, and one faction, in particular, started allying itself with the swinish masses. Moreover, there were plenty of “founders” that you didn’t read about who saw through that smokescreen, and who had a very different vision. Take a look some time at Gordon Wood’s *Radicalism of the American Revolution.* He’s actually pretty sympathetic to the upper-case “Founders,” but he’s clear-eyed enough to recognize that their vision was fundamentally too self-contradictory to last.
I must say, though, I’m hardly surprised at this sentiment; I’ve long been aware that you’re basically an elitist who thinks that South Carolina is best governed from a board room. Never mind that this is the way South Carolina has been traditionally governed, with results we all know about. Sorry, there never has been, and never will be, a “disinterested” elite; just people who pose as one. And there’s no substitute for actually empowering people to protect their own interests, rather than relying on an elite to do it. Ask just about any black South Carolinian how well that’s worked.
Someone just published a poll (AP I think) that discovered that 3 out of 5 people see no need to cut medicare of social security or raise taxes. The article I read stated that people thought that if proper oversight was provided, and if the government stopped making mistakes, everything would be ok. Apparently 3 out of 5 people in the USA cannot do simple arithmetic.
Yeah, Karen, that’s why direct democracy is a bad idea… well, one reason. There are plenty of others…
As for David in Chapel Hill — yeah, that’s the kind of attitude I was referring to above…
To elaborate on my point, Karen…
The superiority of representative government over direct democracy is less about who make the decisions, and more about the process itself.
It’s not that elected representatives tend to be smarter than the average person. There’s ample evidence to the contrary of that. It’s about the process — or rather, the process when it’s allowed to work, and isn’t perverted by parties or popular whims of the moment (it’s the preponderance of such negative phenomena that points to the wisdom of all those checks and balances).
When the system works as it should, here’s what happens (and to a great extent it DOES happen this way, just not as infallibly as one would like): People are elected to office, and they go to Columbia or Washington or wherever, and they immediately start learning more about the issue than they knew before. They study the issue. They (and this is critically important, and one of the main things that parties undermine) engage in debate with people who disagree. Their own ideas are tested, and (too rarely these days) are reshaped and refined by the process of actually listening to other views.
This happens with ANYONE who honestly engages the process, whether they have doctorates from Harvard or barely graduated high school.
The thing about a representative system is that it’s about DELEGATION. You delegate people to spend all that time studying and debating, time we don’t have in our daily lives. And if those people do not become smarter about issues than they were on Election Day, then they are not doing the job. This is why I don’t like hearing “I will definitely do this, or definitely not do that” campaign promises. (That’s one reason — the other is that you can’t possibly anticipate before election exactly what issues and situations you are going to face.)
These beliefs informed our editorial endorsements when I was with The State. You would have heard, in our candidate interviews, relatively little about specific views on this issue or that one. Or there was some of that, but for me it was as much about hearing how the individual arrived at his or her answer than the answer itself.
But we always asked people running for representative positions such questions as this: What do you see as the job of a representative — to go and vote exactly as the majority of constituents thought on the issue on Election Day, or to go with an open mind and study the issue and engage in debate and then vote according to your best judgment? The right answer was the latter. Actually, the perfect answer was to make sure you know what your constituents think, consider that alongside all other factors, and if your own study of the issue leads you to a different conclusion, be willing and able to justify voting that way to your constituents. If you can sell it to them, you’re a gifted statesman. If you can’t — well, at least you did the right thing to the best of your ability, and maybe it’s time to give someone else a chance…
One of the big problems with this system is that certain facts can be manipulated and even falsely presented by the people who have the best information. This happens over and over again when it comes to decisions about going to war. No matter how much you may study an issue if your president falsely portrays some part of the world as a threat to US security you’re pretty much stuck with either accepting that information at face value or rejecting it without any real backup. That’s how Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush got us into hideous wars.
I agree that statesmanship and a good study ethic can work wonders on something like the Colombia Free Trade agreement but those skills are woefully inadequate on issues of national security. That’s where a certain amount of stubborness may actually be of benefit. And that could explain why folks just don’t have the trust in the “leadership class” that they may have had prior to 1964.
Why would we need to raise Social Security taxes (again.. and again… and again)?
Simple – it’s a system that cannot sustain itself.
I agree with David. History always looks more beautiful through rose colored glasses. It wasn’t “better” in 1780, 1860, 1950, or 1980.
One thing that would put a couple stitches in this gaping Social Security would would be to eliminate the cap on contributions.
should be “Social Security wound”
I expect that actually, elected representatives are, at least on average, smarter than the population at large–just not smarter than those of us in the blogosphere. As Juan loves to point out, most are lawyers. I daresay all lawyers have an IQ of more than 100, or whatever measure of “smart” relevant to elective office you want to make– ability to work with your hands is not relevant (insert Arnold Schwarzenegger joke here)…now, we, the Brad Commentariat, may well be smarter than a lot of politicians, but we are above average.
I used to represent juveniles–and if one scored an IQ of over 90, the judges would comment on how very smart s/he was…different populations…most of us don’t meet the below average in smarts much.
Just because you don’t agree with someone’s reasoning process, if any, doesn’t make him/her stupid.
@ Karen: People in government can not do simple arithmetic either. Why on earth would they drop the employee’s portion of the SS contribution to 4.2% beginning 1/1/2011? That being said, there is wisdom in representative government. Otherwise, people in NYC and LA who might see no reason to be protective our good farmers in the farmbelt could shoot themselves in the foot. Simple majorities don’t alwsys see the big picture.
Kathryn, I’d agree with you, but I just watched that Mike Fair video —
Things may not have been better in 1950 or 1980 but by golly 1975 was sure a wonderous time. The long hair, disco music, light up dance floors, smoke filled bars with super loud music, bell-bottom pants, platform shoes and a drinking age that worked for me as a 19 year old invulnerable college kid. We weren’t involved in any kind of war. This was after Vietnam but before the Iran Hostage crises. No one had ever heard of AIDS. Gasoline was about 50 cents a gallon. But alas, we can never go back.
Doug is right, no particular era is better than any other. But it sure seems that way looking back.
Believe me, not “all lawyers” have an IQ over 100. That’s nothing more than one lawyer trying to convince everyone how impressed they should be with them. It’s not like you went to medical school.
I believe 99% of South Carolina is I’m smarter than Jim Clyburn. Jim is smart in one area, at getting big government to pay for what is best for Jim Clyburn.
Kathryn is almost certainly right about the IQ thing. Almost by definition. You don’t make it even into law school unless you test well.
She’s also probably right that most of us who live in the white-collar world don’t interact very much with folks who score below three digits. So people we think are dumb often are not, by that standard…
So Brad, are you implying that everyone with a white collar job has a 100+ IQ and those in the blue-collar world are sub-100? Would you say that everyone you work with right now and everyone you worked with at The State had an above 100 IQ?
I would challenge the IQ and law school theory of yours. Come by USC’s Law School sometime, these days if your tuition check clears you’re in. Their are tiers of law schools, I would agree with you on Tier I and Tier II schools, but USC is a Tier III school.
Steven Davis–how many people have you met whose IQ you even know?
About half of South Carolina residents don’t graduate from high school on time. A fraction of those graduate from college. A fraction of those get into law school, and on and on. Fewer than 75% of people who take the SC Bar exam pass it, most years. You do the math. How likely is it that someone of below average intelligence passes all these hurdles.
I have no love for plenty of lawyers–I’m sure I’ve had a lot more experience, much of it excruciatingly unpleasant, with lawyers than you have– but I have to admit that they are above-average in the sort of intelligence that is relevant in a lawmaker.