Contents - Index

3.1.   The Roots of American Democracy's Problems                    (Top)

The new millennium finds American democracy in trouble.  Symptoms include the excessive power of corporations, excessive power of the Presidency, narrowing of admissible issues and choices to the public, widening of the gap between rich and poor, contested elections, erosion of civil liberties, corruption in high places, troubled domestic and foreign programs, and widespread public dissatisfaction and disengagement.  Why has the system stopped responding to open debate?  What has thrown relationships between power centers out of balance.  What has narrowed the boundaries of acceptable debate?  

Since elections are where it all begins and since America's claim to a government by the people rests squarely on fair and meaningful elections, that is where the origins of problems can reasonably be found. Elections in recent years have become less fair and less meaningful.  To understand how this came about, one must consider the powerful influence of political culture and more recently the dominance of corporate wealth in the contemporary political process.  Then, we need to look back to the structural factors that set the stage for an ailing American democracy.

Political culture is the collection of  prevailing wisdom and dominant beliefs of the participants in a political system about that system.  Beliefs about such things as collectivism versus individualism, the role of government, the market system, privatization, and trust in government and politicians are part of political culture.  Political culture also includes opinions about the relationship of church to state, states' rights, and the rights and obligations of citizens.  Obviously, these beliefs vary across populations and across time.

A critical aspect of the role of political culture in the faltering American democracy is the conventional and inner-circle wisdom of how the system works and how to work the system.  These beliefs are generally abstract in the minds of citizens, but the "how-to" has increasingly become an art and science among politicians, political advisors, political pundits, and journalists.  In fact, it is not too much to say that the special "knowledge" about how to get elected and how to govern is a "technology," not unlike information and communications technologies.  These technologies affect the democratic process and are affected by it and so they will vary with the inevitable changes in the democratic system over time.  

Political cultures most immediately affect the health of the American democracy in the electoral process where they inform political candidates how the system works and how to manipulate that information to get elected.  The prevailing wisdom in the last several elections has been that the American electorate is about equally divided between Democrats and Republicans and that the rest of the population is "independent" or "undecided" and that the way to get elected is to play to the center of the political spectrum and then concentrate on getting out the vote in swing districts favoring your party.  At its extreme, the message to politicians and campaign managers is to ignore the "party's base" and its accompanying ideology and focus on external things you can do to win the election, like targeted districts, massive TV advertising in those areas, and negative campaigning and dirty tricks, if you must.  

The effect of this political culture is to narrow the range of issues and positions on issues.  In this sense, the campaign technology that says that the politically smart party and candidates will shoot for the center becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  From this, we get the "me-too" party phenomenon of recent years with all of its aberrant machinations to win and take control.

This "me-too" phenomenon with its narrowing of the political agenda and the repressed competition of ideas is deeply rooted in the electoral rules of our democratic system.  In their great wisdom, the early founders of our system decided that the best way to represent citizens in the House of Representative is to divide states into districts each represented by one person in Congress where the candidate who gets the most votes takes the seat.  This is called the "plurality rule."  Under this rule, the candidate with the most votes in a district represents everyone in the district, even if a losing candidate had only one less vote than the winner.  Hence the labels "First Past the Post" and "Winner Take All" party system.  This rule is sharply different from more recent alternatives, such as proportional representation with district lists.  In fact, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom are the only democratic systems still using the plurality rule.  

From the plurality rule came the uniquely American two-party system.  With the two-party system came a rush to the center of the political spectrum and shrunken issue agendas from which came the disparaging name "me-too" parties.  From shrunken issue agendas came "too-close-to-call" elections.  From narrow margin elections and extremely high stakes, came personality oriented campaigns, negative advertising, extra-legal tactics, and most of all massive doses of television sound bytes - all funded by corporate donors.  

After elections, corporate donors expect and get something for their large "investments." The inevitable result is a system more aptly described as "government by and for corporations" than by and for people.  Close "contested" elections leave the "winner" with questionable legitimacy and policies thereafter are tinged by political motives in the effort to retain control.  Political parties tend to shed their "me-too" facades and immediately try to express their real agenda and commitments.  The problem is that both political parties as separate organizations are virtually disbanded after elections.  At best, they are weak players in the political process.  Because of the influence of pre-election money, political parties are largely replaced by the special interest groups that provide the money, the most powerful being the big corporation donors.  These are the reasons that the plurality rule/two party electoral system is known as a "weak party - strong interest group" system.  

Political culture also comes into play after elections.  What do people fear the most?  What is the government's job in the response to the threat of terrorism?  What are political advisors telling the government about the effects of threats to national security on public opinion? What are they telling the government about the public's response to threats (real or imagined), such as patriotism and willingness to give up freedoms for security?  What advice is the ruling group being told about using government power and new communication technologies to cool-out the population and to foster a political culture supportive of their aims?

The so-called bottom line of this political process is that American democracy is faltering and at risk of drifting into a deeper crisis in which the potential abuse of power could dash the hopes of the American people and be difficult to reverse.  The leading question asks how that situation can be turned around.  Many have looked to "public interest groups" like Common Cause and The Environmental Defense Fund, but, overall, they have not significantly influenced elections or public policy.  The obvious reason is that they cannot compete with corporate wealth to support candidates and lobbying efforts.  How can the political culture be changed?  How can an out-of-balance plurality representative system be brought back into balance?  How can the competition of ideas and acceptable issue domains be widened?  How can differing ideas be brought into the process?  

This brings us to citizen participation.  Why is citizen participation so crucial to democratic political systems?  What is it based on?  What makes it so hard to achieve?  How can it be extended?  What has changed over the years that might provide the answer to these questions?  

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...many believe there is a judicial crisis. The Bush v. Gore decision was among the worst displays in history of judicial activism unguided by principle (that the Right Wing complains about incessantly). Most of my colleagues teaching constitutional law were at a loss as to how to reconcile that decision with the need to follow precedent and to stay out of what are viewed as political questions. Interestingly, and ironically, the 9th Circuit's decision and opinion in the Davis recall case rather pointedly invoked whatever "law" there was in Bush v. Gore (i.e., that all voters must be treated the same way) to support its decision that as many as 40,000 voters in counties using punch cards would be disenfranchised. We now must wait to see if the Supremes will get involved and what they will do with a decision using its own "reasoning." As serious is the crisis in the lower federal courts. Bush's insistence on nominating ideologues is a serious problem and the filibuster to force Estrada to withdraw is only the tip of the iceberg. The reason this is such a problem is that most cases never make it to the Supreme Court and District Courts and Courts of Appeals judges, who are life appointees not accountable to the public, are often the lawmakers. Then there is the unparalleled Ashcroft order to federal prosecutors to report all judges who imposed sentences for less punishment than the federal guidelines recommend. This action provoked a stern rebuke from Justice Kennedy (a Republican appointee) and even CJ Rehnquist. And on and on.
 
References
Top 1% in '01 Lost Income, but Also Paid Lower Taxes
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON


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