On the face of it, democracy is a preposterous notion on which to found a government. The idea that we ordinary folks know enough, are sufficiently patient and thoughtful, and are willing to take the time to learn how to govern well, is an unpromising prospect. Most of us would wither in the face of the first crisis involving human life, or even the first major storm of criticism.
That, at least, is how America's founding fathers thought. They had some experience with democracy, under the several state governments established in 1776 and under the frail Articles of Confederation government, the first constitution for the United States. The results were singularly unhappy. In those states where the legislature was elected annually, one year's solons would undo what the previous ones had done. In states with a multiple executive, internecine quarreling led to paralysis. Where the executive was subject to the legislature, administration and enforcement of laws enacted were often wanting. In the federal government, the inability to secure the unanimous vote required for substantive matters palsied the governing process.
By 1787, when they sat down to write a new constitution, most of the ultimate signers were quite fed up.
The document they produced is highly undemocratic. The people do not vote directly for the president: They elect an electoral college, which takes on that duty. Senators, given staggered six-year terms, were elected by state legislatures, the elite selecting the uber-elite. Only senators were given the power to advise and consent to executive nominations and to ratify treaties. Though not spelled out in the document itself, the power of the independent, supreme judiciary to review the constitutionality of congressional legislation was assumed, and made explicit in the Marbury v. Madison case in 1803.
Moreover, the federal system did not create co-equal dual sovereignties, federal and state. The Supreme Court assumed the authority to determine when a power had or had not been delegated to the federal government, i.e., when federal should trump state sovereignty.
Only the House of Representatives was directly tied to the people, through biennial election. And the framers did give two democratic kinds of responsibility to the House: to originate fiscal bills, and to impeach. But whatever power the House might accrue is checked by the necessity for both bodies to agree to the same bill before it can become law; and the Senate tries any impeachments.
This is an elitist form of government, and its powers have only grown over two centuries.
No less an aristocrat than Alexander Hamilton argued on the floor of the constitutional convention that the people's power needed to be somewhere effective in the new document, as it was in the election of the House. The people's instinct would be the best guarantor of their own liberty, he averred, and without it he feared the government would become tyrannous, which would lead ultimately to its downfall. But he wanted the popular power to be highly circumscribed, as it was, lest it disrupt government rationality and stability.
Remarkably, in spite of all the constraints erected to shield the central government from the momentary impulse of the people, through 200 years of American development, the power of democracy has grown right alongside the power of the governing elite. Two institutions are most responsible for this: the press, and the schools. The press functions to question not only the operations but also the motivation of government. Even when the mainstream press becomes overly cautious because of its own power and prestige, there's always a guerrilla press to inject nerve into the populace and challenge leadership to honor its fundamental obligations to the people.
The schools have functioned to instill a sense of what those obligations are. The shrill paranoia of the right to the contrary notwithstanding, American schoolchildren have always left, and no one still today leaves school, without knowing the guiding aspiration that "all men are created equal" and "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." It is on the foundation of that principle that "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" has not just survived but prospered. Hamilton would be surprised but doubtless appreciative.
Steven Haycox is a professor of history at University of Alaska Anchorage.
Steve Haycox
comment