There's nothing new about passion in politics. In the final analysis, political leaders are dealing with core values, principles which inform actions we believe will affect our capability to live the way we wish. It's no wonder, then, that people get emotional about the politicians they place their trust in, and take umbrage at those who criticize them. So we've seen in this election cycle passionate Trump supporters, and now Sanders supporters, attacking their critics. The founders of our republic understood this phenomenon.
John Adams, as committed an American patriot as there was, famously defended the British soldiers who had shot into the unruly mob threatening their lives at the Boston Massacre. In another instance, when a mob of protesters threatened to take the law into their own hands, Adams determined that a way was needed to protect the system of governance from the irrationality and emotional upheaval of the governed. It was for these reasons that he and the other founders of the nation believed in the necessity of a republic, not a direct democracy. It would be a democratic republic, to be sure. But it would be a step removed from the emotional vicissitudes of the mob.
So we are governed by representatives for whom we cast our ballots, but who constitutionally are not bound to our wishes about how they should perform. They're free to make their own judgments. They may feel politically bound to what they discern to be the majority will of their constituents, but they violate no law or legal principle if they ignore it. Terms of office, longer for members of the upper body of the legislature than for those in the lower body, election of members of the upper body by state legislatures (the original design, changed during the Progressive Era), and the mechanism of the electoral college for election the President are other elements that remove elected officials from the emotions of the common herd, and give protection to those elected.
Americans are generally familiar with this design, but are not very comfortable with it. That's because it's not flattering to their idea of democracy; it's not flattering to the common people, as we were called two centuries ago. They're also uncomfortable with it because the culture has changed dramatically since the end of the 18th century. Particularly in the first half of the 19th century, American political culture underwent significant democratization, a story reconstructed by Princeton historian Sean Wilentz in his masterful 2005 retelling, "The Rise of American Democracy." It was a class struggle which more or less culminated in the election and presidency of Andrew Jackson. Jackson understood the tendency of rising merchant capitalism to corrupt the principle of republican governance, which was public service, a kind of noblesse oblige, the obligation of the elite to guard the rights, security and prosperity of the common people, a notion much ridiculed today. The Jacksonian Democrats, Wilentz writes, assumed that political power "was to be used to protect the majority of 'producers' – farmers, mechanics and other workers in the society – from a non-producer elite composed of bankers, speculators and other moneyed men." This concept is axiomatic to today's politics.
Yet we still have most of the buffers that remove political leaders from the emotions of their constituents; we are still a republic (government by representatives of the people). On a practical level, it's the only alternative to complete authoritarianism (monarchy) or pure democracy. But it's still needlesome. The Democrat Party quite some time ago endorsed the use of superdelegates in its candidate selection process. Superdelegates are party regulars who have devoted more time and resources to party organization, and often have more experience, such as elected officials and party officers. But because they're independent, and not always trending their way, many Sanders and Trump supports find their use "undemocratic." On the other hand, many on the left find themselves sympathetic to the electoral college, since the vote there may supersede the popular vote, as it did in Jackson's first, failed run at the presidency.
The tension between the few and the many in our politics is not likely to subside any time soon, for it's a tension between "democratic" and "republic."
Steve Haycox is professor emeritus of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
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