Not Just For Elites. - Review - book review

The Paradox of
American Democracy
Elites, Special Interests, and the
Betrayal of Public Trust
John Judis
Pantheon Books, $26, 305 pp.

Democracy Derailed
Initiative Campaigns and
the Power of Money
David Broder
Harcourt, $23, 260 pp.

To say that American democracy is in crisis is like saying the earth is round. Voting rates plummet, polls report heightened levels of cynicism, and young people, especially, show little interest in political matters. To this sad scenario, add the analyses of two leading journalists, John Judis and David Broder. Read together, their books tell us a great deal about what has gone wrong.

Judis's book starts slowly. He tries to provide his readers with a sweeping perspective on American political history during the twentieth century, but his historical acumen pales in comparison to his journalistic skills. Covering the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the 1960s, Judis provides few insights; his reading is spotty, drawing from dated interpretations and tending toward generalizations. This weakness highlights a larger problem in American intellectual life: increasingly, journalists fill in a void left by academic historians, who write specialized books for other academics. In this case, readers can simply skip over the first sections of Judis's book for the real rewards at the end.

In explaining the current backlash against liberalism, Judis covers new ground and draws years of political journalism into focus. Businesses, upset by new regulatory regimes created by environmentalists and public-interest lobbyists like Ralph Nader, turned profoundly reactionary during the 1970s. During the 1970s and 1980s, corporations funded a slew of right-wing think tanks where hired intellectuals could curse regulation while drooling over the promise of free markets. At K Street lobbying firms, high-powered lawyers gutted America's relatively weak welfare and regulatory policies. The endgame of these developments was Newt Gingrich's rise and fall from power. Gingrich handed pens to corporate CEOs who wrote their antiregulatory wish lists into the "Contract for America." Judis argues persuasively that this history illustrates how America's elites have placed short-term gain before civic responsibility.

He buttresses this story by discussing the decline of labor unions and the burn-out of 1960s activists. These details suggest how bad the situation is, as does Judis's close analysis of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a small group within the Democratic party that backed Clinton. Though the DLC created important civic-minded policies (for instance, national public service) during Clinton's second term, its "program on trade and Social Security...mimicked Republican conservatism," becoming more "congenial to its corporate funders." Essentially, public-interest liberals went belly-up. What makes this interpretation so important is that Judis does not bemoan the rise of "special interests"--an elastic term used with little discrimination by today's pundits. Instead, he holds corporate power and "lobbyists and irresponsible elites backed by conservative Republicans" directly responsible for the anemic state of our politics. Nor is he embarrassed to express faith in a "public interest."

While Judis focuses "inside the Beltway," Washington Post political columnist David Broder looks outside, but he too presents disturbing findings. Studying the initiative and referendum--means by which citizens can directly enact legislation by popular vote--Broder uncovers the enormous influence money plays in this process. After his own simplistic history of the Progressive Era, Broder goes on to analyze California and Oregon, where the initiative and referendum are central to the political process. He begins with Proposition 13, a famous piece of citizen-legislation that capped taxes in California. Broder explains, "Prop. 13 and its progeny have spawned a huge industry devoted to the manipulation of public opinion. Campaign consultants, pollsters, media advisers, direct-mail specialists, and others have made themselves, in effect, the new bosses of American politics." The remainder of the story focuses on the gory details of "faux populism" or "Astroturf" politics--that is, big money masquerading as the public interest. The expense of gathering signatures and designing advertisements--the heart of initiative campaigns--requires enormous amounts of money. The wishes of millionaires and irresponsible elites drive many initiatives.

Though much of Broder's analysis is hard to dispute, his core assumptions demand scrutiny. After all, he could have written the same book about how money corrupts Congress and state legislatures. The reason he doesn't is that, deep down, Broder is an old-fashioned Federalist and believer in a representative constitutional republic. He follows the reasoning of James Madison: citizens cannot always be trusted to govern themselves. Hence, for Broder, the initiative and referendum should be scrapped.

In light of his evidence, this argument makes some sense. Yet it ignores the philosophy behind direct democracy. In John Dewey's classic work, The Public and Its Problems, he argued persuasively that "popular government is educative as other modes of political regulation are not." The potential that the initiative and referendum have to enhance deliberation among citizens--to educate them into the virtues of public judgment--should not be overlooked. Though Broder interviews bamboozled citizens ignorant about the initiatives they are asked to vote on, I have talked to Oregonians who cherish the power and concomitant responsibility delegated to them. As Oregon's governor put it to Broder: "The process is a blessing, but the way it's being used is a curse." This attitude--not Broder's wholesale rejection--seems appropriate in the face of big money's abuse of direct democracy. And after all, if big money is so powerful, why believe that representative institutions can withstand it any better? On this count, Judis's book corrects Broder's misplaced faith.

So what about Judis's conclusions? He calls for legislation that would cut back on corporate power and strengthen citizen input in government. But he also suggests (or at least his story suggests) that elites must rediscover their civic obligations. Here the argument falters. After all, Judis asserts that up to the present, elites embraced civic consciousness in return for public trust. But what about America's populist spirit? Even during the placid 1950s, when, Judis argues, "Americans accepted the political status quo," Joe McCarthy stoked the passions of many working-class Americans resentful of wayward elites (George Wallace later followed suit). More important, why have elites suddenly dropped their civic consciousness to follow the money? Judis never explains. One answer is that they have discovered their self-interest, no longer clothed in all that old-time civic lore. So why wait for their civic reawakening?

Maybe all we have in the end is the old Progressive Era belief stated so well by John Dewey: "The cure for the ailments of democracy is more democracy." Instead of hoping for a return to a constitutional republic run by civic-minded elites, why not try to reengage citizens in politics? One way to do this is to improve the means of deliberation and political education (through more public forums, interactive town meetings, or voter-education drives). It seems to me that democracy's challenge is to nurture civic virtues among all citizens--not just elites.

Kevin Mattson is associate director of the Walt Whitman Center (Rutgers University) and author of Creating a Democratic Public: The Struggle for Participatory Democracy During the Progressive Era (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998).

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