How Can It Work-London Review of Books

1、Note from Professor Permaul: This article written from the British point of view asks the question whether American democracy is in a temporary cycle of dysfunction, or if this is a longer term issue. The author discusses both the strengths and weaknesses of our system of government, and two differe

2、nt ways of interpreting our history. Please read it before the first class session on January 21st.How can it work?David Runciman on American democracy, March 21, 2013  American democracy is an amazing, fascinating, bewildering thing. There has never been anything else like it. Even now, a

3、s democracy becomes an ever more familiar feature of our world, there is still nothing like the American version. During the early years of the American republic, in the first half of the 19th century, what fascinated outsiders was its sheer implausibility. Could you really do politics like this, wi

4、th such fractured and chaotic popular input? It seemed unlikely anything so ramshackle could last long. It was also implausible, especially to British eyes, for the simple reason that it was so clearly fraudulent: slavery made a mockery of it. During the second half of the 19th century, what fascina

5、ted outsiders was American democracys extraordinary capacity for violence. Europe had seen its fair share of wars, but had never seen anything like the Civil War: mutual slaughter on an industrial scale. It got its own version in 1914: a European civil war to rival the American one. At least thats w

6、hat it was until the Americans joined, at which point it became a world war. This event inaugurated the next stage of fascination with American democracy: a glimpse of its extraordinary global power and the promise it seemed to offer of a better future. That promise has always run up against its con

7、tinuing capacity for extreme violence, along with a seeming inability to deliver on its best intentions. Still, the promise has never entirely dissipated. And now we have a mixture of all these views of American democracy: lingering ideas of the promise, a continuing sense of the power, an ongoing p

8、reoccupation with the violence, but behind it all a return to the thought that was there at the beginning. It is starting to look implausible again. Can you really do politics like this and expect it to last?The immediate objection to any story about two hundred years of American democracy is that i

9、ts changed so much that were not talking about the same thing anymore. A democracy with slavery is different from one that abolishes it; a democracy that denies the vote to women cant be compared to one that grants it; a democracy of 13 states is nothing like one with fifty. Despite these changes, i

10、ts the features that have remained constant which stand out. The most celebrated is the constitution, a uniquely durable or to put it another way, a remarkably entrenched document. But Id like to offer another example, something more prosaic perhaps and easier to overlook, but evidence nonetheless o

11、f just how different American democracy is from all the other kinds that have been tried.In 1845 Congress legislated to require voting for president (that is, voting for the electoral college that would select the president) to take place on a specified day every four years, and always on that same

12、day. The day that was chosen for boring technical reasons was the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Until that point, states had been free to set their own timetables, which meant the process could be drawn out for up to a month, adding to the feeling of chaos surrounding American democrac

13、y. Creating a single election day was an attempt to impose some order, but it just added to the air of implausibility. You cant fix things like this in perpetuity. After all, how could anyone know whether the Tuesday after the first Monday in November would always be a good time to be choosing a new

14、 government? What if there was a war on? Or the country was in the grip of an economic crisis? Or some natural disaster intervened? Surely there had to be flexibility in extremis. Other democracies are careful not to hold national elections when things look really dicey or if it seems especially imp

15、ractical (in Britain an outbreak of foot-and-mouth was enough to put us off in 2001). But since that decision in 1845, US election day has never budged, not by so much as a day, though there have been wars on, and worse, a civil war, and though it has often been both dicey and impractical. The elect

16、ion took place as scheduled on 8 November 1864, even though during the summer Lincoln had feared he might lose it (whether it would have taken place if he had still feared he might lose in November is another question). The election took place as scheduled on 7 November 1944 (in Britain electoral de

17、mocracy was effectively suspended for the duration of the Second World War, as it had been during the First). In 2008, the presidential election was scheduled to take place just seven weeks after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which precipitated perhaps the most dangerous financial crisis in the h

18、istory of the republic (as George W. Bush said of his countrys economy at the time, This sucker could go down). The memoirs of Bushs secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson, make clear his utter terror at what the forthcoming election might do to his rescue plans if either candidate chose to pander

19、to popular loathing of bankers bail-outs (luckily for him, Obama didnt need to and McCain couldnt work out how). But Paulson never seriously thought of a postponement, and nor apparently did anyone else.In the 1890s Congress decided to extend the provision for election day to cover the congressional

20、 mid-terms as well, so now there was a fixed date every two years. Again, it has never been moved, not even in 1942, an exceptionally dangerous year. The closest the US government has come to authorizing a postponement was in the spring before the mid-terms of 1918, when contingency plans were drawn

21、 up in case the November elections needed to be cancelled. America had joined the Great War a year earlier and now American troops were arriving in Europe to discover the war was being lost: the British and French armies were in retreat and conventional wisdom said Paris would fall in the summer. Th

22、e war was expected to drag on at least into 1919, probably into 1920, by which time the weight of American resources might start to tell. Come November the country seemed likely to be engaged in an unprecedented mass mobilization, which meant an election might not be appropriate. But then, in the la

23、te summer, the German army fell apart, and the mid-terms were back on. By sticking to the prescribed date 5 November the course of history was altered. A delay of just a week would have seen the elections take place on 12 November, the day after Armistice Day. As it was, with America, uniquely among

24、 the combatants, still holding elections in wartime, Woodrow Wilson took the opportunity to ask the American people to express through the ballot box their views about the sort of peace they wanted. If they wanted his peace the League of Nations and all the trimmings they had to say so by voting for

25、 the Democrats to maintain control of Congress. The Republicans, meanwhile, hammered Wilson throughout October for talking peace while Americans were still fighting and dying. The president was stymied. The Democrats lost the election, gravely weakening his negotiating position in Paris and his chan

26、ces of getting his desired peace through Congress. As one of his campaign managers noted in a memo after the votes had been counted: The Republican slogans “Unconditional Surrender” and “No Negotiated Peace” proved surprisingly effective. The surprise is that anyone should have been surprised.Since

27、then, come hell or high water, election day has been sacrosanct. Last year it was literally come high water. Superstorm Sandy arrived a week before the vote, a natural disaster that may have helped rescue Obama politically by reminding people on the East Coast that a federal government is sometimes

28、a useful thing to have. The advent of postal voting means that the day itself is not quite as special as it once was, but it remains the focus of campaigning, and the nexus of all media coverage. Its when the horse race ends. And no mere act of God is going to move the finish line.This is a system o

29、f politics that has held its ground under all manner of unpropitious conditions. It has been stress-tested almost to death. So does it work? Youd think we would know by now. But we dont know. In a recent essay in the LRB (3 January), John Lanchester said the simplest summary of the state of knowledg

30、e in macroeconomics is nobody knows anything. The same is true of macro-politics. In micro-politics, as in microeconomics, we are drowning in knowledge. The minutiae of the inner workings of American democracy are better understood than they have ever been, not least because many thousands of academ

31、ics make a decent living studying them. But on the big question of whether it really makes sense to keep doing politics like this we dont know. This is not because no one can answer the question of whether it works. Its because there are two obvious answers to that question, and they cant both be ri

32、ght.The first answer is: yes, of course it works. Just look at it. It has survived everything thats been thrown at it for more than two hundred years. During that time the United States has got exponentially richer and more powerful, to become the richest and most powerful nation in history. This is

33、, by far, the most successful system of government the world has ever seen, certainly as judged by those measures (there are others, but these two are hard to argue with). There are some states that have become wealthier Norwegians are significantly richer per head of population but nowhere has come

34、 close to combining so much wealth with so much power.The other obvious answer is: no, of course it doesnt work. Just look at it. Commentators find it almost impossible to write about American democracy these days without reaching for the word dysfunctional. The country is massively in debt, and its

35、 elected politicians cant decide what to do about it. American party politics is toxic and partisan in a way that seems to satisfy nobody (even the partisans tend to hate the extreme partisanship). Attempts to ameliorate the squabbling by setting artificial deadlines the debt ceiling, the fiscal cli

36、ff, the sequester designed to focus the minds of both parties have just made the partisanship worse, by encouraging each side to play chicken with the system. The politicians no longer trust one another. The public no longer trust the politicians. Confidence in the institutions of American democracy

37、 is at an all-time low. This applies both to the most democratic part of the constitution Congress (whose approval ratings are in the toilet) and the least democratic part: the Supreme Court (whose approval ratings are also at or near historic lows). The presidency is currently the most popular bran

38、ch of the federal government, which, given how many people hate Obama, is saying something. Over the past decade, the country has been getting markedly less powerful and less prosperous. It has been fighting stupid wars in Iraq, in Afghanistan that it neither knows how to win nor how to exit satisfa

39、ctorily. Wealth creation is sputtering to a halt and wages have been stagnating, especially for the middle class. Only a tiny minority (the 1 per cent of the 1 per cent) has prospered significantly during this time, something the majority has been seemingly powerless to do anything about. A democrac

40、y in which the majority is powerless in the face of this sort of rampant inequality looks fundamentally fraudulent.Since both answers cant be right, the temptation is to assume that one must trump the other. There are good reasons for thinking yes beats no, because the success story is a long one, a

41、nd the recent failures are just that recent. Set against a good two hundred years, a bad ten years might just be a blip. No one said the progress of American democracy was meant to be smooth. It has always been cyclical, from highs to lows and back again, and the next upturn may be starting. The eco

42、nomy is stabilizing, unemployment is slowly coming down and the Dow is once again knocking on the door of its historic highs. Obama got through his first term just and now has a chance to try again. There are tentative signs of small political readjustments in the face of this new reality, as Republ

43、icans start to think about recapturing their reputation for being able to govern.But there are good reasons for arguing the other way. A moderately stable six months may just be a blip against a terrible ten years. There is still plenty of scope for any recovery to run into the sand, and for partisa

44、n intransigence to wreck it. Equally, peering from the other end of the telescope, two hundred years is not such a long time: ancient Athenian democracy lasted about that long, and then look what happened. The significant fact about the last ten years is that they come at the end of the story. If Am

45、erican democracy is going to go into decline, there will have to be a bad ten years from which it does not recover. So this might be what decline looks like. The past is not necessarily a reliable guide to any systems powers of recovery, since nothing lasts forever. At some point, past successes bec

46、ome part of the problem rather than the solution, by providing false consolation and grounds for complacency.The good news story and the bad news story can offer equally plausible accounts of the same event. Take Obamas re-election. It isnt hard to weave it into a recovery narrative. Come election d

47、ay, the American people decided to give him more time, and the system a further opportunity to correct itself from the partisan excesses of the past few years. Some of the rancor may now begin to dissipate. The raw data, though, tell another story. Buried beneath the bare fact of his victory is evid

48、ence of a brutally divided nation, as divided as it has been at any point in its recent history. Among white voters, who still account for 72 per cent of the total, Romney won the popular vote by a margin of 59 per cent to 39 per cent, a Reaganesque landslide. Men voted in large numbers for Romney;

49、women in even larger numbers for Obama (more women actually bothered to vote, which helps explain why Obama won relatively comfortably). Obama had huge majorities among ethnic minorities, young people, single people, gay people. Old people, married people, people with children voted for Romney. On t

50、he upbeat account, this is all fine. Obama won among the demographics that are growing; Romney among the demographics that are shrinking. The progressive majority that Obama managed to forge out of this constellation of minorities will become stronger over time. The Republicans will have to adapt to

51、 compete. But any sunny story has to cope with another brute fact about the 2012 elections, which is that the Democrats also won the popular vote for the House of Representatives, on a swing of more than 6 per cent from 2010, yet almost no seats changed hands, leaving the Republicans with a solid ma

52、jority and America with a divided government. This was made possible by the redistricting undertaken by Republican state legislatures since 2010, creating new constituency boundaries that have the effect of piling up Democratic votes in urban enclaves, while preserving Republican majorities. The sta

53、te legislatures are, of course, democratically elected, so this is not simply a power-grab: it is a popularly endorsed power-grab. These are among the ways in which American democracy eats itself. Some realignments serve to entrench partisanship instead of dissipating it.The other problem is that if

54、 Obamas progressive majority is to keep growing, the country needs to keep progressing. It would be wishful to assume that angry white men (especially the ones who are so angry they cant be bothered to vote) can be neutralized by all those other people with less reason to feel embittered, and more r

55、eason to want to vote. After all, its not only white men who get angry, and bitterness can spread. If the recovery stalls, if the political system continues to malfunction, if the decline is real, then all bets are off. No one can know what the voting patterns will look like under those circumstance

56、s, because no one knows what those circumstances will mean. Relying on the cyclical powers of recovery and realignment contained within American democracy means taking a view about the cycles that are really at work. And, as always, there is more than one view.*Two very different books published wit

57、hin a year of each other in the mid-1980s give a sense of the uncertainty. Despite their differences, both seem prescient today. One is The Cycles of American History by Arthur Schlesinger, which came out in 1986. Schlesinger, who had been court historian at Camelot and was a lifelong New Dealer, sa

58、w American politics as moving through generational shifts from a passive to an active mode, or from what he called destiny politics to experimental realism. When destiny had America in its grip, people fell back on the foundational myths of individualism, independence and freedom from government int

59、erference. Then, when that politics of faith ran into trouble (as it inevitably had to), people turned back to the government: 1986, the height of the Reagan revolution, looked to Schlesinger like the trough of one such cycle of excessive faith in free-market individualism, which would switch back in due course to something more statist. Obamas second inaugural address, delivered in January, was effectively channelling Schlesinger. Obama acknowledged the pull of the myths of Amer