Constitutionalism and Democracy -- Here and Abroad
First, thanks to TPM for hosting this forum on Demagogue. It's an especially rough time for books, especially with the Post's tragic decision recently to close Book World as a stand-alone section. It's especially urgent that we have forums like this where books can be discussed seriously.
Thanks also to my great partners here -- we will all benefit from having the great minds of Lind, Katulis, Kleinfeld, Hurlburt, and Dallek trained on this topic of democracy, constitutionalism, and the future direction of American national security policy.
This book emerged from a longstanding fascination of mine about why democracy can prosper, on the one hand, and disintegrate, on the other. It's therefore a book not only about demagogues -- who can cause democracy to collapse -- but about freedom itself. And this is a particularly American story.
The answer to the threat demagogues -- charismatic and dangerous mass leaders, like Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Hugo Chavez today, or Moqtada al-Sadr in the early years after our invasion of Iraq -- pose to democracy is constitutionalism: a rich civic culture where citizens take responsibility for democracy's future personally and collectively and militate against authoritarians. America's story is one of the growth of constitutionalism.
In a time when we're searching for the answer of how to promote true democracy after the neocons' failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, I argue in Demagogue that constitutionalism provides a way forward.
I'm currently running for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, which you can read more about at www.mikesigner.com. I don't want to use this space for campaign speeches. This book was slated for publication well in advance of my decision to enter this campaign. But there have been surprising and exciting connections between the two ventures, and they have shed light on each other in a way I hope will benefit from, and add to, public discussion.
Here at home, to the extent that constitutionalism is one answer to an increasingly polarized, do-nothing political system, I do feel that the "people-powered" politics of Barack Obama means that politics in America needs to be bottom-up, needs to listen to and be driven by ordinary people, and needs to listen rather than just talk. This is especially the case in Virginia -- the home not only of Thomas Jefferson but of James Madison.
And abroad, America needs to take the values we've learned so well at home about the worth and power of constitutionalism -- such as when the American people cut short the very popular FDR's attempt to take over the Supreme Court in the 1930s -- to the world. We need to treat democracy not as some sort of inevitable paradise but rather as a product of people's culture and their day-to-day lives, carefully understood and cultivated.
That's the experience I'm having today on the trail, where hundreds of Virginians are participating, telling me what I should work on, and putting all the candidates through the customary wringer of electoral politics - as they should and as they must. We have a lot to work on in Virginia, especially on fundamental questions of justice and fairness in a state that too often has lingered in the past of "Old Virginny" rather than the New Dominion I think we should be pursuing together.
As I mention in the book, the neocons seemed to imagine that democracy would erupt in Iraq like a democratic version of Plato's Republic. Nothing from our experience in America, where democracy has grown slowly, carefully, and wonderfully, under the care of millions of ordinary Americans committed to maintaining a free republic, would have suggested otherwise.
In the end, I believe we need to look inward before we look outward, and understand that our experience with constitutionalism in America should provide a lamp to light the way forward.
I'd ask the other writers here to begin the fray with a few questions... how does constitutionalism fit into the debate about where we should go in Afghanistan? Am I right in my analysis of how and why the neocons got democracy so wrong in Iraq? Do they agree with my largely optimistic view of constitutionalism in American history? And do they agree that democracy is and should be the point of progressives acting together to bend the arc of history (in Barack Obama's words in Denver, citing Dr. King) upward?
A little ironic that the author of a foreign policy book that warns about the danger of demagogues right from the start lumps Hugo Chavez in with Adolf Hitler.
Okay, our relationship with Chavez is bad, to put it bluntly, but it didn't have to be this way. We drove Chavez away from us -- we radicalized him in his early years when we should have been nurturing him. He started out by doing right by the majority of his people and we didn't support him.
As to your larger point -- sure, constitutionalism is great but a lot of countries have tried that route and failed. Just writing up a constitution isn't enough -- it needs to be a constitution that can be changed and that can be broadly interpreted so as to keep up with changing times.
I take issue with your description of an American democracy that "has grown slowly, carefully, and wonderfully, under the care of millions of ordinary Americans committed to maintaining a free republic..." Our development has been rather messier than that, I think.
February 23, 2009 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please tell me that "a democratic version of Plato's Republic" is a joke, right?
As we have witnessed with George Bush the younger, even written constitutions are subject to "signing statements" by a self-proclaimed "unitary executive" who chooses to take that liberty.
Who is the sovereign authority in the United States? To say it is the people is to invite the question of what effective method is there for "the people" to exercise sovereignty by overruling a renegade executive?
February 23, 2009 7:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I defy you to defy exactly what is this thing called democracy? I have asked this question in countless threads on countless blogs and never recieve any response beyond silly personal insults and wild evasions. America is not a democracy, wherein the authority of the government is derived from the consent of the governed, and the people have a representative leadership working toward and advancing the peoples best interests! - America is a kelptocracy wherein the authority of the government is derived from the consent of lobby's representing select olirachs and predator class cronies, who are the only constituents that have any voice or influence in the conduct of the government. Oligarch and predator class interests are advanced and shielded exclusively and singularly, and the people have absolutely no influence or voice in the conduct of the government.
Define democracy before you brute it. When you bother to examine that definition, you will discover several glaring and fatal flaws in what pundits politicians pimp as democracy, - and what is the practical application of the conduct of American government - which is now a perversion and betrayal of the concept and the spirit of that thing called democracy.
Example. The American people voted for, and were sold on a platform of CHANGE! In practical application however, we see the exact same policies with subtle accessorizing promoted and advanced by the exact same predator class cronies and oligarchs.
NOTHING CHANGES!!!. That truth alone makes of mockery of any academic or theoretical discussion of that thing called democracy. Democracy failed just as spectacularly and costly and with just as much or more blood as Communisim, or Fuedalism, or Fascism. All governments eventually devolve into cabals and cartels that ruthlessly entrench wealth and power into a few select predator class offshore accounts and oligarchs, and brutally suppress, decieve, and abuse the people and the Constitution they are supposedly sworn to represent.
February 23, 2009 7:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Forgive the double post but I meant to say; (I defy you to {define} exactly what is this thing called democracy?)
February 23, 2009 7:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder how productive a discussion we can have when our author is running for office. Signer can't really answer Foresta or Strat's comments with anything but an affirmation of the American system, though most of us here will see right through that.
February 23, 2009 7:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
So let's take Signer's most interesting question: "Do they agree that democracy is and should be the point of progressives acting together to bend the arc of history (in Barack Obama's words in Denver, citing Dr. King) upward?"
I don't see democracy as the point but as a means. We should certainly work to perfect and augment democracy within the United States. We should use technology to transfer power to people directly whenever possible. But if he means that progressives should work together to spread democracy around the world, I have to say "nope."
We should nurture it when it occurs but we shouldn't be pressuring people. Our brand of republican democracy (little r, little d) isn't something we should feel particular need to export and the theory that countries with governments like ours will necessarily get along with us is just wrong. We should under no circumstances use our military to export democracy.
But I would like to engage Signer in a discussion about how we can perfect American democracy and bring more power to the people.
February 23, 2009 8:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
A constitutionalism that aspires to deposits ultimate sovereignty in "the people" is fraught with problems. First the will of the people is often hard to discern and can be easily manipulated. Second it is unreasonable to suppose that "the people" can always have informed opinions on issues arising out of the vast complexity that is modern life. Third how can "the people" overrule any governing faction an thus exercise its sovereign prerogative?
To keep the fiction alive that "the people" are in charge or can be in charge is to perpetuate a myth that is not in the best interests of the people. It makes for a nice campaign slogan though. Gives you a nice feeling. Makes you feel that the politician campaigning on the idea is going to solve your personal problems.
But what are the alternatives we can live with?
February 23, 2009 8:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
While a discussion of the value of constitutions in supporting democracy can be useful and interesting, a discussion of whether demagogues are an important ingredient in American history is bound to become incoherent for the reason that ---
Demagogues must reach a mass audience and since the elites control the means of so doing, demagogues are no threat and have never been a threat.
The threat to American democracy is caudillismo or Bonapartism, a usurping President becoming "the great man on a horse" riding to the rescue of a disturbed and confused population which longs for a sense of community and a strong, straight-talking leader -- George W. Bush, for example.
Had the emergency been real rather than fabricated, had 9/11 really changed everything, we might have seen our own homegrown Caudillo.
February 23, 2009 9:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
"When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal." RMN May 1977
February 23, 2009 9:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ah The Myth of the Indestructible Titanium-clad elite!! Who are these elites you talk about but a passing parade of factions?
And even if they are as entrenched as you say, (what with control of the public dialogue and all) what makes you think they are not a threat to the best interests of the people? Is it their often implied possession of aristocratic values? Well guess what, aristocracy is long dead and gone. What rules is the iron law of oligarchies. The pining for a "truly free" democracy is all warm and fuzzy rhetoric.
There is no more threat to the free and fair exercise of the people's (innate?) will as there is a threat of denying the muskrat access to a decent merlot.
February 23, 2009 10:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
. . . what makes you think they [elites] are not a threat to the best interests of the people?
Who said they weren't?
The issue, however, is whether as per Michael Signor and a book he entitled Demagogue, "demagogues" are a threat to American democracy.
February 23, 2009 10:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
OK so
Elites control the media
Demagogues need mass audiences to be effective and that requires access to media.
Therefore Elites not demagogues control the "will of the people" by picking and choosing which demagogue to allow access to the people.
Is that what you mean?
February 23, 2009 10:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, constitutionalism is a very important factor in US political culture. But no, constitutionalism tells us absolutely nothing about what we should or shouldn't do in Afghanistan.
I am surprised that Michael Signer believes that America has been peculiarly resistant to demagoguery. What he seems to mean is that Americans have only flirted with, but never fully succumbed to one particular kind of demagoguery: the extra-constitutional or anti-constitutional populist usurper of dictatorial powers.
But American political culture is awash in demagoguery of a more universal, but less concentrated kind. It is drowning in it. America might even be said to have perfected demagoguery into the permanent condition of its domestic politics. American politicians on all sides are masters of the arts of flattering the stupidest and most thoughtless and sentimental prejudices of the mob, and maintaining an impermeable barrier between political perception and discourse, on the one hand, and the actual world on the other.
The United States has suffered through several decades of atrophied government, with an elite-operated and thoroughly neutered congress seemingly completely incapable of passing meaningful progressive legislation or consistently advancing the interests of ordinary Americans.
As a substitute for actual political action, our political leaders, corporate leaders and military leaders have entertained The People by stuffing their woefully underdeveloped noggins with a thick and toxic goo made up of patriotic legends, national-religious myths, xenophobic and paranoid delusions and shameless flattery. In America we see the sad fulfillment of every warning of the ancient political philosophers against the susceptibility of democratic polities to the sophistical wiles of unscrupulous flatterers and to the intellectual debasement born of narcissistic self-regard and self-indulgence. Vibrant democratic institutions sometimes remain at the local level, in some regions, but our national political culture is deeply enfeebled and dysfunctional.
Signer himself has engaged in demagoguery with with his paenas to American Exceptionalism, City on the Hill moral vanity and other nationalistic legends, conceits and fantasy tales.
Anyway, the myths are going to be taking a huge hit as we face the unwinding catastrophic global failure of American-style political economy. The old neoliberal order beloved by Signer, Katulis, Hurlbert and Kleinfeld is collapsing under their own feet. I wonder if they get it yet.
February 23, 2009 11:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
It might interest people to read the definition I give in the book of "demagogue," through the following passage:
The best systematic account of demagogues was actually given almost two hundred years ago, in an essay written in 1838 by James Fenimore Cooper called, simply, “On Demagogues.” Cooper wrote, “A demagogue, in the strict signification of the word, is a ‘leader of the rabble.’ . . . The peculiar office of a demagogue is to advance his own interests, by affecting a deep devotion to the interests of the people.” As Cooper recognized, true demagogues meet four rules : (1) They fashion themselves as a man or woman of the common people, as opposed to the elites; (2) their politics depends on a powerful, visceral connection with the people that dramatically transcends ordinary political popularity; (3) they manipulate this connection, and the raging popularity it affords, for their own benefit and ambition; and (4) they threaten or outright break established rules of conduct, institutions, and even the law. They can break these rules, institutions, and laws internally, by threatening tyranny in their own countries, or externally by attacking other nations or groups or by testing the international rule of law. Either way, they are intrinsically violent.
Demagogues pose a very specific threat to democracy, one linked to both mass politics and to violent threats to order. I don't mean to provide a pollyannaish account of American democracy. Certainly we have had dramatic and dangerous fits and starts in the growth of our constitutionalism -- as I note in the book, Jim Crow, the oppression of women, and Massive Resistance are a few examples. But the central point is that America has never seriously been threatened by the figure the Founding Fathers feared most -- a demagogue who actually threatened the stability and security of the constitutional system itself.
On the contrary, figures ranging from Andrew Jackson to Douglas MacArthur to Joe McCarthy either acceded to and embraced America's constitutional conscience (as with Jackson) or were defeated by it (as with MacArthur or, eventually, McCarthy, whose reign lasted three years and who died in censorious ignominy).
This doesn't mean we are out of the woods. George W. Bush and the threats he posed to the rule of law certainly deserved our alarm. But I take heart from the anxieties and protests unleashed by Bush's "unitary executive" theory, the wiretapping, and Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. For every overstep, there was a parallel reaction from activists and ordinary Americans alert to these oversteps. This doesn't mean we are out of the woods -- we never are -- but, respectfully, I am not sure I can agree with the pessimism or dire observations of some of the posts here.
February 23, 2009 11:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Signer,
Yours and Cooper's definition is exclusive. Classically, a demagogue is just one who advances his personal or political interests in the political arena by appealing insincerely to the ignorant prejudices of the masses: specifically by endorsing positions and indulging passions he, himself knows to be false or wrongheaded, but which he also knows to be very popular.
Demagoguery is exceedingly common in American political life. You don't have to be Huey Long, Caesar Chavez or Adolf Hitler to be a demagogue. Demagoguery is also entirely compatible with constitutionalism. Demagogic flattery of the prejudices of the masses can take place within a consistently constitutional framework.
February 24, 2009 12:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hey Dan,
I'm also a little worried that demagogue, as a pejorative, is being applied to some of the wrong people. Caeser Chavez? The man was a hero.
February 24, 2009 12:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, let's take Bush as an example, since you brought it up.
The unitary executive theory? It survived intact. Nobody from the Bush administration is even being investigated right now, much less prosecuted. So anything anyone in that administration did under the unitary executive theory is something they got away with.
Wiretapping? Yes, people raised a fuss about it but Bush's illegal wiretaps were eventually codified into the law and our current president voted for it.
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? We have a promise that Guantanamo will close, otherwise, it's a bit soon to tell.
But notice that in no case did opposition to what Bush was doing actually stop Bush from doing anything he wanted and in the wiretapping case he got a law passed after that fact that made it all not only okay but that also precluded citizens from using the courts to pursue justice.
February 24, 2009 12:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the definition of demagoguery Michael Signer, but before we can advance to the definition of exactly what Constitutionalism means and how it is applied, - we must return to the original question, - and define what is this thing called democracy. Granted, after eight years of being lied to on a daily basis by our socalled leadership, I'm suspect and testy. Pundits and politicians can talk about demagogues or democracy or constitutionalism, or free markets, or privatization, or liberation any trigger words message-force multipliers manipulate to sway opinion, but - at least from my lowly pedestrian perspective, words mean nothing. Words are hollow, substantless, and moot. Pundits and politicians and message-force multipliers brute this or that academic or theoretical ethnocentric or idea, or ideology, or policy on TV, but - when the rubber hits the road, in practical application, - polar opposite idea's, ideologies, and policies are advanced countermining and rendering worthless the pretty words and academic theories. Deeds. Actions form the realities and the practical application of policies. Words mean nothing. Words without deeds are worthless. Would you, could you pretty please define that thing called democracy?
February 24, 2009 12:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bush was not at all charismatic and neither was Richard Nixon, yet those two men destroyed much of what is thought of as "democratic" about the American system of government.
What is destroying "democracy" is the fact that the President commands the forces of empire, at his will, and even when needless wars are started or people are kidnapped and tortured, our system of justice failed to put handcuffs on the perpetrators. It has nothing at all to do with charisma, and everything to do with a failed system of checks and balances that has been corrupted by the two political parties. End of story.
February 24, 2009 1:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
True that tiggers thotful spot! Democracy shapeshifted into fascism. Words sans deeds mean nothing.
February 24, 2009 3:05 AM | Reply | Permalink