Democracy's Death of a Thousand Cuts

It was Election Day yesterday, so naturally, I was sitting on my couch binge-watching my favorite program on Netflix.

It had not been a conscious decision -- to avoid election-related information on Election Day.

Rather, it was just that I knew I didn't have to be at work until 4 p.m., and so why not take advantage of having the house to myself?

But then I made the mistake of turning on the radio while I did the dishes, and something the host of program I was listening to said, made me pause.

He said something about hating elections and I realized, to my dismay, he was absolutely right.

I hate what elections are now in America, and, I'm not alone in suspecting, most Americans do as well.

Its not hard to find someone reminding us on Election Day about the sacrifices made by our troops over the years to secure and maintain the right to vote.

And they're right, they have.

And yet, we're more willing to put a yellow ribbon on our truck to honor that sacrifice than we are to exercise the vote they died to protect.

Not to worry, this is not a sanctimonious lecture about how we're all failing American democracy -- we are, that's a given at this point -- but more a rumination on why.

I have this James Madison quote taped to my computer screen at work, and I look at it every day: 

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

It's not quite on point, but it does catch the flavor of what I think is happening to us.

In fact, sometimes I think the single best way to increase voter participation would be to introduce a bill to eliminate it completely (I mean it's not as if they're using it), to force people to fight for it.

But it's not worth the risk, given the tepid response America has had to the "Voter ID" craze, an attempt in the name of democracy, to make it harder to vote, rather than easier.

Many blame the obvious villain. 

But it's not the media, or at least not the media in the traditional sense that most of us mean. 

As I pointed out in a Facebook rant several weeks back, the real tradition is American journalism is one of rank partisanship. It was there in the beginning even as it experiences a renaissance today.

The tradition of impartiality in journalism is relatively recent in the long view and those who bemoan our current state of news coverage and harken back for a simpler time would be amazed and disgusted at what passed for journalism in the time of the founding fathers. 

Nevertheless, quotes from Jefferson about preferring newspapers to government notwithstanding, the founders did see them as necessary, not because they were beacons of impartial truth; but because it was at least some way to get out a message about policy and information to a larger nation than democracy had ever been tried in before.

That's why they allowed newspapers to pass through the mails free of charge.

It was an imperfect system, but it was all they had.

Still, despite partisan and outright false newspaper reporting similar to what we have today, Americans still turned out for elections in droves in generations past.

Election Days of the past were marked by parades, riots, free beer, all for the purposes of gathering support at the polls. No, not the best environment for considered decision making, but let's remember the state of public education until the last century.

So if it isn't a partisan media, why don't we vote in large numbers anymore, particularly in the lower level elections which have such a disproportionately larger impact on our lives?

(Perhaps the exception in Pennsylvania proves the point. It's no accident that the governor's race will pivot almost entirely on the issue of public school funding, because voters have experienced it first-hand. When was the last time THAT was the major issue?)

Well, allow me to contradict myself now and say the media is certainly to blame, at least in part, for this voter malaise, to channel the spirit of President Carter

And by that I mean the media in the sense of advertisements, mailers, relentless e-mails and robo-calls and, yes, partisan television and web sites.

Remember, for the most part, this media is not reporting so much as passing along paid messages, messages paid for by the candidates or supporters. The media is merely the medium by which they are brought to your doorstep.

And, I think that's because those media vehicles work best in conveying symbols and simple messages. 

It's no accident that the term "optics" was born in Washington, and no one speaks to a camera in front of a lecturn anymore without the message of the day prominently and repeatedly splashed across the backdrop.

So in one sense, my journalism professors were right. "The medium IS the message."

But, like everything, it's not that simple.

My father often boasts that his single biggest responsibility in raising children was to teach them irony. He did that well.

I, on the other hand, spend a lot of time reinforcing in my son the idea of nuance, of complexity, of an outright rejection of the view that, with several obvious exceptions, everything can be seen as black and white, right and wrong, us and them.

We have complex problems. I doubt simple solutions will solve them.

So, in arguing for nuance, let's take this governor's race. 

I'll reveal a secret that's not hard to guess and say I voted for Tom Wolf, but even that's not entirely correct. 

I voted mostly against Tom Corbett, in much the same what that I did not vote FOR John Kerry, so much as AGAINST George W. Bush.

To further the cause of complexity, I will also tell you that I cast my vote yesterday despite the fact that I agree with Gov. Corbett on at least one major issue, the issue of public pensions. 

I agree, more pointedly, with the idea that reform is needed and that without reform, our public school budgets will continue to explode to pay for things that have nothing to do with educating the current crop of children.

But, having had the luxury denied most voters and having interviewed Gov. Corbett several times, I was pretty convinced he was not a skilled enough negotiator to successfully carry out meaningful reform. And despite his attempts to convince the public to the contrary, his undermining of public education was too extreme and too brazen to earn my vote.

And so I voted for Tom Wolf, even though I don't know very much about Tom Wolf, and that makes me nervous. 

I tried to be an informed voter. I went on his web site looking for his positions on pensions and how he would improve funding and results for public education, and what I found mostly was a list of things he would NOT do, and some vague assertions.

And so I pushed the voting button yesterday with very little hope that public pensions will be dealt with in any kind of comprehensive and fair way in the next four years, and that I will continue to write news articles quoting school district business managers talking about how much local tax money will be diverted to PSERS instead of classrooms.

And so I don't wonder if my experience wasn't duplicated, will thousands of local variations, a million times all over the country yesterday.

Those who did vote, whether in national or state elections, doing so listlessly, more as a civic duty than with any enthusiasm for a particular candidate or, even more pointedly, their program of solutions.

Voting, it seems to me, has become like going to the dentist. We do it because we should, not because we're excited about what's involved.

And, like the dentist, voting has become expensive.

Money, for the most part, decides elections but I am heartbroken at what that money buys, at the messages on which that money is spent

But the politicians and operatives don't do it to be undermine democracy. They do it because it works.

The simple truth is Americans don't have the attention span for the kind of detailed, comprehensive and issue-oriented campaign we all pretend we want.

And that brings is right back to us.

Again.

We could choose to ignore political ads and educate ourselves about candidates.

But we don't.

We could choose to go to the polls despite the fact that none of the candidates seem to possess many redeeming qualities.

But, increasingly, we don't.

We could even vote for third-party candidates in great numbers, just to shake things up and maybe put a scare into the two big parties and bring about the change we say we all crave.

But we don't.

Instead, we choose to do exactly what the pollsters say we will do and that which we say we abhor.

If we vote at all, we make decisions based on "gut feelings," on "optics," on, like I did, which of the candidates is the lesser of two evils.

And we blame the politicians, and the political operatives, and the Supreme Court Justices who have unleashed this idiocy even more fervently further into our living rooms.

And we should blame them.

And we hate them for it.

But I think we also hate ourselves for it as well; for accepting that this is just how things are, that there's nothing we can do about it, that one of us, or some of us or (dare I say it?) all of us, standing up and demanding something better, supporting something better, encouraging something or someone better would not make a difference.

And because we hate ourselves for our collective failure, we avoid the thing that reminds of us of that failure within ourselves -- the voting booth -- and so that failure is compounded.

It is a failure driven not, as it turns out, by violent usurpations, as Madison put it and partisan e-mails would try to convince us, but by slow, creeping "gradual and silent encroachments," each too small to cause a rise in us, to warrant a call to arms (or the ballot box) but collectively burying us over time in cynicism, indifference and inaction.

Happy Election Day.

Memorial Day and Election Day, Both Are Days for Patriots

Photo by Tom Kelly III

This year's Memorial Day services at the Revolutionary
War cemetery at Ellis Woods in East Coventry.

Blogger's Note: So apparently my father and I are of like mind on a number of things, including our tendency to attend Memorial Day parades. 

I was contemplating a blog post on the subject after attending Pottstown's (we have a saxophonist who marched), and then I read what follows. 

"Well, can't improve on that" I thought. 

Anthony S. Brandt

So, in the ultimate act of parental plagiarism, I share it with you here knowing that people don't always follow links, and in the hopes that you'll appreciate it as much as I do. If you would like to read more of his blog posts, his blog, called "Completely Out of My Mind," can be found by clicking here. It's always a good read.

My dad's town is located on the north shore of the
South Fork of the east end of Long Island.

MEMORIAL DAY

May 28, 2012: I've just come from Sag Harbor's annual Memorial Day parade, with its veterans, a few still remaining from World War II, its firemen, the high school band, an honor guard firing blanks (don't bring your dog, folks), and even its celebrity observer, Matt Lauer, who has a weekend home nearby. It's nice to see him there, but it's also nice that Sag Harbor is in New York, and in New York people leave celebrities alone. I generally tear up when taps is played, but I didn't this year. At the end the parade gathers at Marine Park and people give speeches. I don't stay for the speeches, either, or the playing of patriotic songs.

But I am a patriot, and I was thinking about patriotism as I walked home. Saturday night Lorraine and I went to a dinner party where a friend of ours told us that his 26-year-old daughter just couldn't work up any enthusiasm about the election this year. She had been among the millions of young people whose enthusiasm for Barack Obama in 2008 put him in office, but now--well, she wasn't going to volunteer, she might not even vote. The man was such a disappointment. What happened to all the promise, the hope, the return to democratic principles and Democratic policies? Why were the rich still getting off tax free; why didn't the wars come to an end right away, how could he allow off-shore oil drilling, and now, drilling in the Arctic Ocean?! Where was the Obama of the speeches, of his two books? 2008 had been so exciting, such heady stuff. But his actual Presidency was more than a bit of a bust. So why get involved?

The founders knew republics depend on
an active (and informed) citizenry.

It is times like these that one despairs of one's country. When one remembers all the republics that have gone the way of the ancient Roman Republic: Florence, Venice, the Weimar Republic, the Republic of Czechoslovakia, numerous South American republics. The list is long and tragic.

There's nothing about a republic that is immortal. The Founders knew that very well indeed; they understood how fragile they were, that the very idea of a republic required the active participation of educated citizens who understood the issues, because issues are immortal, who debated, campaigned, and who voted. In a republic active participation is not only a right, it is a duty. You have an obligation to get involved. It's not something you do only when a candidate gets you excited and enthusiastic. Citizenship is not a feeling, a high you get out of participating in a great event like the election of the first African-American President. It's the work you do, that you absolutely have to do, if you take your patriotism seriously, if you actually do care about the United States of America and what it stands for. What it stands for in fact is precisely the most basic of the immortal issues that underlie American politics, a fact that is peculiarly germane to American history because it was the first self-made country, the inspiration for so much of the revolution in rights that subsequently transformed the world. For the first time a country announced, at its very formation, that its whole reason for being was to guarantee these rights. Human rights. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and more. If you don't actually fight for your idea of what it stands for you have only yourself--ONLY YOURSELF--to blame if other peoples' views prevail and it turns out to stand for something else entirely.

The bridge over Otter Pond inlet is very historic.

Many years ago, just a few years after we settled into Sag Harbor, the man who owned the house we were renting was trying to decide whether to run for Mayor, and he came to us to ask our advice, and would we help. The issue on that occasion was a bridge over the culvert that connects Otter Pond, at the entrance to the village, to the open bays beyond. The man who was mayor then wanted to rebuild it, and he wanted NYState money to do it with, which meant that it would have to be rebuilt to state standards, and thereby be widened and straightened. It would have made the entrance to the village look like an Interstate ramp. The village was upset over this idea. Sag Harbor is quite beautiful. The entrance to the village sets the tone for the whole place. The election turned out to hinge on the issue of that culvert. Lorraine and I went to strategy meetings, helped form a slate, wrote publicity, started letter-writing campaigns. I did all the radio announcements. And our man won; he took two-thirds of the vote. The culvert was rebuilt in a much more modest way, the road wasn't straightened, the entrance to the village wasn't changed. It's still beautiful.

This is the downtown municipal building, my
dad and step-mother, Lorraine Dusky, helped
to save.

Subsequently we formed a Board of Historic Preservation and Architectural Review, I was its first Chairman, and I served for four years. Lorraine went on the Zoning Board and ultimately became its Chairwoman. I went up against the Mayor when he wanted to sell the Municipal Building, and build a new one on the outskirts of the village next to the new firehouse. We formed a second committe, an ad hoc committee to look into the feasibility of this. We met for six months, every other week. We called in some of the best historic preservation people in the country. I had a lot of help from architects who had homes in the village. They were also good citizens. Turns out the old Municipal Building, built in the 1840s, was a really interesting example of period construction and was basically fine, but it did need some work so we floated a bond issue to get the work done. I wrote copy for that, too, and we won again.

I'm not bragging. You don't brag about doing your duty. But I am proud of that work. It was citizenship; it was a moral obligation. It was also thankless. People questioned our motives, attacked us in print. These were not paid positions. But that's politics. There's always opposition; it's always messy and often dirty. It's even more so on the national level. A president gets elected on the strength of his rhetorical skills and then his enthusiasts, who have drunk the Kool-Aid, are disappointed when the realities of American politics and the viciousness of the fight over what the country stands for sinks in, and he turns out not to be what they thought he was, but a centrist who, bless his level of intelligence, understands that the country is far more complicated than the Left wants to believe and has far more constituencies and interest groups than one can easily imagine. He has not had an easy time. It is not an easy job, and he may not be the perfect man for it.

But he's infinitely preferable to the alternative.

Be a patriot. Get involved in your republic. And vote.

So use your brains, children (because children you are). Twelve years ago a similar attitude--oh who cares? both parties are corrupt, both have sold out to big business--put, what was it, thirty, forty thousand votes, in Florida in the Ralph Nader camp and gave the nation George W. Bush, two wars, one of them built completely of lies, both unfunded, a tripling of the national debt, and 6,000 more soldiers to mourn on Memorial Day. Not to mention the national embarrassment of having an idiot in the White House.

Or don't use your brains, don't get involved, don't campaign, don't care, don't even vote. And what happens next will be YOUR FAULT, and the historians of the future will place the blame on YOU, the shallow generation, for abandoning YOUR republic to its ignoble fate.

Posted by Anthony Brandt, 5/28/12 at 11:01 AM

The Rights Stuff

Two-hundred and twenty four years, and three days ago, Pennsylvania ratified the U.S. Constitution, only the second state to do so.



Four years and three days after Pennsylvania ratified the Constitution, the first 10 amendments were officially added, having themselves been ratified by enough states to make them the first additions to a living document that continues to guide and confound us to this day.

That makes today Bill of Rights Day.

So it seems appropriate to continue our history theme for another day. (Back to Pottstown matters tomorrow, I promise.)

The back-story on the Bill of Rights is sort of interesting (for those of us who find these things interesting).

The Pennsylvania Statehouse hosted the convention in 1787

Our local metropolis, Philadelphia, was again the setting for a Constitutional Convention, another momentous step forward for this Republic, which was in danger of grinding to a standstill under the inadequate framework of the Articles of Confederation, ratified in 1781, two years before peace with Britain was declared.

Even then, Americans were wary of a strong, central government, never having seen one that had their interests at heart, and the Articles of Confederation reflected that.

But it soon became evident, as states refused to pay their share of national expenses and sought individual treaties with the sovereign nations of Europe, that what they had was not enough.

And so in 1787, delegates from throughout the fledgling country had to make another trip to Philadelphia.

They came with different ideas.

Alexander Hamilton, who favored a strong federal government, with a strong central bank, wanted a president named for life; whereas others believed all that was needed was some tinkering with the current articles.

The end result, as James Madison's detailed notes make clear, was an amalgam of several proposals, hammered out through negotiation and compromise by men who knew that their failure likely meant the failure of the American democratic experiment.

But it wasn't perfect.

As with the Declaration of Independence, our forefathers who established a nation in the name of freedom, were unable to find a way through the tangled political thicket to end slavery and, perhaps worse, in fact enshrined it in the new Constitution by including the now infamous "three-fifths clause."

This allowed the states with legalized slavery to count those who were otherwise considered to be "property," to, in this once instance, be counted as at least partially people for the U.S. Census purposes of representation in Congress and the Electoral College.

In his book "Negro President," historian Garry Wills makes the compelling case that Jefferson and the  parade of Virginians who followed him into the presidency and House Speakership, benefited from this clause, which gave them representation in the House of Representatives and Electoral College disproportionate to their white populations.

(He also argues, with some apparent justification, that from that point forward, Jefferson's earlier and impassioned advocacy for eliminating slavery in the new republic  evaporated into mere rhetoric, as the full benefit of the political windfall the three-fifths clause provided made itself increasingly self-evident.)

But throughout the debate over the Constitution, one other central issue plagued the debates -- a Bill of Rights.

The American Civil Liberties Union sums it up pretty succinctly: "The Federalists opposed including a bill of rights on the ground that it was unnecessary. The Anti-Federalists, who were afraid of a strong centralized government, refused to support the Constitution without one."

The federalists argued that the Constitution clearly outlined the powers of the federal government and that all other powers fell, by default, to the states. They argued articulating a set of rights might make those not articulated unprotected.

But for those who feared centralized control, an assumption was not enough and it was equally important to outline what a central government could not do.

And so the Constitution was ratified at its convention with the promise that immediately after its adoption by ratifying conventions in all 13 states, that an equal effort would be made to draw up and adopt a Bill of Rights.

Drafted by Madison and based largely on George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, these civil liberties have formed the foundation of some of our most treasured freedoms, as well as the foundation of some of our most vociferous arguments.

Those who argue in favor of gun rights, and those who argue to protect the right to burn the flag both revere the same document.

Only in America.

So take a moment today to consider what life might be like without those rights. It doesn't take much imagination.

Adams looks worried. He was, about his legacy.

And you don't have to look at despotic regimes in third-world countries to do it.

It has happened right here on our shores, most often in times of war, or near war, and often by those considered our greatest presidents.



Just seven years after the adoption of the Bill of Rights, they were challenged by the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to speak ill of the administration of President John Adams for fear of fomenting a desire to go to war with France.

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended the right of "habeus corpus," which allows a court to determine if a prisoner has been imprisoned lawfully.

During World War I, Congress passed and Woodrow Wilson signed The Sedition Act of 1918, which outlawed speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds.

During World War II, this nation imprisoned thousands and thousands of Americans in west coast camps simply because they were of Japanese heritage.



And, as Jon Stewart archly noted (does he ever note anything any other way?), last week Barack Obama made clear he is considering vetoing the $662 billion defense authorization bill passed this afternoon, "not because he objects to the executive branch having near infinite power to detain whoever it wants, but because he objects to the executive branch not having totally infinite power to detain whoever it wants" without charging them.

It was not too long ago, 2007 in fact, when the same Barack Obama told an enthusiastic crowd of supporters "we're not a nation that locks people up without charging them."

All of which brings to mind of a quote from James Madison that I have taped to the very computer screen on which I am writing these words, and which I look at every day:

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations."

Happy Birthday Bill of Rights.

It would seem we need you more and more each day.