America’s System of Self-Government Is Miserable, and Correct

By Jay Cost

Monday, May 06, 2019

Everybody today is miserable about politics, or so it seems. Our system is broken, it’s sick, it’s dysfunctional, etc. I certainly agree that our government has its share of problems (and then some!). But being the contrarian that I am, I think our misery is actually a sign that it is still doing at least a few things right.

Think about the Brexit vote a few years ago. This was an enormous popular plebiscite in the United Kingdom on whether the nation should break away from the European Union. The “Leave” vote eked out a narrow majority that was highly divided along geographical, socioeconomic, and age lines. Since then, the process of leaving the EU . . . has not gone so well, as we all know.

Something like Brexit would never, could never happen in the United States. We do not have national plebiscites, for one thing. But more important, we do not give narrow majorities so very much power.

This gets back to the distinction that often is made about the United States being a republic but not a democracy. That notion is imprecise, but it does reveal a key insight. The Founders were committed to the idea of popular rule, as opposed to government by unelected monarchs. But they were deeply skeptical of rule by the people. They had good reason for both opinions. The period between the end of the French and Indian War and the American Revolution taught the colonists that a king without sympathy for his subjects is dangerous indeed. But the period between the Declaration of Independence and the ratification of the Constitution taught them that popular majorities can be even more dangerous than any king.

So the Framers arrived at an ingenious solution: The people would have total authority to choose their governors, but absent broad, durable, and large majorities, their leaders would struggle to enact major changes. They bet the future of the American republic on the supposition that, the larger a majority is, the more likely it represents the interests of the whole nation, and the more able it should be to govern.

This is why Brexit could never happen in the United States, at least not in the way it occurred in the United Kingdom. The Framers would probably be appalled that 51.9 percent of the nation could impose its will on 48.1 percent on such a fundamental matter.

Now, imagine that the United States was struggling with its own version of Brexit, with no hope of a popular referendum and with the practical need for a very large majority to support its passage. The two sides would be locked in a lengthy, heated, and eventually vituperative debate that would make them both . . . miserable. But at least neither side could force itself on the other.

This, in its way, is the genius of the American style of self-government. Without a decisive majority, two sides would be locked in a stalemate whereby they would make each other miserable. But that is the tradeoff that needs to be made, out of fear that one side manages to impose its views on the opposition.

This is not perfect, to be sure. The Left is understandably frustrated that Donald Trump wields so much power despite not having won a plurality in the 2016 election. But then again, note that the sweeping expanse of presidential authority is quite afar from the original Founders’ view. Ditto the authority of the courts. That developed later.

I would much rather strip power from the executive and the courts than make our system more “democratic,” at least in the Brexit sense of the word. I would much rather be miserable than live under the sweeping decisions of a faction that happens to equal a numerical majority for a brief moment. And the reason is that I believe the Founders were fundamentally correct. Majority rule is an essential quality of republican government, but it is also its greatest threat — for majorities can be narrow-minded, short-sighted, and even vengeful.

The corollary to this is that we should stop looking for individual meaning and purpose from our politics. We will never find it there. Our politics is a politics of Federalist 10 and 51, where a multiplicity of basically self-interested factions fight it out through an incredibly complicated process, and perhaps hammer out a compromise that more or less makes nobody happy. It’s not fulfilling. It is often miserable. But it is how our government has sustained itself for two centuries and counting.