I began writing this at some point in 2007, unaware of the positive changes that would have spread over Iraq by the spring of 2008, the looming economic meltdown that would begin in late summer, or the historic crossroads presented by the fall election. This post is incomplete and somewhat indistinct (it looks like I might have been attempting a great treatise on American government). No matter, for lack of anything better to say right now, I am releasing it as an unfinished thought from that moment in time.

Is the United States of America a democracy?

A caller to C-SPAN's Washington Journal a few weeks back, representing himself as a lifelong Republican loyalist, wanted to know why this president seemed bound and determined to wreck "his party" by flying in the face of the overwhelming expression of the popular will on Iraq and the "children's health" bill?

A letter writer to the Waco Tribune Herald (but you may insert any town USA), disgusted with "Bush's war," proclaims:

"Politicians in this country are so disconnected from the constituents that democracy, the true definition of that word, simply does not exist here."

Resolved: The vast majority of Americans, as evidenced by public opinion polls and the last mid-term election, no longer support our presence in Iraq; therefore, the majority should rule, Congress should pass legislation to correct the President's failed policy, and instruct the military to initiate a withdrawal sequence.

Resolved: Public opinion polling indicates that the vast majority of Americans suppport the Democratic Party's proposed expansion of SCHIP; therefore, the President should accede to the will of the people.

Right? Wrong.

Is the United States of America a democracy? Or, as high school history teachers and talk radio hosts like to ask, is the United States a republic?

Yes.

The answer is both--and then some. The United States is a pluralistic, quasi-federal, constitutional representative democracy with republican roots.

The Constitution of 1787 provides for republican government. When we pledge allegiance to the flag, we pledge allegiance to the "republic for which it stands." On the other hand, the clear intent of the framers lost out to a cultural revolution, which began almost as soon as the national government came into being and democratized American politics. History texts commonly refer to the great change as Jacksonian Democracy--but it is also correctly associated with Thomas Jefferson, the first two-party system, and the so-called Republican Revolution of 1800.

Definitions:

republic: a state in which supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote, exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them, and in which the head of government is not a monarch or other hereditary head of state.

democracy: government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system; a state of society characterized by formal equality of rights and privileges.

How it happened:

The Patriots of the American Revolution hoped that they were birthing an age of republican government animated by virtue. However, people like James Madison quickly surmised that Americans were no more virtuous than humanity in general, and they conceived a government necessarily more realistic about the nature of man.

Therefore, the framers devised a fairly intricate system of divided government in which three jealous departments compete against one another and sometimes internally for authority. The system of checks and balances, which has served us so well, is essentially a framework for consensus government. Most of the time, little happens without broad agreement.

No one person has ever exerted ultimate control over the system. To date, no one faction or institution has proven capable of rising to the top of the greasy pole of American government for a dangerously extended period of time. Men and women come and go. Parties are born, rise, fall, pass away completely, and, sometimes, rise again. But the system perseveres.

What of majority rule?

Here is how majority rule works under Mr. Madison's plan for government:

Many diverse constituencies and institutions exert their influence on national decision making. Instead of public policy turning on a dime, the framers designed a system resistant to "temporary enthusiasms" and "popular passions."

A Side Question: What happens when the popular will is in opposition to the public interest?

American Revolution-era republicans hoped that statesman, when presented with hard choices, would choose wise governance over popular sentiment, accepting the consequences of doing the right but unpopular thing.

However, once the optimism gave way to realization, the framers scrambled to construct a system in which popular majorities exerted due influence without facilitating a "tyranny of the majority" (a phrase Alexis de Tocqueville would coin a generation later).

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