Voice of Reason: We need less democracy
“The best argument against democracy,” said Winston Churchill, “is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
Our Founding Fathers would no doubt agree with this assessment. They knew that democracy, literally “the rule of the people,” could and would have disastrous results (for more on this see Hitler, Adolf, elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933).
In their wisdom, the founders chose to make the United States a republic, in which the people themselves do not make laws, instead electing representatives to it for them, representatives who (in theory at least) make it their job to become better informed about the issues that affect all of us and, based on this superior knowledge, to make decisions in everyone’s best interest.
(Knowing human nature as they did, thankfully the founders also created some nominally, as well as some downright, undemocratic institutions, including the U.S. Senate and, most notably, the U.S. Supreme Court.)
Unfortunately for our system of government though, this representative democracy has become quite perverted over the last 100 years or so. It was during the 1890s when Progressives, determined to end the influence of Big Business on government, enacted laws in many state constitutions giving voters the right, through referenda, recalls and initiatives, to bypass legislative bodies and make their own laws and policy.
While this was done with the best of intentions, giving “power to the people” has done much more harm than good. To find support for this point one need look no farther than California. It is here that Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat re-elected to office less than a year ago, is now in the fight of his political life due to a voter-initiated recall.
The recall effort is led by Republican State Rep. Darrell Issa, a multimillionaire who wants to be governor and has contributed over $1.7 million of his own money to the recall effort. Issa and other recall supporters say Davis should be recalled, mainly, for his mishandling of the state’s economy, California now having the worst state deficit in the country.
It’s true that Davis is far from a model governor. He’s deserves as much blame for the state’s recent energy crisis as Enron and the state’s economy is in the pits (not entirely his fault however, as 85 percent of California’s budget is “pre-assigned” by federal mandates and a slew of voter initiatives).
That said, the recall effort is nothing more than sour grapes of a relatively few voters (who make up a mere 5 percent of the state’s population) combined with the political ambitions of Issa, who knows he could be elected governor with a mere plurality and minimal campaign expenses.
The Davis recall effort is just one example of the folly of such “power to the people” laws. And because of them, instead of making the tough decisions we empower and pay them to make, our elected representatives, from the county commission to the General Assembly to Congress, are all too happy to allow us, the people, to make them instead, thus ensuring they cannot be held accountable come election time. Prime recent examples include the state income tax and lottery referenda, as well as the local sales and property tax referenda of past and present years.
If anything, the answer to our problems is not more democracy, but less. The fact of the matter is that we, the people, are not capable of making sound public policy decisions nor should we be allowed to. The majority of us has neither the time nor the inclination to do so, as is evidenced by our widespread ignorance and apathy.
There aren’t any perfect solutions. Obviously what we have doesn’t work, but perhaps we deserve exactly what we get.
(Will Stewart is a reporter for the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].)