We Live In A Political World: #219 / Democracy In Retreat?

Walter Russell Mead is the Alexander Hamilton Professor of Strategy and Statecraft at the University of Florida's Hamilton Center. He is also a columnist for The Wall Street Journal. In one of his "Global View" columns published in The Journal back in May, Mead addressed this topic: "Why Democracy Is In Retreat." The column was, among other things, a report on discussions taking place at the so-called "Copenhagen Democracy Summit."

Mead was critical of the "internal weaknesses that undermine the world's democracy advocates." The basic problem, according to Mead, is that too many democracy advocates (especially in Europe, by Mead's reckoning) think "outcomes," not "process," is how democracy must be understood. Thus, a free and fair election that results in the election of a "bad person with bad ideas" is considered to have been "undemocratic." Mead says that this is "madness."

Mead is clearly thinking about the election of our current president, who does a more than adequate impression of a despot - and who, I believe, can clearly and accurately be catagorized as "a bad person with bad ideas." Even if that characterization is granted (and Mead would probably not put Mr. Trump in the "bad person with bad ideas" category), our current president was elected in a free and fair election. This, Mead says, makes clear that any claims that the Trump Administration is "undemocratic" are just plain wrong. The way Mead sees it, democracy "isn't about enshrining the cultural and political preferences of the educated professional classes on the rest of society." Democracy is, to the contrary, "a tool by which the majority can check the pretensions and the delusions of a self-regarding elite." "Democracy is about self-government, not good government," says Mead.

As anyone who reads many of my blog postings knows, I am a big advocate of "self-government," contrasting it with "democracy." If we want to talk "self-government," that means we need to talk about how ordinary people are involved in government themselves. That isn't a big priority for Mead. He thinks an election, putting a despot in power, is "democracy in action." I disagree. Self-governent and democratic elections may both be important, but they are different things.

Is the Trump Administration "undemocratic," even though our current president was elected in a free and fair election? Mead says, "no." I would say, "yes," because while the election was "democratic," the conduct of the current president is not.

"Democracy" is - I agree with Mead - NOT defined by outcomes. It is defined by "process," and a "democratic" process is a process in which we, "the governed," are directly involved, ourselves.

Do the American people want to spend some of their taxpayer money to provide help to starving children? Our current president doesn't care to find out. HE doesn't want to help starving children in Africa, so he eliminates the U.S. Agency for International Development. NO "democracy" involved. The decision to defund USAID was a purely personal and autocratic decision by our democratically-elected president.

A democratic "election" doesn't result in "democracy" if the election puts into power a despotic individual who says, "I, alone, can fix it," and thinks that his election as president means that he, having been elected, can now do whatever he thinks is best.

Mead is on target to say that "democracy is about self-government," but self-government is not achieved by democratic elections, every couple of years. It is achieved by ordinary people being involved in the decisions that define the world in which we live - involvement that can be both indirect, through the institutions of representative government, and direct, through our personal and direct involvement in political and governmental decisions, on the streets and everywhere else.

If you want "democratic self-government," you had best start getting involved in political and governmental decision-making yourself!