Customer Reviews

Bad for Democracy: How the Presidency Undermines the Power of the People

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dana Nelson has a word for what many progressives sense is wrong with presidential governance in America, from ideas of the "unitary executive" on down.

That word is "presidentialism," and needs to get on more people's lips.

That said, for progressives wedded to the Democratic half of the two-party duopoly, Nelson has bad news for you.

Carter advanced presidentialism. So did Clinton. And, in all likelihood, so will Obama if he gets elected. Kennedy did it, too; Nelson says the Green Berets may have been his presidentialist response to the "New Frontier" of Vietnam.

This is the type of book that, if you're like me, you'll have higlighter out and running over many passages. (Actually, for me, it was a pen underlining many spots, so that I could write marginal notes as well.)

Presidentialism, in a phrase, is not just presidents, and their staffs, attempting to ever-strengthen the powers of the presidency. It's also citizens -- voters -- investing the office with godlike powers, character and mystique that not only go far beyond what the Founding Fathers intended, but are actually part of what they feared about a strong presidency, as Nelson shows.

And, presidents of both parties have played on that as well.

Briefly looking at whom she identifies as the first presidentialist president, Andrew Jackson, then taking a bit longer, yet brief, look at Lincoln and his Civil War exigencies, Nelson says the first more modern threads of presidentialism start with Grover Cleveland, the first president since Jackson to seriously use his veto for political and not just constitutional reasons.

That, in turn, influenced a Ph.D. history professor at Princeton on his theories of government. A professor named Woodrow Wilson.

Then came FDR's response to the Depression, and presidentialism, primarily but by no means solely in foreign policy, has had pretty much an upward ride ever since.

Again, progressives wedded to the Democratic Party -- past presidents of both parties have worked to expand presidential power, and have worked to "play" the public to support this.

What's the problem? Nelson says that this risks becoming antidemocratic, squeezing public participation in our country's political process down to a quadrennial plebiscite at the polls.

Along with that, she said, has come the parallel rise of zero-sum politics, where discussion, as well as compromise, are disdained. Parallel to that comes the clumping of people by political pairing into neighborhoods of similarity.

All good concerns.

Excellent analysis...

Until the conclusion.

Nelson specifically says on the second page of the conclusion that she is not talking about a "magical kumbaya moment" in what changes she advocates.

But, methinks she doth protest too much.

Volunteerism used to increase political involvement, not just volunteerism? Might work, but I doubt it. Leaderless organization? The Founders' dissing of Hamilton aside, and John Yoo's ahistorical appeals to him, Americans have tended to like strong-leader presidentialism, and Nelson herself admits that.

What's unbelievable is that Nelson either ignores or rejects the obvious solution -- parliamentary government. She also, although giving lip service to things like proportional representation, ignores the need for public financing of congressional campaigns, including with third-party funding possibilities, the use of instant runoff voting, and the restoration of the legality of fusion candidates. (Most states have explicitly outlawed them.)

And, that's why I give her book four stars instead of five. She offers primarily nonpolitical solutions to political problems, and does come off a bit kumbayish. (As a left-liberal of some sort myself, albeit a scientific-minded skeptical one, I feel comfortable with that phraseology and assessment.)

Parliamentary government would of course need constitutional amendment. IRV and fusionism would need state law changes -- which could be done more easily if sent to states as a tie-in with Help American Vote Act version 2.0. In short, those two are far from impossible.

But, they would both undermine the two-party duopoly, as parliamentary government would. (See David Lazare's "The Frozen Republic" for the best treatise on America's need for parliamentary goverment.)

I was kind of disappointed, even disillusioned, by the weak tea conclusion of a book that had such excellent insight in every previous chapter. I'm also disappointed that Nelson doesn't appear to be thinking more outside the two-party duopoly box.

"Bad for Democracy" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor Nelson's book interview ran here as a cover feature on December 23, 2008.

Dana Nelson has grasped one aspect of America's broken democracy and has written a terrific book focusing on this one flaw.

That flaw is "presidentialism" -- people worshipping the president. Presidentialism "trains us to want the president to take care of democracy for us instead of remembering that democracy, properly defined, is our job" she writes. It's blind adulation that channels us politically into thinking one person can solve every problem, so for most people, exercising democratic rights has narrowed to simply voting for president. She notes contradictions: people resent the power of presidents they dislike but approve of presidential power generally, and she faults people for having a misunderstanding of the relation of the president to democracy. "Presidents anti-democratic function has become normalized," she writes. She doesn't criticize particular presidents but sees a worrisome trend and suggests the office of the presidency itself endangers the great American experiment. Newly-elected presidents promise to end partisan rancor and unite the nation, but she questions whether such unity is a good thing. She asks: Isn't constructive debate what democracy should be about? Does democracy need a commander-in-chief? These are excellent questions by a sharp intellect.

Dr. Nelson has done extensive reading of political scholars I've read like Benjamin Ginsberg and Matthew Crenson and Justice Stephen Breyer (and others I will read such as Arend Liphart and Bill Bishop) and adds their insights to support her main premise. She's up-to-date with recent political writing. Her highly readable essay makes a solid case by sticking to her main point. But why has her book appeared now? Perhaps the failed Bush presidency let us peak behind the presidential curtain -- instead of seeing The Wizard of Oz himself, there's a little man frantically pulling levers.

Dr. Nelson focuses primarily on presidents with particular attention to their marketing images and personas which makes for delightful reading. She chronicles increasing executive power, referring to Ginsberg and Crenson along with more typical thinking that modernization, bureucratization, foreign interests, hot and cold wars and such have contributed to an expanded presidency. Recent presidents have been adept at increasing executive power and bypassing Congress. The rather secretive Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) lets presidents control much of the regulatory machinery. As Ginsberg shows in "The American Lie", the president has detailed and accurate information to overpower the legislature by using the OIRA. Nelson lists other presidential "power tools", such as issuing proclamations, executive orders, decrees, memoranda, which bypass Congress. But this activity is largely hidden from press, public, and Congress. It's not democratic. Numerous authors have pointed out the unconstitutionality of presidential "signing statements" when signing a law (the American Bar Association denounced this practice). Nixon, without Congressional approval, created the Environmental Protection Agency and instituted wage and price controls. And Bush II used lawyers like John Yoo to provide legal justification for unconstitutional power grabs. Dr. Nelson joins a growing list of scholars critical of a dangerously powerful presidency.

What surprised me is that Dr. Nelson is not a political scientist, historian, but an English professor. No wonder it's well written. She explores the image of the presidency throughout history, with focus on Washington, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, and more detailed discussions of recent presidents. Kennedy studied movie stars; the PT-109 war story was tailored for public consumption. The Kennedy image? A restless leader, a lone and spirited redeemer for a national fantasy, heroic and youthfully athletic. His image was carefully crafted to create a presidential "monomyth" and she shows how such images encourage public passivity. When a president refuses to play the hero, he's kicked out, as Carter was. Reagan was adept at crafting a persona to voters who "prefer being enchanted to being politically represented". Nelson touches on other aspects of democratic decay, such as the rise of political parties ("democratic agitation not connected to political investments"), and how many avoid politics because disagreement feels "damaging to democracy". And I agree citizens with diverse views generate better solutions.

So what are her solutions? Dr. Nelson thinks people should stop seeing the president as the source and center of democratic power. Her advice is correct -- that people should want the president to have less power, to be more patient, to tolerate disagreement, to have less "reactive snarkiness" (great phrase -- I love great writing!) Citizenship should be more than voting and volunteering. She's optimistic about open platforms like the Internet and community events like the "Burning Man" temporary desert city (Brian Doherty's book about this is excellent).

My solution? I think the political process is so broken and dysfunctional that only a Second Constitutional Convention can restore it; so, as a private citizen, I'm summoning the nation's best and brightest thinkers to convene in Independence Hall in Philadelphia beginning July 4, 2009. And the new constitution should define citizenship as an active relation with enumerated responsibilities including local political participation (which will reduce presidentialism in my view), and recognize the fact that not all persons will choose to be citizens or have the ability to maintain such a relationship -- and these people won't be citizens. Citizenship should be a "use it or lose it" proposition. I've detailed my other problems with our existing constitution in my book and in other writings.

Dr. Nelson is, in my view, one of the few Americans competent to be a delegate to this Convention, and I am asking her to be a delegate and I hope she decides to attend. She is a true citizen, a thinking American with smarts and savvy and the integrity to speak truth to power. She's today's equivalent of James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington but with an awareness of modern problems and sensitivities. This book is a must read! Five stars!!!

Thomas W. Sulcer
author of "The Second Constitution of the United States"
(free on web -- google title above + sulcer)