Ever since the early 1990s, Greider (Who Will Tell the People?) has been warning that our democracy is in peril because America’s political parties have abandoned the citizenry in favor of the interests of corporations and the power elite. Here he outlines the full substance of the predicament we find ourselves in as exhibited by the financial collapse: a culmination of our decaying democracy, the negative effects of globalism, the dominance of militarism in our financial policy, the destruction of the middle class, and the threat of global climate change. Greider argues that spreading our style of democracy through force is a new form of imperialism stemming from an arrogance of power. He sees much pain in our future if we remain on our current course but finds hope for a day of reckoning when mass social movements and a third front that fills the space between big government and the private sector will take power back into the hands of ordinary citizens. While those in power may claim that Greider’s ideas are defeatist or unpatriotic, it is during times like these that his dissenting ideas are likely to resonate with a large and angry audience. --David Siegfried
Review
“Greider's moment...may have arrived. Given the current, gloomy circumstances, all neatly summarized here, it's more difficult than ever to argue with his analysis, and he's surely correct that 'in crisis lies opportunity'...With the times propitious and unprecedented organizing tools (the Internet, especially) readily available, the people may finally be sufficiently aroused--in the manner of the late 19th-century Populists and the early New Dealers--to demand accountability from a system that has failed them. If they do, historians may point to this book as one of the prairie fire's first sparks. Astute, hopeful and humane commentary.” —Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
WILLIAM GREIDER is the best-selling author of five previous books, including One World, Ready or Not; Who Will Tell the People; and Secrets of the Temple. He has written for the Washington Post and Rolling Stone and has been an on-air correspondent for six Frontline documentaries on PBS. Currently the national affairs correspondent for The Nation, he lives in Washington, D.C.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER ONE
FAIR WARNING
I have some hard things to say about our country. Beyond recession and financial crisis, we are in much deeper trouble than many people suppose or the authorities want to acknowledge. Because I think Americans always deal better with adversity if they have a clear understanding of what they are confronting, this book will address the gloomy circumstances and rough passage I see ahead for the American people.
Everything around us is changing, and Americans must change, too. First, we must be honest with ourselves, face the hard facts, and put aside some comforting myths. Then, we must find the nerve to take responsibility again for our country and democracy. Taking responsibility means having the courage to step up and reclaim our power as citizens. We have to relearn what many in earlier generations knew: how to assert our own ideas and values on what the future should look like, how to make ourselves heard amid the empty noise of politics, how to avow our convictions as aggressively as necessary to alter the course of history.
Americans will get through this. Our country has been through far worse in the past. We can emerge from it in promising new ways, not necessarily richer, but wiser and joined more closely together as a people, more able to realize fulfilling lives. If we do the hard work. If we change.
* * * * *
We live in a country where telling the hard truth with clarity has become taboo. Its implications are too alarming. Any politician who says aloud what some of them know or feel in their guts is vilified as defeatist or unpatriotic. Many are clueless, of course, and others are too scared to raise forbidden subjects. I understand their silence and I do not forgive them.
This book is about harsh truths that were mostly not addressed during the long and intensely reported campaign for the presidency. A few marginal candidates did challenge the orthodox version of American greatness, but their also-ran status ensured they would not be widely heard. Most politicians looked the other way and stuck to familiar themes of patriotic optimism. The news media did not help much, either, by generally adhering to conventional thinking and ignoring dissenting opinions. Under these circumstances, citizens are more or less on their own, and remarkably, they do often find their way to the truth about things. In these very difficult times, I hope this book will help them.
Our newly elected president's victory and inauguration have stirred the national spirit--a new president always renews our optimism--but during the campaign Barack Obama did not stray far from the accepted assumptions about the American condition. He promised big changes on many important issues and, like most Americans, I hope for his success.
But the ominous historical circumstances moving against the nation pose adversities that dwarf any single leader. One damaging myth Americans ought to abandon is the naive notion that the celebrity power of the presidency can somehow solve our problems. That faith has been disappointed again and again in recent decades. First, the new leader is built up with miraculous powers, then cast down when he fails to prevail.
Blaming politicians is a healthy American pastime and I intend to do a lot of it, but I want to suggest a more complicated perspective. Politicians are human. That is, they are fallible, prone to folly and error, subject to all of life's usual confusions. I have spent my adult life around government and politics, working as a reporter and dealing closely with the people who have power and make the decisions that govern the nation. Many are earnest and fun to be around. Some rise to noble stature and are courageous and wise even when their causes do not prevail. Many politicians are spear carriers and merely follow routines. Others are corrupted by power and go for the money. They are a mixed lot, but so are we all.
Knowing this about them and knowing the obstacles they face within the deformed political system, I feel a measure of sympathy, especially for the conscientious few who struggle heroically to make the governing system function as it should, serving the general welfare as servants of the people. I do not blame them when their efforts fall short.
The political behavior I do not forgive is failing to give people fair warning. This is the very least we should expect from a system that describes the American people as "sovereign" citizens and proclaims the United States a "self-governing" democracy. Those who govern ought to tell people what's coming so they at least have a chance to get out of the way.
Modern politicians routinely evade that obligation on matters large and small. I have frequently observed the silence that comes over Washington when Congress, the White House, or one of the federal agencies enacts a measure that will deliver a damaging blow to many citizens. The insiders know what's ahead and may even have participated in making it happen. Yet they do not share the bad news with the public in a timely manner.
Evasion is merely one symptom of the deep decay in America's representative democracy. The political system functions well enough for some purposes and some interests, but it does not honor its democratic obligations--usually, it doesn't even try. A wide gulf has opened between the governing and the governed. I once described this poisoned relationship as "mutual contempt." Americans in general are blunt about their disgust with the political order. But people in power don't think so much of ordinary citizens, either. They don't express this openly for obvious reasons, but their contempt is reflected in their behavior.
More than 15 years ago, I wrote a book--Who Will Tell the People--that explored the bleak reality of representative democracy. It helped ordinary citizens understand why their representative system has lost much of its meaning and how democratic principles are routinely betrayed in everyday practice. The book was not warmly received by governing elites. By governing elites, I mean more than the elected officials. The term is meant to include the deep ranks of influentials in and out of the government who exert disproportionate influence on the decision-making--the policy makers and professional experts and party functionaries, the lobbyists and lawyers and the financial and business sectors they represent, the academic thinkers and major media. These opinion leaders did not much like how my book depicted them.1
The deformities in our democracy, they complained, were not caused by Washington, but by the people. Office holders are compelled to take evasive actions, they explained, to fend off lazy and inattentive constituents, voters who randomly act on irrational impulses and make impossible demands. Blame them, not us. Democracy "works," I was assured, by giving the people the screwed-up government they deserve.
The governing classes' sour view of the governed still prevails. The democratic condition has not improved but deteriorated further. So has the public's regard for the system. Democracy is broken and most Americans seem to know it. Even in Washington, this is no longer news.
* * * * *
I start with the failing democracy because it is the soggy mattress thrown over everything else this book will discuss. The immobilized political system that allows powerful interests to exercise virtual veto power over major reforms is not a new condition. But the stakes of failure and paralysis are much higher today because the country is on far more dangerous ground. The public yearns for the enormous changes that are required on many fronts. Yet the status quo is stuck, deformed by the concentration of power and unwilling to respond with anything more than limited gestures.
Electing a new president and shifting control to a different party can help, of course, and a new political opening has arrived. Republicans are in disarray; Democrats are hesitantly taking up some of the larger issues. But I am not going to dwell on the combat between the two major parties or on the failures of George W. Bush's presidency. Bush is gone, but the larger predicament still threatens the nation.
On the whole, it has bipartisan origins. Both political parties are implicated in the country's darkening prospects, both are reluctant to come clean about momentous mistakes. Despite important differences between them, Republicans and Democrats largely overlap in their ideological convictions and governing strategies. Neither party has been willing to face its own culpability or abandon policies that are deeply destructive to the national well-being. Yet the 2008 elections could eventually be seen as a historic turning point. In spite of the stark circumstances, Barack Obama provided fresh evidence for the redeeming promise of our nation and persuaded an energetic majority to believe that Americans can still remake the country anew. I believe this, too. I shudder at the alternative.
* * * * *
This is what the politicians and policy elites don't want to talk about. I don't see a nice way to put it. America as "number one" is over. The United States is headed for a fall, a great comeuppance that will impose wrenching changes on our society and deliver humiliating blows to our national pride. As a nation, we will still be very wealthy and awesomely powerful, but the country's preeminent economic strength is steadily deteriorating, as is its ability to dominate other nations through persuasion or military force. America's worldly power, wealth, and status are all rapidly diminishing in historic dimensions. The long and triumphant era during which America led the world and largely got its way is approaching an end.
It's easy enough to see why political candidates and the collaborating elites cannot bring themselves to talk honestly about this, much less to propose plausible alternatives that might replace the failing status quo. They dare not even admit that American power is faltering. In spite of their reluctance to speak of this honestly, I have a sense that many Americans--perhaps most of them--know this is happening. Americans feel at least a great, shuddering shadow is hovering over American life and hard circumstances are converging on the country like walls closing in around us. A lot of people know it because the consequences are evident in their daily lives. This will not be the "worst of times" in American history--the nation is too rich for that--but it may feel that way to many families. The pain and loss will be distributed widely throughout society, but very unevenly. Some deeply rooted convictions will be upended, starting with the enduring faith in onward-and-upward prosperity. That self-confident assumption is already faltering. For many, it has already failed.
Given the deep forces at work, we hardly have a choice about how to react. The country has to change because, like it or not, the country is going to be changed by events and adverse forces that will not yield to our can-do optimism.
The rest of the world appears to recognize the United States' weakening position, even if American governing elites do not. Other nations, large and small, friendly and unfriendly, are discreetly preparing for the transition by rearranging the distribution of power among themselves in various ways and without seeking approval from Washington. These developments alarm US policy makers and add to their sense of the potential danger in the world. But, as Iraq has demonstrated, war making is not a reliable solution to all the country faces.
History, in any case, is not going to wait for the American political system to wake up and get its act together. The longer this nation ignores the new realities or imagines it can overpower them with blunt force, the more difficult and dangerous this transformation will likely become.
Other great powers have experienced similar humbling passages in history, and some learned with sorrow that stubborn denial can lead to tragic outcomes (think of the blood-soaked history of European nations battling to dominate each other). A nation blinded by the arrogance of its own power may eventually wind up embittered and divided, lunging after delusional solutions and searching for scapegoats to blame. The national character can curdle in the process and people may try irrationally to strike back at history. I won't dwell on the darker possibilities because they are avoidable--if a country faces reality and responds maturely to new circumstances. For Americans, this will be the great test of character.
The first proposition in this book is the hard reckoning ahead. I will explain the complexities behind it as concisely as I can. My goal is clarity. I will examine how we got into this situation, and how we might get out.
But there are two other propositions at the heart of this book, less certain but far more hopeful. I want readers to see that, despite the adversities we face, promising possibilities also lie ahead. Past the loss and humiliation, America has the chance to become a new and better place. Once relieved of the burdens of worldly dominion, we will find ourselves free to redevelop the interior landscape of our own country--how we want to live, what kind of society we want to become. A renewed America can emerge more fulfilling and equitable, a society that liberates its citizens--all of us--to pursue life, liberty, and happiness in more satisfying and self- directed ways. We can get closer to our deepest human yearnings and imagine life in full, beyond the relentless imperatives of greater material wealth.
America the Possible--that is my second proposition. I will describe ways in which it might be created through politics, social action, and plausible reformation of the economic system and society.
The third proposition may be the most difficult for readers to envision. Some will find it implausible. It is something only the people can do: Rescue the country and redeem ourselves. The country can reinvent itself-- it has before--but only if ordinary Americans find their bearings and reclaim their voices and unrealized power. That is, become citizens in the fuller meaning of the word. I am convinced that only the unruly energies of engaged citizens can break through the encrusted status quo and force deep changes in government and society. Political parties, presidents, and governing elites cannot do this. They are too comfortable, too complacent and self-protective, too embedded in the defunct assumptions inherited from past glories. If the people do not do this, it will not be done.
A wise friend, a retired professor named Lee Halprin, listened to me go on this way about my hope for democratic revival. Then he interrupted with a question: "Why do you think this is possible?" I had to pause and think. "The history, I guess," I said. "This is how it has always happened."
