We British are disdainful of politics and politicians. Then again, as you may have noticed, we’re disdainful of a lot of things. What’s more surprising is how widespread such disdain is in the United States, an optimistic country with, by global standards, a stunningly successful political system.
How often during this election campaign have you heard people say that the parties are the same, that money has corrupted democracy, that the pols are shysters, that voting doesn’t change anything?
Such cynicism has a long pedigree in America. It was endorsed by the master aphorist himself, Mark Twain, giving it almost canonical authority.
“No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session,” quipped the Mississippi River sage — an attitude that has since become the default mode of American commentators.
Well, cousins, let me put a radical idea to you. Your legislature is not broken. Your elections are not meaningless. Your politicians are, by international standards, able and patriotic. Your system works.
When I say your system works, I mean that your Constitution and the institutions it established have more or less done the job their authors intended. They have ensured that, unlike in most places, the state is the servant of the citizen rather than the reverse. They have democratized, dispersed and decentralized decision-making. Not everywhere and not always; but often enough to make your country one of humanity’s thundering success stories.
Forty million people around the globe watched Barack Obama’s inauguration speech. Try to imagine tuning in to watch the result of elections to Russia’s Duma or China’s National People’s Congress — let alone the nomination hearings for EU commissioners — and you’ll see how fortunate the world is in its superpower.
You chaps rarely do see it, though. According to Gallup, 81 percent of you distrust the government — a record high. Nothing wrong with distrusting government, you may say. Still, a limited state, constrained by a democratic constitution, is surely preferable to all the alternatives: theocracy, anarchy, fascism, communism, monarchical absolutism.
It’s worth taking a moment to consider the characteristics that make American elections distinctive. Term limits, balanced-budget rules, states’ rights, ballot and initiative mechanisms, the direct election of every public official from the sheriff to the garbage guy: These things are not general features of Western democracy. They are, if not in every case unique, certainly unusual features of U.S. politics.
And they have something in common: They’re all about reducing the power of government. Constraining the state has been humanity’s task since the first cities. People in power almost always set about rigging the rules so that they and their descendants might live at everyone else’s expense. Totalitarianism and oppression, caste and hereditary status, slavery and serfdom are the customary lot of our species.
But not in America. Your Founders had fought a war against a regime that they feared (wrongly, as it turned out) would become autocratic. They were determined to design a system where power could not be concentrated; and, by and large, they succeeded. The peculiar characteristics of American democracy, from the elected school board to the local referendum, are a realization of the Jeffersonian principles on which the republic was founded.
More to the point, they work — and they work best in the places that have embraced them most enthusiastically. Ballot mechanisms are especially popular in your rectangular states, and tend to correlate with better legislation, greater participation at elections and higher GDP. Texas, which drew up its constitution in the aftermath of Reconstruction, has perhaps the most libertarian model of all, limiting the days its legislature may sit. I can’t help noticing that Texas is doing pretty well.
Sneering is easy and entertaining. Twain again: “Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.”
Well, OK, we can all name idiotic congressmen. But shall I tell you something? Over 16 years as a member of a supranational assembly, I haven’t come across another parliament where the mean caliber of members is so high. This isn’t because of any virtue in the American soil or the American DNA. It’s because of another peculiarity: open primaries. A system that makes candidates repeatedly prove themselves in different forums — in radio debates, at public meetings, over coffee in living rooms — is good at weeding out duds. Again, not always; but usually.
Open primaries mean that no lawmaker has lifetime tenure on his seat. They shift power from party machines to voters. They strengthen the legislature vis-a-vis the executive. They ensure a more diverse Congress. I don’t mean “diverse” in its leftist sense of “people of different sexes and colors who all think the same way”; I mean pluralism of opinion. The reason the Tea Party happened in the United States rather than elsewhere is not that the rest of the world likes paying taxes; it’s that primaries offered a mechanism for American voters to impose their candidates on the parties rather than, as happens everywhere else, the reverse.
Every country is shaped by its institutions. Yours created the greatest and freest republic on the planet. They attracted millions from every continent and archipelago, and liberated millions more from the tyrannies of Nazism and communism.
And what do those institutions rest on? Your Founders placed ultimate responsibility on You, the People. Every other year, you get to decide whether freedom is worth keeping. Don’t knock elections, cousins. They’re what lift you above the run of nations.
CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to clarify that Mark Twain was a Mississippi River sage.
Daniel Hannan is a British Conservative member of the European Parliament.
