THE DECLINE OF AMERICAN POLITICS, WHICH MANY OF THE FOUNDERS FEARED
by
Allan C.Brownfeld
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There can be little reason to doubt that American political life is in serious decline.
After
I graduated from law school, I spent a number of years working in both
the U.S.Senate and the House of Representatives. I worked with such
Republicans as Charles Mathias of Maryland, Philip Crane of Illinois and
served as assistant to the research director of the House Republican
Conference. Board members of the conference included George H.W. Bush
and Gerald Ford, both of whom went on to become president. I also
worked with one Democrat,Sen.Thomas Dodd of Connecticut, and was his
representative on the Senate Internal Security subcommittee. In that
capacity, during the Vietnam war, I wrote the U.S.Senate report on the
New Left.
In those years,
Republicans and Democrats did not view one another as “enemies,” as
many do now. I do not remember those members of Congress with whom I
worked thinking of those in the other party in hostile terms, as many do
at the present time. Instead, they were busy building coalitions on a
number of issues. They worked together and were on good terms. Think
of Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill. Together, Republicans and Democrats
won the Cold War and advanced civil rights and ended segregation.
The
chaos in Congress at the present time is clear to all. After weeks
without a Speaker, the House of Representatives has finally chosen a
Speaker almost unknown to his colleagues, with very little congressional
experience. Rep. Mike Johnson, it seems, was acceptable because he was
unknown on Capitol Hill. During the roll call vote on the House floor,
Rep. Kay Granger (R-Tex.), chair of the Appropriations Committee, rose
and mistakenly voted for “Mike Rogers”—-the chairman of the Armed
Services Committee—-before correcting herself to Mike Johnson. Rep.Paul
Gosar (R-Ariz.), in a statement congratulating the new speaker, called
him “Jim Johnson.” Sen.Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on
the Senate Appropriations Committee, told CNN that she would have to
Google him.
In only his
seventh year in Congress, Johnson is the least experienced Speaker in a
century and a half. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank writes that,
“…three weeks before the next deadline to avoid a government shutdown,
Republicans have elected a no-name speaker with no experience and no
agreement on a way forward.”
In
a recent interview, former Republican Governor of California, Arnold
Schwarzenegger recalled that when he first came to the U.S., American
politics was in serious decline. John F.Kennedy had been assassinated.
A few years later, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were
murdered. He recalls that, “We came out of all that. Ronald Reagan
provided the leadership to bring us back…We need a new generation of
leaders to bring both of the political parties together. There is a
real danger in demonizing the other side. It is important to bring
people together.”
The
decline of Congress can be seen in the case of Rep. George Santos (R-NY)
who appeared in court in late October pleading not guilty to 23 federal
charges. The allegations include 10 new felony counts including money
laundering and identity thefts related to his congressional races,
coming after a guilty plea from Santos’s campaign treasurer for helping
the lawmaker commit these alleged crimes.
“He
should absolutely resign,” said former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA). Some
politically endangered Republicans from Santos’s neighboring districts,
tired of being tied to the embarrassing freshman, plan to force an
expulsion vote for the full House. This, however, seems unlikely.
During more than 230 years of congressional history, just five members
of the House : three for disloyalty to the Union during the Civil War
and two in the last 45 years after they had been convicted in federal
court in felony corruption cases, have been removed.
In
the years I worked in Congress, I don’t remember any members receiving
death threats. The U.S. Capitol Police investigated about 7,500 cases
of potential threats against members of Congress in 2022. Capitol
Police Chief Tom Manger says that, “This has resulted in a necessary
expansion of not only our investigative capabilities but our protection
responsibilities as well. While that work
Is
ongoing, everyone continuing to decrease violent political rhetoric
across the country is the best way to keep everyone safe.” Referring to
the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, he warns that this could
happen again.
Our
government, almost 250 years old, is the oldest form of government in
the contemporary world. No other people today live under the same form
of government which existed in their country 250 years ago. Only
Americans. But, historically, we have seen that democratic societies
have self-destructed. Consider Athens and Rome. More than 200 years
ago, the British historian Alexander Tytler wrote: “A democracy cannot
exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the
voters discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public
treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the
candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury—-with
the result that democracy collapses over a loose fiscal policy,always to
be followed by a dictatorship.” In Tytler’s view, the average age of
the world’s few democracies was around 200 years.
Thomas
Jefferson thought it would be only a matter of time before the American
system of government degenerated into an “elective despotism.” He
warned that citizens should act now in order to make sure that “the wolf
was kept out of the fold.”
As
early as 1785, he wrote: “Mankind soon learn to make interested uses
of every right and power which they possess, or may assume. The public
money and public liberty, intended to have been deposited with the three
branches of of magistracy, but found inadvertently to be in the hands
of one only, will soon be discovered to be sources of wealth and
dominion to those who hold them. They (the assembly) should look
forward to a time, and that a distant one, when a corruption in this, as
in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the
heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the
people; when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them
pay the price. Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic,
and will be alike influenced by the same causes. The time to guard
against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold of
us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to
drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.”
In
a 2023 report, “Understanding Democratic decline in the United States,”
the Brookings Institution declares that, “The United States is
experiencing two major forms of democratic erosion in its governing
institutions: election manipulation and executive overreach…Most
obviously, after the 2020 election, the sitting president, despite
admitting privately that he had lost, attempted to subvert the results
and remain in office. But democratic erosion in the U.S. is not
synonymous with Donald Trump. Since 2010, state legislatures have
instituted laws intended to reduce voters’ access to the ballot,
politicize election administration, and foreclose electoral competition
via extreme gerrymandering. The U.S. has also seen substantial
expansion of executive power and serious efforts to erode the
independence of the civil service.”
According
to the Brookings Institution report, “Against these pressures, the
gridlocked and hyper partisan Congress is poorly equipped to provide
unbiased oversight and accountability of the executive, and there are
serious questions about the impartiality of the judiciary…Globally, it
is increasingly rare for an authoritarian to come to power through a
coup. Instead, democracies in decline usually experience slow but
steady erosion….In the words of political scientists Daniel Ziblatt and
Steven Levitsky, ‘The electoral road to breakdown is dangerously
deceptive…People still vote. Elected autocrats maintain a veneer of
democracy, while eviscerating its substance.’”
We
have had serious problems in the past and we have overcome them. The
first step in restoring the health of our democracy is to recognize the
very real threat we now face. Fortunately, more and more Americans are
coming to understand the challenges which now confront us.