Not Just For Elites. - Review - book review

Commonweal, May 5, 2000 by Kevin Mattson

The Paradox of
American Democracy
Elites, Special Interests, and the
Betrayal of Public Trust
John Judis
Pantheon Books, $26, 305 pp.

Democracy Derailed
Initiative Campaigns and
the Power of Money
David Broder
Harcourt, $23, 260 pp.

To say that American democracy is in crisis is like saying the earth is round. Voting rates plummet, polls report heightened levels of cynicism, and young people, especially, show little interest in political matters. To this sad scenario, add the analyses of two leading journalists, John Judis and David Broder. Read together, their books tell us a great deal about what has gone wrong.

Judis's book starts slowly. He tries to provide his readers with a sweeping perspective on American political history during the twentieth century, but his historical acumen pales in comparison to his journalistic skills. Covering the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the 1960s, Judis provides few insights; his reading is spotty, drawing from dated interpretations and tending toward generalizations. This weakness highlights a larger problem in American intellectual life: increasingly, journalists fill in a void left by academic historians, who write specialized books for other academics. In this case, readers can simply skip over the first sections of Judis's book for the real rewards at the end.

In explaining the current backlash against liberalism, Judis covers new ground and draws years of political journalism into focus. Businesses, upset by new regulatory regimes created by environmentalists and public-interest lobbyists like Ralph Nader, turned profoundly reactionary during the 1970s. During the 1970s and 1980s, corporations funded a slew of right-wing think tanks where hired intellectuals could curse regulation while drooling over the promise of free markets. At K Street lobbying firms, high-powered lawyers gutted America's relatively weak welfare and regulatory policies. The endgame of these developments was Newt Gingrich's rise and fall from power. Gingrich handed pens to corporate CEOs who wrote their antiregulatory wish lists into the "Contract for America." Judis argues persuasively that this history illustrates how America's elites have placed short-term gain before civic responsibility.

He buttresses this story by discussing the decline of labor unions and the burn-out of 1960s activists. These details suggest how bad the situation is, as does Judis's close analysis of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a small group within the Democratic party that backed Clinton. Though the DLC created important civic-minded policies (for instance, national public service) during Clinton's second term, its "program on trade and Social Security...mimicked Republican conservatism," becoming more "congenial to its corporate funders." Essentially, public-interest liberals went belly-up. What makes this interpretation so important is that Judis does not bemoan the rise of "special interests"--an elastic term used with little discrimination by today's pundits. Instead, he holds corporate power and "lobbyists and irresponsible elites backed by conservative Republicans" directly responsible for the anemic state of our politics. Nor is he embarrassed to express faith in a "public interest."

While Judis focuses "inside the Beltway," Washington Post political columnist David Broder looks outside, but he too presents disturbing findings. Studying the initiative and referendum--means by which citizens can directly enact legislation by popular vote--Broder uncovers the enormous influence money plays in this process. After his own simplistic history of the Progressive Era, Broder goes on to analyze California and Oregon, where the initiative and referendum are central to the political process. He begins with Proposition 13, a famous piece of citizen-legislation that capped taxes in California. Broder explains, "Prop. 13 and its progeny have spawned a huge industry devoted to the manipulation of public opinion. Campaign consultants, pollsters, media advisers, direct-mail specialists, and others have made themselves, in effect, the new bosses of American politics." The remainder of the story focuses on the gory details of "faux populism" or "Astroturf" politics--that is, big money masquerading as the public interest. The expense of gathering signatures and designing advertisements--the heart of initiative campaigns--requires enormous amounts of money. The wishes of millionaires and irresponsible elites drive many initiatives.

Though much of Broder's analysis is hard to dispute, his core assumptions demand scrutiny. After all, he could have written the same book about how money corrupts Congress and state legislatures. The reason he doesn't is that, deep down, Broder is an old-fashioned Federalist and believer in a representative constitutional republic. He follows the reasoning of James Madison: citizens cannot always be trusted to govern themselves. Hence, for Broder, the initiative and referendum should be scrapped.