Bad for Democracy

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Q and A with Dana Nelson

Book Information
Top 10 Things You Can Do for Democracy Besides Vote

$24.95 cloth/jacket
ISBN: 978-0-8166-5677-6

1.Why did you write this book?

As I finished my last book—a historical look at how notions of middle-class manhood and citizenship developed in the early United States—I saw the role of the presidency as a symbolic institution that routed expectations for political representation and power in the early United States. As I worked on those historical issues, two movies about fictional presidents appeared—Contact and Airforce One. I ended up writing about those movies and their presidents in the conclusion to that book because they offered so many interesting examples of some of the claims I was making about the symbolic work of the presidency in the early national period and focused some interesting questions about the perdurability of that symbolism. That exercise made me think it might be worth examining the development of the presidency over time and its impact on democracy in the United States. I’ve been working on this project off and on for almost a decade, and whenever I gave talks on presidentialism, either out of the previous book, National Manhood, or out of this one, people from a range of political positions—liberal, conservative, libertarian, green—have been excited about the arguments and eager to see me develop them into a book.

2. What is Bad for Democracy about?

The first and biggest part of my book is about how we take the president for granted as the symbolic center of democracy, and how we take voting for the president to be the essence of democracy—and why those two commonsense assumptions about how our political system works are actually bad for democracy. My book argues that our habit of putting the president at the center of democracy and asking him to be its superhero works to deskill us for the work of democracy. And, it argues that the presidency itself has actually come to work against democracy. Bad for Democracy tells the story of how this came to be—how the symbolism developed and took root, how the institution developed and began accumulating more and more power, and how, under the new theory of the Unitary Executive, proponents are actually waging a war against democracy, in the name of “democracy.”

The second part of my book outlines my ideas for how we can turn back this 200+ year historical trend, and take democracy back, by the people, for the people. I’m not arguing at all that we need to overturn our government, or get rid of the presidency. I insist that we need to seriously examine our own democratic habits, attitudes and assumptions, and then we need to act differently. I think if we do, we can have a political system that we find both more rewarding and satisfying. I think we realistically can change both political culture and the way we do political business, both formally and informally.

3. I’ve always heard—for instance in political science classes—that the Presidents are weak—that they only have the power to “persuade,” as the famous political scientist Richard Neustadt put it. How can you claim that they are so powerful?

Neustadt’s theory, first published in 1960, and then updated in 1980, has been entirely influential for at least a couple generations of work in political science. Following his wisdom, political scientists and historians paid little attention to the campaigning of political conservatives and jurists on the subject of the unitary executive beginning in the early 1980s. That theory’s proponents—many of them members of the Federalist Society—published their arguments in law journals and think tank forums. While some political scientists had begun questioning Neustadt’s theory in the 1990s, only since the turn of the century and the Bush presidency have political scientists begun training their attention directly on the rationales for and implications of the Unitary Executive—its proclivities toward unilateral powers and actions—and its hard turn away from the “weaker” skills of persuasion. So now they are considering the expansion of executive unilateral powers, but debating about whether those powers really work to consolidate the president’s individual legacy. I’m less concerned with individual legacies in this book than in paying attention to what happens to our democracy in the face of those expanding unilateral powers.

4. Did the Framers model a strong executive, as Unitary Executive proponents claim?

That’s a claim that is very easy to rebuff. One delegate to the Constitutional Convention, New York’s Alexander Hamilton, may have personally preferred it, but his pro-monarchical views were resoundingly rejected by other participants in the Convention. In Madison’s notes on the Convention, it’s evident that the Framers worked to avoid giving the president any kind of power that might deliver the country to a system of one-man rule. They did worry about the unpredictability of the legislature—the “democratic branch”—and that’s why they gave the President veto power. But they also admired it as the best place for self-government to be conducted, and were very clear about their aims to construct what they termed a “Congressional government.”

The Unitary Executive is a US corporate model—controversial but employed the world over—where the CEO is also the Chair of the Board. It is a twentieth-century model for undivided corporate power.

5. But maybe people really want a king? Maybe they fought for independence from one king but need the president as an elected placemarker for that role. Maybe people really don’t want democracy?

That’s an interesting question. There are moments when any of us want somebody else to do the deciding—that’s true. But what people want is always complicated, and while occasionally it’s a relief to turn our responsibilities over to someone else, I believe when most people think about it, they prefer to manage their responsibilities themselves. I think it is probably like that for democracy too. But here, the problem is that over time, citizens have been reconceived less as democratic actors then as passive consumers. For generations now, we have not been taught to think about democracy as our responsibility and our job, so it doesn’t really occur to most people that there’s anything they can do now—besides vote.

6. But so few people vote. How can you appeal to them to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work of revitalizing democracy when they can’t even be bothered to drive to the poll once every four years?

I know the media and many political scientists are fond of pointing to low voter turnout as evidence that most citizens aren’t worthy of the powers of self-rule. But I think that single number of non-voters conceals a lot of frustrated political engagement. While I don’t dispute that the roll of non-voters contains people who simply do not care about becoming involved in their political system—no matter what it is—I think there are lots of reasons people don’t vote. Sometimes they don’t vote precisely because they are so politically passionate, and disgusted by the way they can’t find anything close to their preferences represented in the political spectrum. Some people don’t vote because they are in a political minority and their vote never “wins”—if you never see your interests represented after an election, it’s easy to just give up on voting, even though you still care about politics. I think if we worked to revitalize our formal political system so that it did a better job at incentivizing more people to stay involved with the democratic “game”—for instance, if we could use proportional representation for multi-body institutions like city councils, school boards, and Congress, and preferential voting schemes for single-body offices like mayor, governor and president—people would feel that their vote wasn’t being wasted, they would see their views gaining some airtime in political bodies, and they might be more interested to try participating again.

7. In late March, 2008, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling on Medellin v. Texas, where all the Unitary Executive proponents on the Bench join Chief Justice Roberts in rebuking President Bush’s overreaching of the Constitutional limits on his executive powers. How does this ruling affect your predictions that the Court may well soon support the Unitary Executive theory, “turning it into a constitutional fact”?

Great question. I’m surprised you noticed that, since it got about 3 minutes’ worth of media attention. It’s an interesting ruling, and presents a strong rebuke to the President’s assertion that he can use a February 2005 President’s Memorandum to unilaterally enforce a treaty agreement binding without legislation from Congress defining its implementation. His order would compel state courts to set aside applicable state laws in favor of international agreements.

The decision cites both Youngstown and Hamdan v. Rumsfield—both firm rebukes to executive overreaching—to reprimand President Bush for poaching on Congress’s authority. And they upbraid him for abusing the Framers’ vision. Our Framers established a careful set of procedures that must be followed before federal law can be created under the Constitution—vesting that decision in the political branches, subject to checks and balances. U. S. Const., Art. I, §7. They also recognized that treaties could create federal law, but again through the political branches, with the President making the treaty and the Senate approving it. Art. II, §2.

For all its lecturing about Constitutionally separated powers, though, the ruling’s most serious aim is to defend what is known as the “new sovereigntism,” a movement that calls for the US to guard its Constitutional sovereignty by resisting the incursion of international laws and norms. This principle is what drives our nation’s official refusal to participate in an array of human rights and environmental reforms that are widely accepted by other nations and many of our own citizens, like the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Land Mines Convention, and the Kyoto Protocol. It also explains, as Foreign Affairs explains, why the “United States stands alone with Somalia in not acceding to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.”

Federalist society legalists and intellectuals hold both the Unitary Executive and the New Sovereignty dear. So it strikes me that this legal moment was a bit of a wake-up call for conservative UE proponents, and that there will be some new limits on what the Roberts Court thinks a Unitarian president can aim at. What they seemingly signaled here is that a Unitary Executive will not function with independence from the political aims of the New Sovereigntists. I’m not persuaded, in other words, that this ruling repudiates the stated support of Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas for Unitarian principles, but it does seem clear that the Unitarians on the Court have at least registered the possibility of losing control over the political aims of an executive whom they considered to be a fellow-traveler. That is of course the precise danger. I’ll be extremely happy if this ruling does indeed signal a significant pull-back on the part of proponents on the Bench, rather than, as I fear, just some minor fine-tuning.

8. How do we take back democracy, given the power of corporations and the media in shaping how candidates emerge and debates get framed?

We stop waiting for someone else to do it for us. We organize together, using public spaces and the internet. We form blogs, we write letters to the editor, we show up at Congress, we protest, we call, we lobby, we boycott, we buycott, we email our representatives, we find supporters, we get them moving, we grow the movement. We ignore the idea that the right president will do it for us and find every way we can to do it ourselves. Great if the president will help but totally unnecessary.

9. Doesn’t this take too much energy and ask too much from individual citizens?

It takes some energy, that’s for sure. But I think it’s energy a lot of us are itching to use. I frankly think it takes a lot of energy to feel so disgusted with our political process, to regularly fight back our feelings of helplessness in the face of a system we don’t feel represents us adequately. I also don’t imagine a revitalized democracy as being incredibly demanding—like a military schedule! But I do imagine it will be more robust—it will make more calls for our attention, but the time we put into a plus-sum, open system democracy would be more rewarding—it wouldn’t leave us feeling as wasted as our zero-sum model often does. In other words, I’m imagining that democracy could be energizing, not just a drain of energy. People already are doing this work, and I’ve found getting involved in it—for instance, working locally with the Nashville Movement, a collective of groups working for economic, racial and social justice—gives me inspiration, ideas and energy. And it lets me meet, learn from, and interact with people I would never otherwise have met.

I’m sure it would take a good amount of focused effort to effect some of the changes I and others propose, but once they were in place and routine, there would also be a lot of flexibility about involvement, room for people to check out of the work when they need to, and more incentives and rewards for them to check back in when they can.

10. What do you think about the Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama?

That’s usually the first question I get when I give public talks on this subject since the Democratic primary season began in 2006. I find it strange to give a talk about how we need to stop being so obsessed with the presidency, and then the very first question I get asks me to participate in our ongoing obsession with the presidency!

Here’s what I have to say: First and most importantly, both Clinton and Obama have promised to continue using signing statements, a cornerstone maneuver for the Unitary Executive. Their Republican opponent, John McCain, has said he will not use them. That’s interesting—their supporters should be asking their candidates what they think about the Unitary Executive theory and why they would continue using the signing statement to override legislative intent.

Second, from the perspective of my conclusion where I urge my readers to recreate US democracy on the model of an open system, I can see why people, especially youth, respond so warmly to Barack Obama. He’s using precisely that conceptual model to talk about what he wants for the United States. He’s promising to help turn democracy into an open system, and he’s describing his role here as a catalyst, differently from that of a leader. Whether or not he’ll deliver on that, if he’s elected, is, I think, a big question. The centripetal force of that office is enormous—the promises you make before the day you become “the most powerful man in the world” often fade from memory once you are placed inside that institution. For now, what I think is, I’d be even more impressed and persuaded by Obama’s rhetoric if he would summon supporters in Obama t-shirts not to political rallies, where he basks in the glow of thousands, but, say, to a Habitat for Humanity build, or to stocking up their local food banks, or another public service action that lets supporters do more than celebrate his charisma, but turns them onto the work they can do for democracy, together.

Dana D. Nelson is professor of English and American studies at Vanderbilt University where she teaches U.S. literature, history, and culture and courses that connect activism, volunteering, and citizenship. She has published numerous books, essay collections, and articles on U.S. literature and the history of citizenship and democratic culture. Nelson lives in Nashville where she is involved in a program that helps incarcerated women develop better decision-making skills and works with an innovative activist group fighting homelessness in the area.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]



Q and A with Dana Nelson Book Information Top 10 Things You Can Do for Democracy Besides Vote		$24.95 cloth/jacket ISBN: 978-0-8166-5677-6
1.Why did you write this book? As I finished my last book—a historical look at how notions of middle-class manhood and citizenship developed in the early United States—I saw the role of the presidency as a symbolic institution that routed expectations for political representation and power in the early United States. As I worked on those historical issues, two movies about fictional presidents appeared—Contact and Airforce One. I ended up writing about those movies and their presidents in the conclusion to that book because they offered so many interesting examples of some of the claims I was making about the symbolic work of the presidency in the early national period and focused some interesting questions about the perdurability of that symbolism. That exercise made me think it might be worth examining the development of the presidency over time and its impact on democracy in the United States. I’ve been working on this project off and on for almost a decade, and whenever I gave talks on presidentialism, either out of the previous book, National Manhood, or out of this one, people from a range of political positions—liberal, conservative, libertarian, green—have been excited about the arguments and eager to see me develop them into a book. 2. What is Bad for Democracy about? The first and biggest part of my book is about how we take the president for granted as the symbolic center of democracy, and how we take voting for the president to be the essence of democracy—and why those two commonsense assumptions about how our political system works are actually bad for democracy. My book argues that our habit of putting the president at the center of democracy and asking him to be its superhero works to deskill us for the work of democracy. And, it argues that the presidency itself has actually come to work against democracy. Bad for Democracy tells the story of how this came to be—how the symbolism developed and took root, how the institution developed and began accumulating more and more power, and how, under the new theory of the Unitary Executive, proponents are actually waging a war against democracy, in the name of “democracy.” The second part of my book outlines my ideas for how we can turn back this 200+ year historical trend, and take democracy back, by the people, for the people. I’m not arguing at all that we need to overturn our government, or get rid of the presidency. I insist that we need to seriously examine our own democratic habits, attitudes and assumptions, and then we need to act differently. I think if we do, we can have a political system that we find both more rewarding and satisfying. I think we realistically can change both political culture and the way we do political business, both formally and informally. 3. I’ve always heard—for instance in political science classes—that the Presidents are weak—that they only have the power to “persuade,” as the famous political scientist Richard Neustadt put it. How can you claim that they are so powerful? Neustadt’s theory, first published in 1960, and then updated in 1980, has been entirely influential for at least a couple generations of work in political science. Following his wisdom, political scientists and historians paid little attention to the campaigning of political conservatives and jurists on the subject of the unitary executive beginning in the early 1980s. That theory’s proponents—many of them members of the Federalist Society—published their arguments in law journals and think tank forums. While some political scientists had begun questioning Neustadt’s theory in the 1990s, only since the turn of the century and the Bush presidency have political scientists begun training their attention directly on the rationales for and implications of the Unitary Executive—its proclivities toward unilateral powers and actions—and its hard turn away from the “weaker” skills of persuasion. So now they are considering the expansion of executive unilateral powers, but debating about whether those powers really work to consolidate the president’s individual legacy. I’m less concerned with individual legacies in this book than in paying attention to what happens to our democracy in the face of those expanding unilateral powers. 4. Did the Framers model a strong executive, as Unitary Executive proponents claim? That’s a claim that is very easy to rebuff. One delegate to the Constitutional Convention, New York’s Alexander Hamilton, may have personally preferred it, but his pro-monarchical views were resoundingly rejected by other participants in the Convention. In Madison’s notes on the Convention, it’s evident that the Framers worked to avoid giving the president any kind of power that might deliver the country to a system of one-man rule. They did worry about the unpredictability of the legislature—the “democratic branch”—and that’s why they gave the President veto power. But they also admired it as the best place for self-government to be conducted, and were very clear about their aims to construct what they termed a “Congressional government.” The Unitary Executive is a US corporate model—controversial but employed the world over—where the CEO is also the Chair of the Board. It is a twentieth-century model for undivided corporate power. 5. But maybe people really want a king? Maybe they fought for independence from one king but need the president as an elected placemarker for that role. Maybe people really don’t want democracy? That’s an interesting question. There are moments when any of us want somebody else to do the deciding—that’s true. But what people want is always complicated, and while occasionally it’s a relief to turn our responsibilities over to someone else, I believe when most people think about it, they prefer to manage their responsibilities themselves. I think it is probably like that for democracy too. But here, the problem is that over time, citizens have been reconceived less as democratic actors then as passive consumers. For generations now, we have not been taught to think about democracy as our responsibility and our job, so it doesn’t really occur to most people that there’s anything they can do now—besides vote. 6. But so few people vote. How can you appeal to them to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work of revitalizing democracy when they can’t even be bothered to drive to the poll once every four years? I know the media and many political scientists are fond of pointing to low voter turnout as evidence that most citizens aren’t worthy of the powers of self-rule. But I think that single number of non-voters conceals a lot of frustrated political engagement. While I don’t dispute that the roll of non-voters contains people who simply do not care about becoming involved in their political system—no matter what it is—I think there are lots of reasons people don’t vote. Sometimes they don’t vote precisely because they are so politically passionate, and disgusted by the way they can’t find anything close to their preferences represented in the political spectrum. Some people don’t vote because they are in a political minority and their vote never “wins”—if you never see your interests represented after an election, it’s easy to just give up on voting, even though you still care about politics. I think if we worked to revitalize our formal political system so that it did a better job at incentivizing more people to stay involved with the democratic “game”—for instance, if we could use proportional representation for multi-body institutions like city councils, school boards, and Congress, and preferential voting schemes for single-body offices like mayor, governor and president—people would feel that their vote wasn’t being wasted, they would see their views gaining some airtime in political bodies, and they might be more interested to try participating again. 7. In late March, 2008, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling on Medellin v. Texas, where all the Unitary Executive proponents on the Bench join Chief Justice Roberts in rebuking President Bush’s overreaching of the Constitutional limits on his executive powers. How does this ruling affect your predictions that the Court may well soon support the Unitary Executive theory, “turning it into a constitutional fact”? Great question. I’m surprised you noticed that, since it got about 3 minutes’ worth of media attention. It’s an interesting ruling, and presents a strong rebuke to the President’s assertion that he can use a February 2005 President’s Memorandum to unilaterally enforce a treaty agreement binding without legislation from Congress defining its implementation. His order would compel state courts to set aside applicable state laws in favor of international agreements. The decision cites both Youngstown and Hamdan v. Rumsfield—both firm rebukes to executive overreaching—to reprimand President Bush for poaching on Congress’s authority. And they upbraid him for abusing the Framers’ vision. Our Framers established a careful set of procedures that must be followed before federal law can be created under the Constitution—vesting that decision in the political branches, subject to checks and balances. U. S. Const., Art. I, §7. They also recognized that treaties could create federal law, but again through the political branches, with the President making the treaty and the Senate approving it. Art. II, §2. For all its lecturing about Constitutionally separated powers, though, the ruling’s most serious aim is to defend what is known as the “new sovereigntism,” a movement that calls for the US to guard its Constitutional sovereignty by resisting the incursion of international laws and norms. This principle is what drives our nation’s official refusal to participate in an array of human rights and environmental reforms that are widely accepted by other nations and many of our own citizens, like the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Land Mines Convention, and the Kyoto Protocol. It also explains, as Foreign Affairs explains, why the “United States stands alone with Somalia in not acceding to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.” Federalist society legalists and intellectuals hold both the Unitary Executive and the New Sovereignty dear. So it strikes me that this legal moment was a bit of a wake-up call for conservative UE proponents, and that there will be some new limits on what the Roberts Court thinks a Unitarian president can aim at. What they seemingly signaled here is that a Unitary Executive will not function with independence from the political aims of the New Sovereigntists. I’m not persuaded, in other words, that this ruling repudiates the stated support of Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas for Unitarian principles, but it does seem clear that the Unitarians on the Court have at least registered the possibility of losing control over the political aims of an executive whom they considered to be a fellow-traveler. That is of course the precise danger. I’ll be extremely happy if this ruling does indeed signal a significant pull-back on the part of proponents on the Bench, rather than, as I fear, just some minor fine-tuning. 8. How do we take back democracy, given the power of corporations and the media in shaping how candidates emerge and debates get framed? We stop waiting for someone else to do it for us. We organize together, using public spaces and the internet. We form blogs, we write letters to the editor, we show up at Congress, we protest, we call, we lobby, we boycott, we buycott, we email our representatives, we find supporters, we get them moving, we grow the movement. We ignore the idea that the right president will do it for us and find every way we can to do it ourselves. Great if the president will help but totally unnecessary. 9. Doesn’t this take too much energy and ask too much from individual citizens? It takes some energy, that’s for sure. But I think it’s energy a lot of us are itching to use. I frankly think it takes a lot of energy to feel so disgusted with our political process, to regularly fight back our feelings of helplessness in the face of a system we don’t feel represents us adequately. I also don’t imagine a revitalized democracy as being incredibly demanding—like a military schedule! But I do imagine it will be more robust—it will make more calls for our attention, but the time we put into a plus-sum, open system democracy would be more rewarding—it wouldn’t leave us feeling as wasted as our zero-sum model often does. In other words, I’m imagining that democracy could be energizing, not just a drain of energy. People already are doing this work, and I’ve found getting involved in it—for instance, working locally with the Nashville Movement, a collective of groups working for economic, racial and social justice—gives me inspiration, ideas and energy. And it lets me meet, learn from, and interact with people I would never otherwise have met. I’m sure it would take a good amount of focused effort to effect some of the changes I and others propose, but once they were in place and routine, there would also be a lot of flexibility about involvement, room for people to check out of the work when they need to, and more incentives and rewards for them to check back in when they can. 10. What do you think about the Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama? That’s usually the first question I get when I give public talks on this subject since the Democratic primary season began in 2006. I find it strange to give a talk about how we need to stop being so obsessed with the presidency, and then the very first question I get asks me to participate in our ongoing obsession with the presidency! Here’s what I have to say: First and most importantly, both Clinton and Obama have promised to continue using signing statements, a cornerstone maneuver for the Unitary Executive. Their Republican opponent, John McCain, has said he will not use them. That’s interesting—their supporters should be asking their candidates what they think about the Unitary Executive theory and why they would continue using the signing statement to override legislative intent. Second, from the perspective of my conclusion where I urge my readers to recreate US democracy on the model of an open system, I can see why people, especially youth, respond so warmly to Barack Obama. He’s using precisely that conceptual model to talk about what he wants for the United States. He’s promising to help turn democracy into an open system, and he’s describing his role here as a catalyst, differently from that of a leader. Whether or not he’ll deliver on that, if he’s elected, is, I think, a big question. The centripetal force of that office is enormous—the promises you make before the day you become “the most powerful man in the world” often fade from memory once you are placed inside that institution. For now, what I think is, I’d be even more impressed and persuaded by Obama’s rhetoric if he would summon supporters in Obama t-shirts not to political rallies, where he basks in the glow of thousands, but, say, to a Habitat for Humanity build, or to stocking up their local food banks, or another public service action that lets supporters do more than celebrate his charisma, but turns them onto the work they can do for democracy, together. Dana D. Nelson is professor of English and American studies at Vanderbilt University where she teaches U.S. literature, history, and culture and courses that connect activism, volunteering, and citizenship. She has published numerous books, essay collections, and articles on U.S. literature and the history of citizenship and democratic culture. Nelson lives in Nashville where she is involved in a program that helps incarcerated women develop better decision-making skills and works with an innovative activist group fighting homelessness in the area.