[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 149 (Thursday, December 1, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: December 1, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE'S THOUGHTS ON DEMOCRACY
Mr. PELL. Mr. President, I would like to call the attention of the
Senate to a very thoughtful article written recently by the new U.S.
attorney for Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse.
Mr. Whitehouse, who was my choice for the post of U.S. attorney, has
a distinguished record of public service, having served as executive
counsel and director of policy to the Governor of Rhode Island before
being named director of the State's department of business regulation
in 1992.
A graduate of Yale and the University of Virginia Law School, he
clerked for a State appeals court judge in West Virginia before
returning to Rhode Island to practice law in 1983. Two years later, he
joined the civil division of the Rhode Island attorney general's
office, specializing in utility regulation.
It was against this background that Mr. Whitehouse reflected on the
current plight of government and the democratic process, in an article
entitled ``Learning to Live with Democracy'' which was published in the
Providence Journal of October 15, 1994.
His article is a plea for citizen involvement as an antidote to the
current mood of disenchantment with electoral government. The mood is
nothing new, Mr. Whitehouse reminds us. It results from the inevitable
tension between the promise and actual performance of democracy, which
now is accentuated by the superficiality of the electronic age.
Americans must ``learn to become discerning consumers of information
about government,'' he says, and must ``avoid the easy lure of
cynicism.''
Mr. Whitehouse has given us much food for thought and I commend his
article to the attention of the Senate. I ask unanimous consent that
the article entitled ``Learning to Live with Democracy'' be reprinted
in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Learning To Live With Democracy
(By Sheldon Whitehouse)
``There is a compelling need for a revaluation of our
public attitudes toward political life. The national attitude
that politics is somehow a degrading occupation for which no
man of intelligence or ambition should aspire is becoming too
deeply ingrained in our national thinking.''
Robert F. Kennedy opened a speech with that very sentence
on the day I turned four years old.
Now my own daughter has passed her fourth year. In the
intervening generation, the view that political life is
degrading has become more widespread. A recent survey by the
Volcker Commission on Public Service showed that only 3
percent of college honor society students ranked the federal
government as their ``most preferred employer.'' State
government rated less than 2 percent, and local government
less than 1 percent.
What is the trouble with democracy that keeps this problem
so current across the generations?
To say that it is the degraded nature of politicians is too
easy. There is a natural tension built into democracy that
may explain it better: On the one hand, we need to believe in
our democracy in order for it to work; on the other hand, the
way it works makes it sometimes hard to believe in. The
opposing forces creating this tension have been described in
the words of two of democracy's heroes: Ben Franklin and
Winston Churchill.
Benjamin Franklin warned that we must have a good opinion
of our government if it is to serve us well (note: not vice
versa). He said: ``Much of the strength and efficacy of any
government, in procuring and securing happiness to the
people, depends on opinion, on the general opinion of the
goodness of that government as well as of the wisdom and
integrity of its governors.''
At the end of World War II, Winston Churchill rose to speak
in Parliament. Churchill was the political embodiment of the
wartime courage of his small nation. Under the circumstances,
he could be excused for exaggerated praise of democratic
government. Instead, Churchill said, ``Democracy is the worst
form of government, except all those other forms that have
been tried from time to time.''
The tension exists because Ben Franklin and Winston
Churchill were both right. In a nutshell, that's the trouble
with democracy: How do we, the people, keep a ``good
opinion'' of this ``worst form of government''? Democracy is
never going to be easy; and we shouldn't expect it to be
easy. The ancient Greeks had one name for those who
participated in their democratic process and another name for
those who did not. Those who were involved were called
civites. From this ancient word comes a host of modern terms:
civil, civilization, civic, city, citizen, civilized. Those
who were not involved were called idiotes. Perhaps the Greeks
were giving us a hint.
Indeed, Pericles said of democratic Athenians that they
``regard the man who takes no part in public affairs, not as
one who minds his own business, but as good for nothing.''
Not only is democracy not easy, it's getting harder. We are
now on the edge of a third major revolution in U.S.
democracy, and these revolutions increase our obligations as
citizens.
The first was our ideological revolution denying the divine
right of kings to govern, and establishing self-governance by
the people. We often refer to the war of 1775-83 as the
Revolution, but the real revolution was the emergence of this
idea.
In the second, quieter, revolution, the benign and
idealistic paternalism expected by the Founding Fathers was
overwhelmed by vigorous local political representation. This
second revolution is represented in U.S. history by the
election of President Andrew Jackson. The recent passing of
Tip O'Neill perhaps marks the end of that ``all politics is
local politics'' era.
Before these two revolutions, political life for the
average citizen was very simple: You obeyed the king and paid
your taxes. The first revolution made life more difficult: It
gave us the obligation to select our own government from a
small meritoracy of educated, property-owning white men. The
second revolution required us to seek among a broader
candidate pool the white male who best represented our local
community's interests, and required us to decide for
ourselves what those local interests would be.
In the modern age, elected officials are of every race and
both sexes; local issues compete with national,
international, economic, ideological and factional issues for
our attention. It is a great achievement that our political
mainstream is becoming broader and more diverse, but it makes
our job as citizens harder than ever.
The difficulties compound as government and politics try to
find their way in the electronic information age. Look at
what is happening to politics and government already, as we
enter this third revolution. Devotion to image and appearance
has replaced loyalty to party and constituency. The old-
fashioned ward heeler is out; the opposition research
consultant is in. Hundreds of single-issue special interests
besiege the political process, each ready, willing and able
to deploy vast arsenals of dollars and disinformation on the
electronic superhighway at the first whiff of threat.
Political aspirants themselves are willing to attack the
institutions they seek to join, to gain an advantage in
getting there. And of course there now seem to be no holds
barred between candidates in political contests. Our sources
of information about government and politics--the media,
opposition research consultants and spin doctors--are all
richly rewarded by concentrating on the superficial and the
scandalous. All of these changes make the information we
receive more negative, more divisive and more simplistic.
How could we possibly keep a ``good opinion'' of this mess?
First, we need to get smart. We must learn to be discerning
consumers of information about government.
We should no more rely on the information these sources
feed us than we should rely on McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts
for our food. A junk food diet of information creates a
public that is more likely to know what the yacht ``Monkey
Business'' is than what the national debt is. (I looked it
up: Roughly $4 trillion.) We've gotten a lot smarter about
our food diets, and we're healthier as a result. Now we need
to get smart about our information diet. We need to encourage
legitimate efforts to expose and address real problems, and
reject media scandal-mongering, interest group propaganda and
partisan political posturing; we need to separate the real
food from the junk food.
We also need to avoid the lure of easy cynicism. The harder
the task of being a citizen becomes, and the more we are
required to think for ourselves, the more seductive is this
lure. Cynicism about government hurts us. It hurts us in two
practical respects. First, it is an excuse for us an
individuals to draw the limit on our obligations as citizens
to participate in our own democracy. It is an excuse to
become idiotes rather than civites. Second, as Ben Franklin
pointed out, cynicism about government actually weakens
government's ability to do the things we need government to
do.
This is not to say that we should ignore misdeeds in
government. We must root out misdeeds and corruption with a
vengeance.
But we must also recognize that cynicism about government
has its own price.
And we need to understand the problems we find in
government to be a call to action, rather than an excuse to
condemn. There comes a point when the accumulation of
contempt for government, like a run on a bank, threatens the
viability of the institution itself.
It is time to restore our faith in our beliefs and our
principles, and it is time to be prepared as citizens to act
on that faith. The most precious thing we as a country have
to provide to ourselves, to future generations, and to the
world, is our democracy. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said,
``Our constitutional system has proved itself the most
superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has
produced.'' It has provided unparalleled civil liberties and
economic freedoms to our people, it has survived a bitter
civil war and emerged strengthened; and it has sheltered and
sustained for more than two centuries the growth of an ever
fairer and more prosperous society.
The battle is a long way from over, but our democracy
remains the model for freedom-loving people around the world.
We all want to restore our faith in our government; to do
so we need to solve the riddle of keeping a ``good opinion''
of our ``worst form of government.''
The question is, how do we do it?
The answer is the one that Greeks hinted at when they
called the group civites and the other idiotes. It is self-
evident in the phrase ``participatory democracy.'' It is
contained in the central phrase of Abraham Lincoln's
description of our government as ``of the people, by the
people, and for the people.''
The answer is to get involved. Inform yourself. Don't be
discouraged. Get involved in government yourself. (Don't be
afraid to start small. Your local school committee or town
council probably makes a bigger difference in your family's
life than the U.S. Supreme Court.)
The way to a good opinion of this worst form of government
is to restore our belief in its principles.
The simple way to restore our belief in its principles is
to participate in it and participate in it and participate in
it, until we respect those who participate in it.
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