Appetite for Destruction Democracy

Time to update the list of things that caused Trump! The Candidate! to include the popular vote. Really, you ought to have penciled it in a while ago, but now H.W. “Fire” Brands, an actual history professor type person writing for Politico, has made it official.

The drafters of the Constitution distrusted the opportunist who played on popular emotions in the quest for political power. They created a republic, a system in which authority was rooted in the people, but they were leery about letting the people actually exercise power.

To the founders, the preservation of freedom meant they had to be wary of popular rule, or pure democracy, which they saw as an invitation to despotism.

All right, but I would think that even at that point in time that if history taught one anything, it would be that everything is an invitation to despotism. However, we know the FFs were all about compromise.

The founders thus fashioned a series of checks and filters to keep the people—and the demagogues who might sway them—at bay. Voting was reserved to property owners and permanent residents; the riff-raff had no place at the table.

Right, so back in the good old days, when the founding colossi bestrode the country, Donald Trump would be able to vote because he had the good luck to be born white, male and the heir of a wealthy man, but not get elected to office.

Perhaps this is riff-raffish of me, but the moment someone begins the “Of course they were reasonable, they were white men of means!” song and dance routine, I am filled with the urge to toss a few poison-coated caltrops in his path. And it seems especially inappropriate since Brand started his performance by yelling “‘Ware despots!” yet by the third paragraph he’s shifted to some animals are more equal than others. How did that book end?

Lawmaking was done by senators and representatives, who would be better educated and more temperate than the masses.

How can one tell they were more temperate than the masses? Why, they were educated white men of means. I mean, duh!

The president was chosen by electors, who themselves were chosen, in many cases, by state legislatures (as, in all cases, were the federal senators). At every step of the political process, the passions of the people were hedged and blunted.

Little known fact: In its infancy, the U.S. of A. was ruled by robots. Or Vulcans. I’m not sure. But according to Prof. Brand, everything was dandy, but then the states (which were sentient in those days) started enticing the commoners with the opiate of the masses – The right to vote.

But the checks broke down one by one. Voting became democratic as the states, competing for residents, lowered the property and residency requirements. The new voters—still only white males, for the most part—demanded to choose presidential electors themselves, and the state legislators, dependent on these new voters, yielded.

And a couple hundred years later – Trump! The Candidate! Woe unto thee America. In thy ignorance and lust for the franchise, thou has not heeded the Sons of Enlightenment and torn down the wall that they, the Founding Fathers of America raised up against demagogues which totally wasn’t foreseeable until just a couple of months ago!

But the founders were onto something. The virtue of democracy is the legitimacy it confers on those it elects;

Even when those elected are put in power by a tiny portion of the people they will govern, because Reason, dontcherknow.

its vice is the temptation it affords candidates like Trump to inflame the baser passions of the electorate. The founders understood the need for the system to step back and take a deep breath before conferring great power on mere mortals.

The return of the electoral college to its founding design is unlikely, but the next best thing might be the revival of conventions as places where the will of the people is filtered through the judgment of those who make a study and a practice of governance. This might happen as soon as July in Cleveland, and it might save the Republican Party and the country from a demagogue such as Trump.

Good luck finding anyone who has made a study and practice of governance at GOPcon 2016!

And now, the punch line.

He takes a progressive view on the nation’s founders and the U.S. Constitution, arguing that the founders were at heart radicals who were willing to challenge the status quo in search of a better future. That being so, he believes that Americans today should not be constrained by the views of self-government held by the founders. “In revering the founders we undervalue ourselves and sabotage our own efforts to make necessary improvements in the republican experiment they began. Our love of the founders leads us to abandon and even betray the principles they fought for.” He believes the framers would not want the Constitution to be interpreted by the idea of original intent, and believes that we are in error when we view the founders in a “deified” way.”

A byline in Politico must be one hellavu drug.