You Noticed

It’s gratifying to see that the aristocratic Lord Saletan has seen the light and is now in favor of democracy. This piece certainly hits the nail on the head:

The election is becoming a referendum on democracy.

In a democracy, the commander in chief works for you. You hire him when you elect him. You watch him do the job. If he makes good decisions and serves your interests, you rehire him. If he doesn’t, you fire him by voting for his opponent in the next election.

Not every country works this way. In some countries, the commander in chief builds a propaganda apparatus that equates him with the military and the nation. If you object that he’s making bad decisions and disserving the national interest, you’re accused of weakening the nation, undermining its security, sabotaging the commander in chief, and serving a foreign power—the very charges Miller leveled tonight against Bush’s critics.

Are you prepared to become one of those countries?

This is quite interesting (and gratifying) but I’m puzzled. At the beginning of the week Saletan wrote:

6:33 p.m. PT—This will be an interesting convention for me. Five years ago, when I moved out of the District of Columbia—a one-party state, minus the statehood—I had to think seriously about which party to register with. I was sick of the liberal dogmatism of my college and post-college friends. I’d come to the conclusion, through personal and political experience, that while Democrats had the right values, Republicans had a better operating theory of human nature: People behave more virtuously and wisely when they bear the consequences of their actions.

I also agreed fundamentally with something Newt Gingrich said a lot when he was speaker of the House: If we leave the money in Washington, the liberals will spend it. So, when George W. Bush got elected, I wasn’t terribly disturbed. I thought he was dumb and unqualified, but with a fat surplus accumulating in Washington, sending the money back to taxpayers before Congress spent it struck me as prudent.

I didn’t agree with the conservative urge to legislate on abortion, homosexuality, or other moral issues. But in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, I found a Republican who shared my libertarian instincts on those questions: Rep. Connie Morella. On many spending issues, Morella was to my left. But I was happy to find a sensible representative who didn’t have to follow the Democratic Party’s line of bribing approved constituencies and equating virtue with spending.

The Maryland Democratic Party refused to let me vote in its primaries if I registered as an independent. The Maryland Republican Party, in need of converts, demanded no such loyalty oath. So, I registered as an independent and voted in Maryland’s Republican presidential primary for John McCain, whom I admired even when I disagreed with him. Then I voted for Morella in a tight general election contest, and she won. I was beginning to feel comfortable thinking of myself as a liberal Republican, even if this was one of just a few pockets in the country where people like me could find a place in this party.

Four years later, I come to this convention stripped of that feeling. The past four years have alienated me from this party. I’m here, among other things, to find out why.

He seems to have figured it out in the last three days. The modern Republican party is hostile to democracy.

But, dear God, what on earth did he think was going on for the last fifteen years when Bob Dole went on the floor of the senate and declared that Clinton won with only a plurality so he wasn’t legitimate? What was Saletan thinking when the Republicans insistently employed their investigative power and relentlessly mau-maued the media into pressuring the admnistration to appoint special prosecutor after special prosecutor over insignificant issues? What in the world did he think was happening when they impeached a twice duly elected president over a trivial sexual matter?

And what did he think was happening when they played an unprecedented form of hardball in seizing the presidency and then governing as if they had a huge mandate for radical change?

Did any of those actions speak of a party that gave a damn about the spirit of democracy?

It has been clear for quite some time to anyone who is paying attention that the modern Republican party is actively undermining the democratic process. Look at the Republican funded recall in California or the strong-arm redistricting all over the country, not to mention the more subtle forms of anti-democratic rule like bald-faced lying about government statistics and holding secret meetings and creating entirely new forms of executive privilege.

Yes, standing up before the nation and saying that speaking out against the president during a presidential campaign is putting our troops at risk is a very shocking charge. But, this is hardly the first time they’ve said that. I simply don’t understand how people who are paid money to watch politics for a living have missed what seems to me to be an obvious development over more than a decade. Every election since 1992 has been dicier and dicier. With each cycle, they have gotten more and more aggressive in breaking the rules and challenging accepted norms. The only real question at this point is if they have been successful in rigging enough voting machines to swing this election if it’s close enough. I’m hoping that they just haven’t had the time to get it done because if they have there is absolutely no reason to believe they won’t do it. They do not have any limits.

So yes, this election is a referendum on American democracy. At this point, they all are — and they have been for quite some time. I’m glad some members of the media are noticing. Maybe this time they won’t be so willing to smugly tell us to “get over it” if things go wrong.

But, I doubt it. Until elections are actually cancelled (which we — shockingly — even discussed openly for a while)or journalists are jailed for sedition or some other heinous suspension of the constitution (for ordinary white people, mind you) is employed, the media will continue to support the slow erosion of our political system until it will be too late to get it back.

After all, Lord Saletan still believed the Republicans held the abstract philosophy that “people behave more virtuously and wisely when they bear the consequences of their actions” in 1999, after the Republican congress had weakened the constitution and impeached Clinton over a blowjob. If he was that slow on the uptake, then I’m not anticipating that he will figure out the rest of the story until everything is already lost.