Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy by Tom Nichols

    

Should have received more publicity on publication

                                                            

The end of democracy will come not with mobs burning the Capitol, or food riots, or juntas of national salvation, or demagogues leading the peasants to burn the castles of the rich. It will end, instead, with highly educated, technically proficient, otherwise decent men and women with families and children and mortgages and car payments who will decide that uninformed, spoiled, irascible voters simply can’t produce coherent demands other than “just get it for us,” and they will act accordingly.


This will not happen after a revolution, or a disaster, or a landmark court case—or even after a pandemic. It will happen as part of a million small decisions made every day without the input of the common citizen, as the fulfillment of an unspoken agreement between technocratic elites and the working and middle classes. Rights and participation and transparency will be shelved—as they too often were during the Cold War in the name of national security—as luxuries simply too expensive to indulge. The population will not be impoverished proles, but reasonably educated, comfortable people who have decided that “democracy” means a certain standard of living.

Nichols, Thomas M., Our Own Worst Enemy (pp. 214-215). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

As we Americans attempt to deal with the crisis of our democracy, we are blessed to have many capable individuals addressing our plight. In no particular order: Anne Applebaum, David Frum, Thomas Edsall, Francis Fukuyama, Yousha Mounk, Max Boot, Tim Miller (and others in The Bulwark crowd), Steve McIntosh, George Packer, and others whose names escape me for the moment. Suffice it to say that there are many continuing efforts to better understand our plight. 

And, oh, yes, there’s Tom Nichols. Like Applebaum and Frum, Nichols also writes for The Atlantic. And like Frum and Applebaum and several of the others, Nichols published a book about this topic in 2017, The Death of Expertise. I haven’t read that book, but I became familiar with Nichols around that time and have followed his work since then. This includes frequent contributions to The Atlantic and podcast interviews with Charlie Sykes on the Bulwark podcast. And, to my surprise, I learned that Nichols had published a book in August 2021, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy (OUP).  In fact, there’s a bit of an embarrassing story about how I discovered this book, which I detail at the end here.* Suffice it to say that while a year late to the party, I’m glad that I finally arrived. In fact, it may prove to be the best “party” that I’ve attended about this topic. 

Nichols's argument is straightforward: the greatest problems facing the U.S. and other established democracies come from within, not from abroad. The electorate in the U.S. (and I’ll focus on the U.S., as Nichols does) has been chronically unhappy with elites and the course of the nation. Why is this so? Our situation (at least our material situation) is really pretty good, notwithstanding the challenging events of the first fifth of the twenty-first century: the 9/11 attacks and related events of radical Islamic terrorism; the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the crash of 2008; mounting domestic terrorism; the COVID-19 pandemic and the related economic crash—all these events were indeed traumatic and cost precious lives and huge amounts of treasure. But for most Americans living in August 2022, life is nevertheless quite good. Again, not to minimize the pain and death associated with the events listed (and others), but Nichols (and I) agree with former Presidents Obama’s statement that there’s never been a better time to be alive. One must acknowledge that our material well-being, as measured by the amount of stuff we have and the quality of life that we can enjoy, is beyond the dreams of even the wealthiest who lived as recently as less than a century ago.

So, what's eating at us? Nichols summarizes his answer in three words: “narcissism, anger, and resentment.”

In pursuing this line of thought, Nichols distinguishes himself from others who’ve attempted to diagnose our malaise, including popular opinion. Nichols acknowledges that elites have indeed made mistakes, but then they always do, and the magnitude of those mistakes doesn’t justify the magnitude of the malaise claimed by so many.

To arrive at his diagnosis, Nichols, instead of using a searchlight, uses a mirror. 

Among the unholy triumvirate of narcissism, anger, and resentment, the anger (and resulting grievance) aspect has received the most attention from many commentators. This line of thought goes a long way in explaining the reactions of those who've suffered direct hits to their well-being by way of job losses and declining communities. Many of these losses are rightly attributable to jobs going overseas and to automation (the latter, I think, being the more significant problem regarding jobs). But the number of Trumpists and sympathizers who have suffered these severe losses is rather small. A full explanation of the approximately 40% of the U.S. electorate who vote for Trumpists requires a deeper, more sweeping explanation. 

Of course, anyone who knows much about American politics knows that most citizens, including most voters, are shockingly ill-informed about candidates, policies, and how our political institutions function. It’s a fool’s errand to place an articulated, rational set of reasons for the outcome of any election. It’s most often like trying to draw a detailed picture using just black and white (Yes or No? Candidate A or B?) and beginning the picture from a Rorschach ink blob. Nichols illustrates the problems with a couple of tales from my native Iowa: 

The Los Angeles Times reporter Matt Pearce, for example, spoke to a woman who caucused for Sanders in 2016 and then voted for Trump. In 2020, she initially settled on Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, as her choice. If Buttigieg didn’t win the nomination, however, she would move from the young, progressive, gay, once-married Buttigieg back to the elderly, right-wing, serially adulterous, thrice-married bigot Trump—a kaleidoscopic change in preferences that only makes sense as a search for a tailored set of narrow promises that would meet her personal satisfaction, rather than the selection of a candidate who must govern across a range of issues. Location 1306)

. . . . 

Another Iowan told the media that she had voted both for Barack Obama and for Donald Trump, “just to shake up Washington, to be honest.” (This is sometimes called the “OOT” voter, the person who voted Obama-Obama-Trump in 2008, 2012, and 2016, respectively.) Had Trump not been available in 2016, she said, she might have gone for—of course—Bernie Sanders. “We’ve just been in a rut so long,” she sighed. (Location 1311)

Even as a native and resident of Iowa most of my life (and as a long-time observer of its politics), this makes my head spin. I migrated from Booker to Buttigieg to Biden (I do like those Bs, I guess), but jump to Trump? How can any mind make that leap? But then it wasn’t the mind so much as the emotions that motivated these voters. 

Narcissism and resentment (and its manifestation on steroids, ressentiment—thank you, Nietzsche) both reach beyond the surface rationalizations and reasons to reveal the motivating emotional core. I suspect that social scientists tend to shy away from such broad and amorphous concepts that can’t be easily quantified, but happily, Nichols (a Ph.D. in political science and retired college professor) doesn’t shy away from these depths. 

In his discussion of narcissism, Nichols draws on the work of American historian and social critic Christopher Lasch. Lasch was active roughly from the 1960s until his death in 1994, and he’s perhaps most remembered for his 1970 work, The Culture of Narcissism. Nichols cites this work and others in his review of contemporary manifestations of narcissism. One wonders what Lasch would make of our situation today. (N.B. Nichols, like me and others, believes Lasch went too far in his criticisms near the end of his career.) Related to narcissism, Nichols draws on the work of political scientist Edward Banfield to note that when the chips are down, individuals often hunker down into the confines of family rather than seeking out and pursuing the common good. Banfield saw this phenomenon demonstrated in a poor Italian village in the 1950s; Nichols sees this increasingly in contemporary America. Nichols quotes Hannah Arendt to capture the implications of the two different potentials exhibited here: 

The idiot is one who lives only in his own household and is concerned only with his own life and its necessities. The truly free state, then—one that not only respects certain liberties but is genuinely free—is a state in which no one is, in this sense, an idiot: that is, a state in which everyone takes part in one way or another in what is common. (Location 974)

But while there’s plenty of evidence in support of the anger-grievance and narcissism aspect of our current malaise, it’s the resentment aspect that may manifest the most potent motivating and explanatory power to our current malaise. Let me introduce this topic with an extended quote from Nichols: 

Resentment in politics is the externalization of envy. If there is one thing authoritarian governments do especially well, it is the way in which they mobilize resentment as a weapon. Democracy, on principle, is based on the public’s acceptance of regular cycles in which winners and losers exchange places, sometimes unexpectedly. Authoritarians, by contrast, promise stability and equality. They offer placidity by promising, without favor or exception, to make losers of everyone outside of the ruling group. By reducing all citizens to the same miserable condition, they build a constituency among those who are willing to endure oppression as long as the people they hate have to endure it as well. Resentment is about leveling rather than leadership, about vengeance rather than virtue.

(Location 1733)

. . . . 

Resentment, like narcissism, undermines the civic virtues of tolerance, cooperation, and equal justice, because it fuels demands for rewards and punishments based on jealousy and unhappiness rather than reason or impartial justice.

(Location 1739)

And if you thought that mere garden variety resentment seems quite enough to invade and perhaps destroy the garden of democracy, then there’s resentment on steroids: ressentiment.

Again, Nichols provides an informative overview:

There is a more evocative word, ressentiment (imported from French by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche), that captures this vague but powerful envy of others. Mere “envy” or “resentment” isn’t enough to express the lasting toxicity of ressentiment. As the writer Joseph Epstein has explained, ordinary resentment is a “quick, stabbing thing, set off by an act of ingratitude or injustice, but that can, fairly quickly, melt away.” But ressentiment is of greater endurance, has a way of insinuating itself into personality, becoming a permanent part of one’s character. Ressentiment, then, is a state of mind, one that leaves those it possesses with a general feeling of grudgingness toward life. . . . So much so that those suffering ressentiment come almost to enjoy the occasions for criticism that their outlook allows them.

(Location 1741)

. . . . 

...philosopher Ian Buchanan describes ressentiment as a “vengeful, petty-minded state of being that does not so much want what others have (although that is partly it) as want others to not have what they have.”

(Location 1754)

. . . . 

...in the words of the German philosopher Max Scheler, it is existential envy “directed against the other person’s very nature,” and thus unresolvable: “I can forgive everything, but not that you are—that you are what you are—that I am not what you are—indeed that I am not you.”

(Location 1758)

And if the citations to Nietzsche, Epstein, Buchanan, and Scheler seem too highbrow, here Nichols provides the comment of an American voter as an exemplar: 

[A]more prosaic example of this kind of resentment in modern America is the voter in Florida who was furloughed from her public sector job during a 2019 budget impasse between the White House and Congress. Initially a supporter of President Trump, she turned on her candidate in helpless anger. “I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting” (emphasis added).

(Location 1801)

After addressing the issue of resentment, Nichols touches on nostalgia, the tendency to idealize and attempt to recover an imagined past. The answer to malaise becomes time-travel; escape to the past when things were “better.” But time travel isn’t an option, time’s arrow flies only in one direction. And even if some aspects of the past were in some measure “better,” they can only be re-created, not re-captured. 

Nichols also notes that democracy and liberalism often prove boring. There’s no Le Mis celebrating the endless wrangling of a congress, legislature, or city council. The flag waving and drama of January 6 proved dramatic, even cinematic, but was not democracy, not the rule of law, and not a future that any sane person would want. Again, reason takes a backseat to the emotional engines that prompt some form of salvation through mindless acts expressing inarticulate dissatisfaction with the status quo. (Fascism, anyone?)

This work of Nichols is the most convincing, comprehensive assessment of our current democratic dis-ease that I’ve read to date (although there are many works out there on this topic that I haven’t yet gotten to). Nichols has the analytical mind of a political scientist that he combines with a keen, appreciative eye for the contemporary American scene. He reports coming from a modest background, and while he’s critical of his fellow Americans, he’s not dismissive or despairing of them. He wants us, our nation, to succeed, but he realizes the realities of our (largely) self-imposed self-destructive traits. Nichols has no magic wand, no simple answers; I imagine he hopes, like an experienced physician, that the first step forward in alleviating the malady is to properly identify it. 

There are many aspects of the book that I haven’t addressed here, and there are some avenues that I would like to have seen Nichols explore (for instance, the work of Rene Girard, whose insights about rivalry, memetic desire, envy, jealousy, resentment, and scapegoating, seem to me to be likely quite applicable who what Nichols is exploring. (But in fairness, I’ve only dipped into Girard to date, although I’m planning a deep dive. But we can’t know everything all at once.) Perhaps it’s best to close with a couple of more brief quotes from Nichols: 

Can we regain this Athenian sense of honor, civic pride, love of community, self-sacrifice, and deep confidence in our way of life? Or are these virtues now to be lost in a dark sea of grievance, resentment, and envy? (Location 3414)
. . . .  

“It cannot come from abroad,” Lincoln warned. “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” (Location 3425)

 

*And now for my big faux pas: Nichols posted a thread on resentment in contemporary American politics. I "liked" the threat and suggested that he write up his perspective in an Atlantic article. His reply:  "(said much more in a book)" My humble pie response to that revelation was "My bad! I've now obtained a copy of OUR OWN WORST ENEMY & will seek to rectify my ignorance. Appreciate very much your commentary & analysis." I hope that this review has in some manner rectified my having missed the boat earlier!

Two Modest Propositions About Caucuses & Elections (and Iowa)

Iowans participating directly in politics. Messy, but that's sometimes how democracy works

In light of the Iowa Democrat Caucus last night--the results of which we don’t know as I write this--let me make a couple of observations that should prove less radical than Jonathan Swift’s “modest proposal” but that may upset you. I only ask that you forebear judgment until I make my case. 

But first, the elephant in the room: the lack of a final result last night and into Tuesday as I write this in the early afternoon. To this situation, I must say, “So what?” I know, I know.  I, too watched last night in anticipation of results, but I went to bed without a result. I slept soundly. I learned in the first election that I recall, Nixon-Kennedy in 1960, that despite my parents sending me to bed with the result still in doubt, the result would come without me and I’d find out soon enough to go to school and carry on with life. So, now, too. The glitch or glitches are unfortunate, but not very important. Yes, I thought Wolff Blitzer was going to have a meltdown, he kept murmuring “in 2016 we had the results by now.” The reporters and politicos used the opportunity to bad-mouth the caucuses for various reasons (more on that below). All the candidates declared victory and moved on. Their supporters will get on with their campaigns and going about their lives. We have every reason to believe that life, the campaign, and the news cycle (“all hail the News Cycle!”) will go on. We’ll get the results and will have every reason to believe that (in part) because of the time and delay that the reported results are accurate. (If not, then a whole lot more than the Iowa Caucus has big problems.) The whole episode has been a reminder of the American infatuation with instant gratification and how the demands of news organizations have come increasingly to dictate the conduct of our electoral system. Now to my modest propositions. 

1. We should expand the caucus and delegate system of party candidate selection. 
2. Voting is the least important--albeit essential--element of a democratic system. 

Let me explain these heretical propositions before your hair catches on fire. 

 First, about voting. In a democratic system going back to the ancient Greeks, the essence of a democratic system is decision-making by means of speech in which all stakeholders have a right to express their opinions should they choose to do so. As problems arise in a polity, responses are considered by collections of individuals who express their knowledge of relevant facts and share their opinions based upon those facts. In a perfect environment, all of the relevant facts are available to the stakeholder-decisionmakers, and they can express their opinions freely and fully; i.e., subject to neither necessity or coercion. Persuasion is the order of the day. But persuasion isn’t a one-way street; the mode of persuasion occurs with the dialectic of dialogue--or perhaps more accurately, multi-logue. Only after all perspectives and options have received a fair hearing that will winnow-out undesirable options and merge related options, will the decision-makers reach a decision about any action to undertake. And, the best (rational and fair) way to reach a decision is via a vote. This serves to ratify a decision, to make it conclusive, rational (at least in some measure), and legitimate (all will accept it as based on the perception of fairness and rationality). 

Let me hasten to note that I realize that the description of the decision-making system that I set forth above is at once both eutopian and utopian--both good and yet ideal beyond the reach of mortal humans. But the goal should be to approach the ideal. In modern mass democracies, we tend to be satisfied by providing the mass of the decision-makers, the electorate of eligible voters, with candidates and decisions that have been framed by elites (normally working through established institutions). These decisions (in the U.S.) tend to present voters with a binary choice. The key ingredient of democracy is reduced to a simple mark on a ballot for Candidate A or Candidate B. Sometimes, as in a primary election, there may be more than two candidates (or only one), but the principle of minimizing the expression of a decision-making choice reduces speech to the simplest possible expression. All of this may be necessary at the national and state-wide level, but why do we always want to push the system to the lowest common denominator? Why do we keep pushing towards plebiscites? Also, as you consider this, you realize what hooey any talk of a “mandate” is in a presidential election, which is most often a simple binary choice with occasional noteworthy third-party distractions from time-to-time; e.g., Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, George Wallace.  

So what does any of this about the limited (but essential) role of voting have to do with keeping, let alone expanding, the caucus system? Here I must admit that I’m an NRI (non-resident Iowan), having spent about 55 of my 66 years growing up and then raising our family in Iowa. I’ve participated in both Republican and Democratic caucuses and conventions. (I’ll save my confession of a misspent youth for another time.) Not having resided in Iowa full-time since 2012 and now in Brooklyn, I also have some outsider perspective also. In my experience (reinforced by press reporting this year), Iowans take the caucus system and their place in the nominating system very seriously. It’s like voluntary jury duty--it’s a pain in the rear for most folks, but if you’re going to do your civic duty, you’re going to try to do it right. (My experience with about 30 jury trials over more than three decades has informed my respect for most jurors.) Especially this year, with the abdication by the (Republican) Senate of its role in defending the Constitutional order in the face of an autocratic president, Democrats in Iowa have been especially concerned to select a winning, qualified presidential nominee. We don’t know who will prove the most popular choice yet, and opinions varied greatly, but make no mistake that the responsibility was taken very seriously by Iowa Democrats. And make no mistake, while Iowa isn’t the closest match to the national demographic picture, its track record in selecting Democratic nominees is exceptional. In 2000, Iowans preferred Al Gore, winner of the popular vote in 2000. They preferred the first woman nominated for president by a major party and the winner of the popular vote in 2016, Hillary Clinton. (Yes, yes, we know that winning the popular vote isn’t worth a warm buck of spit, but for that’s not the fault of Iowa Democrats.) They preferred John Kerry, the eventual nominee in 2004, and they preferred (and provided lift-off horsepower) to the first African-American nominee and president, Barack Obama, in 2008 and 2012. So remind me again why you believe the Iowa Democrat caucus is so off-kilter? 

Ah, yes, the caucus is not an election, and so the participation rate is much lower than would expect if we asked Democrats to only fill out a ballot at some point in the nominating process. This assertion is undoubtedly accurate. This way, perhaps via a regional primary, we could by-pass all the neighborhood discussions and maximize TV advertising (such an effective medium of one-way communication) and rely on the totally reliable--but for Russian bots and doctored tapes and conspiracy theories--social media platforms. In other words, Iowa (along with New Hampshire) emphasizes retail politics. Think how much better democracy would be if we all candidates would hold only Trumpeque “rallies” consisting only of the faithful. No messy questions (and, yes, candidates receive some really whacky questions in the coffee and handshakes systems of Iowa and New Hampshire). An only primary election system would be so much easier and lucrative for campaign professionals and media consultants. People (let’s not call them citizens) wouldn’t have to waste their precious time talking directly to candidates and neighbors. They could simply sit at home and have only the most wholesome, honest, and accurate information fed to them by their televisions and computers. That many--perhaps most--people would prefer this does not negate my point. The encouragement of political laziness should not be the goal of a republican democracy.

And in selecting the nominees for office, why shouldn’t the faithful of the political parties have the greatest say? That interlopers, like Trump among the Republicans and Sanders among Democrats, have done quite well in party contests doesn’t negate this argument. (Trump most definitely; the Sanders effect yielded a mixed record in 2016 and remains an open question in the present election.) Some argue that the party faithful tend to be more extreme in their views, toward the left (Democrats) and the right (Republicans), but this largely because of the political polarization that we’re currently experiencing. And even in Iowa this year, the final results, as well as ancillary polling, will reveal that defeating Trump is more important than the candidacy of any particular individual. When newcomers or minorities gain control of presidential nominations, the results have proven disastrous: Goldwater (GOP 1964), McGovern (Dem 1972), and Trump (GOP 2016). (The admitted exception is Mondale (Dem 1984), who had the misfortune of encountering the popular Reagan with the economy in an upswing while Democrats were continuing to wander in the wilderness seeking their identity.) While I’m not advocating a return to the smoke-filled rooms, I am arguing that the initial decisions be left to those committed to the party and what it stands for. This is an ever-changing and relatively self-selecting elite that should be perfectly consistent with democratic equality. And, returning to my point about the relative unimportance of voting (necessary but not sufficient for a democratic system), the more self-selective caucus system promotes speech, the political conversations that are the taproot of a realized democracy. Any change we make in our electoral system should emphasize real political communication at the grassroots level. 

So two cheers for the Iowa caucus system! It’s far from perfect, but I don’t see a better alternative. 

083019 Krugman, Trump, The Music Man, Iowa, & Farmers

Professor Harold Hill, a/k/a The Music Man

I have to admit that from the time that our current president became a candidate for president, in lighter moments, I identified him with the figure of "Professor" Harold Hill, a/k/a "The Music Man." The association just popped into my head. Meredith Wilsons's musical about "River City," Iowa was on the big screen when I was young, with Robert Preston in the title role. My mom took me to the (old) Page Theatre to see it. It turns out that contrary, skeptical Iowans* could be bamboozled by a fast-talkin' city-slicker. The good folks of River City were taken-in, but through the redeeming love of "Marian, madame librarian," Hill is reformed, and all ends well.

After three wives and innumerable mistresses and one-night stands, there's been no redemption of Trump. And so many Iowans were bamboozled again in 2016 with no happy ending in sight. (A shout-out to Iowa City and Johnson County for resisting the tide.) In the article below, Paul Krugman details how Iowa (and other) farmers have been fleeced. And while getting fleeced, mocked by the miscreants ("the whine cellar"). It's a sad and disturbing tale. Farming is hard, dangerous work, full of challenges and subject to Nature's whims as well as those of markets and governments. Farmers don't need more problems.

I do question whether Krugman's attribution of motives is accurate, however. PK overlooks that fact that Iowa was 2x carried by Obama, and voted for Al Gore in 2000. There are many Iowa voters (and others around the country) that voted for Obama and then turned around and voted for Trump. This is a turn-around that has perplexed me since the election. It could be we have different voters who turned out in each of those three elections, but that certainly can't account for the switch in the state-wide vote tally. And neither, obviously, can mere brand (party) loyalty explain the results. Most voters, I believe, claim to vote for "the candidate." I surmise that many of those votes that switched from Obama to Trump were protest votes; a desperate "why not?" attitude when Trump's opponent came to be identified with a status quo that has become increasingly difficult for rural and small-town voters. Let's hope for all our sakes that folks wake-up to the reality around us.

*"And we're so by God stubborn/ We could stand touchin' noses/ For a week at a time/ And never see eye-to-eye")

I

About this website

NYTIMES.COM

Opinion | The Frauding of America’s Farmers

Trump’s biggest supporters are his biggest victims.

190625 Rural & Small-Town Development

Braley for Senate Endorsement . . . . And a Dream Speech

First, I'm voting for Bruce Braley for the Senate. Easy.

 I first came to know of Braley through the Iowa Association for Justice, and I received the impression of someone who was impressively knowledgeable and diligent. I was delighted when he chose to run for Congress, and he was the person I thought of when Senator Harkin announced his retirement. He’s hard working, bright, and has the right instincts on the issues. 

Of his opponent, I think little useful can be said. She gained notoriety sufficient to win the primary by riding a motorcycle, shooting a gun, and castrating pigs. Otherwise, she seems to follow the Tea Party line, which is long on complaint and short on ideas. Repeal Obamacare, guns for all, tax cuts: line up the usual suspects. I do, however, want to make one thing clear. The fact that she’s from Red Oak does not prejudice me against her. I have some great friends from Red Oak. And after all, it’s not as if she’s from Clarinda. 

I’ve read the “issues” sections of each candidate’s website and find the usual nostrums and platitudes. I prefer Braley’s, but it’s like choosing one’s favorite pabulum when what you really want is steak. I’ve followed politics since the second grade (when I “endorsed” Richard Nixon for president over JFK). I’ve watched The West Wing reruns, I’ve practiced law, and I’ve read Max Weber and Reinhold Niebuhr. I understand that in politics one has to make choices and compromises that you’d rather not have to make. Reality—other powers—impose hard choices on us. Good politics mixes realism with idealism. Good politicians must know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. When I looked at Braley’s website, I didn’t see anything about reasonable limits on guns, global climate change, foreign policy realism, or political corruption (although his emails about Citizens United to do show concern about this later topic). I knew that I shouldn't expect to see such things.

But setting aside the concerns of reality for a moment, here’s a speech that I dream that Bruce Braley—or any candidate—might give. A speech that takes the gloves off and addresses what ought to be our most pressing concerns:

The Dream Speech

Imagine Bruce Braley, in the midst of his campaign, chooses to give a speech to a large audience, a full bank of microphones as a shield before him, TV lights illuminating him, and a large, live audience eager to hear him speak. The audience is mixed; Iowans from all walks of life. What they have in common is a belief that the choice of a U.S. Senator is a crucial choice, and they want to hear what he has to say. The campaign is in full swing, and sound bites of stump speeches have littered the airwaves, along with the canned commercials showing each candidate with family and farm fences in the background. And the next minute we see advertisements that show how vile and alien are the beliefs of the opponent. The ads exhibit the usual mind-numbing drivel that consultants tell campaigns they must peddle in mass quantities to trigger the appropriate Pavlovian reactions among the docile voting public. 

This audience on this occasions expects a typical stump speech, but they secretly hope for something more. It’s a major event. Maybe today will be different. Braley steps to the microphone. He speaks: 

Fellow Iowans, 

Thank you for sharing this time with me. I've been campaigning for this U.S. Senate seat since Senator Tom Harkin announced that he would not run for re-election. During this time and in my time as a Congressman, I've staked out positions on all sorts of issues. I've voted for and against all kinds of legislation. I've made statements and issued position papers, written letters to constituents, and answered questions on about every conceivable issue a member of Congress can expect to receive—and some you'd never think that we'd get.

If you voters have paid any attention to this race, you have some sense of what I'm about. You know that I'm a Democrat. That means that I believe that government can be an effective tool to improve our lives. Government programs can be—but aren't always—effective in improving our lives. Being a Democrat means that we believe that we all should benefit from government and that we all should contribute to a degree that is as fair as we can hope it to be in this imperfect world. Being a Democrat means that government should act pragmatically, creating a government that's sometimes smaller and sometimes bigger. We reject the blanket proposition that smaller government is always better government and that less taxes are always better for everyone. Our gauge isn’t the size of government. We judge government by its effectiveness in delivering the services that benefit our citizens and that work to keep us safe. We Democrats are guided by a sense of fairness and the public good. Debates about where to draw the lines of government began with the Founding of the Republic and will continue. The devil is in the details.

But today I want to address the larger picture, beyond the usual laundry list of how particular programs that I support will benefit children, or teachers or veterans, or the elderly, or women, or farmers, or a seemingly endless list of other groups to which most of you probably belong. Today, I want to address those issues that go beyond our common, more limited characterizations of our concerns and ourselves. I want to talk about those issues that should concern us all. The wider focus gets shunted aside in our incessant marketing of positions to groups defined by how government affects their bottom line. But because you care about whom you will support for the U.S. Senate will make a difference for our future, I want to address some of the fundamentals that we usually try to hide from. Let me therefore share these ideas with you:

Buying and Selling Influence. Our political system is badly corrupted. The corrupting agent is money, lots and lots of money. Our current political system has legalized bribery. Anyone running for office today at the federal level most worship at the feet of the big campaign contributors. I appreciate the $5, the $25 or $100 that you send, but's its small change for what it costs to run a campaign today. The real money comes from interest groups, shady super-pacs, and extremely wealthy individuals. The bigger the contribution, the more the moneyed interests will influence legislation. This isn't an insider's secret knowledge, it's human nature, it's Econ 101. He that pays the piper calls the tune. You students of history recognize that this problem isn't new, but it's gotten worse. It's out of control. We have to do something about it because Big Money is warping the outcome of our political process.

To take concrete steps to counter this pernicious infection, I'm endorsing the programs of two groups aimed at restoring our political process to end the most egregious effects of Big Money in politics. I am endorsing the programs of Root Strikers and Represent Us. I pledge to change our system of political financing so that the corruption of Big Money will no longer call the tune and fundamentally distort the democratic process.

The Senate Filibuster. Another alarming warp in our political institutions involves the U.S. Senate, the body to which I seek election. Minority rule now controls that chamber. I’m speaking about the filibuster. For those you my age or older, you probably first learned about the filibuster by reading about it in the daily paper or in history class, about how Senators from the Old South used it as a weapon to fight civil rights legislation. Those tactics failed and the American Dream moved forward despite that its use. But in the last twenty years or more, and especially during the term of President Obama, the filibuster has changed from a rarely used device to stall legislation into a common tool to impose minority rule on the Senate and the nation. It requires the Senate to pass legislation or confirm judges by a super-majority. To block Senate action requires only 41 members oppose a vote—just a vote! This isn't about debate. It's about obstruction of the will of the majority. The issue of the filibuster goes far beyond free debate and Senate tradition. It creates a regime of minority rule. I support and relish free and vigorous debate in the Senate, but I don't believe that a minority—even if I'm a member of that minority—should hold the power to veto the will of the majority and counter the intention of the Constitution. I will strive to end this practice.

Guns. Let's be honest: when it came to the Second Amendment to the Constitution that includes the provision about the "right to bear arms", the Founders blew it. I’m not sure what they intended. Scholars aren't sure. Those who claim certainty have the least basis for their beliefs. We would be better off throwing it out and starting over, drafting something new that we can understand and that addresses the realities of the 21st century.

Does this mean banning all guns? Don't be ridiculous. Limiting all gun ownership and possession is neither proper nor practical. However, we do need to make sure that we create reasonable restrictions on weapons that serve the needs of the community for safe schools, homes, and workplaces. We have to make sure that gun ownership and possession balances responsibilities with rights. We must stop sanctifying guns and recognize them as having legitimate uses, such as for hunting, sports, and law enforcement and having criminal uses. Whether we’re talking about handguns, semi-automatic assault rifles, mortars, grenades, or weapons of mass destruction, we have to take reasonable, practical steps to regulate weapons to protect ourselves. We need to stop worshiping guns and treat them as the weapons that they are and the useful tools that they can be. We should no longer worship the Moloch created and promoted by the NRA. Our idolatry requires us to sacrifice too many children, teachers, colleagues, friends, and family. We must act sensibly now.

Climate Change. Not so long ago, I thought that global climate changed caused by our current energy system would be the most significant issue we would leave to our children. I was wrong. The problem isn’t waiting for the future. Try as we have to ignore or dismiss the threat, it won’t go away. We cannot act as if it’s a child’s nighttime monster that will retreat if only we hide under the covers. This monster that we—the modern industrial world—has created, like Frankenstein's monster, must now be brought to heel by us, its creators, before it wrecks too much havoc on this earth we inhabit. We cannot easily change the economic and energy systems that have made us the most privileged and prosperous human generation to have ever inhabited this earth. But we cannot continue to foist the dregs of our economic miracle onto the future that our children and grandchildren will inherit. In fact, the future has arrived, and we must reduce the amount of carbon and other greenhouse gasses that we are dumping into the atmosphere. This is a scientific, engineering, economic, and—most of all—political problem that we must address before it's too late. We must adopt a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade regime (or combination of the two). We must develop conservation measures and alternative energy sources. We have to do these things before we are compelled to spend vast sums on projects that will prove difficult and perhaps unsuccessful. This goal transcends the particular interests of farmers, drivers, oil and power companies, and ordinary citizens. We must develop an effective response before the problem rends our social fabric. Change will hurt some more than others and so we must seek to spread the burdens equitably and to promote new opportunities for those subject to change.

In sum, we either cure ourselves now with some hard choices or suffer the remedies that Mother Nature will impose upon us in her fury at our desecration of her gift to us. 

We must stop fighting foolish wars. In my lifetime, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have all taken away from America more than we could have ever gained. In the way of young lives, lost limbs, shattered minds, and billions of dollars that could have been spent more wisely, we as a nation have paid a heavy toll. We have the most powerful, most awesome, and most well-armed, trained, and disciplined armed forces in world history. But our leaders’ failures of wisdom in choosing when to deploy those armed forces in the national interest of the United States have harmed our nation. We must understand the limits of military power even as we have cultivated this most mighty military. Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have offered these lessons, but we haven't been smart students. The cost of our pride and foolishness will only increase. We must actively resist the lure of the Situation Room where the adrenaline rush of life and death decisions, enhanced by the reach and potency of technology, creates a temptation for any president to deploy force when so much power lies in his or her hands. We need to think strategically and realistically about how can protect our national interests, with the use of force as only a last, most carefully weighed, option. We must be wary of delegating to a president from any party the authority to wage war without the approval of Congress and the approval of a fully and truthfully informed American public.

In conjunction with limiting the war-making power and predilection of our government, we must also curtail the mentality that justifies infringing upon and degrading our civil liberties. Make no mistake here: belief in a strong, effective government does not entail the endorsement of an omniscient government that spies without constraint on its citizens and subverts due process of law. These problems arise from the militarization of our government in the face of fear of foreign enemies, both nations and trans-national terrorists. We have to act decisively in a changing environment, but we have to recognize that crossing some lines take us down a path that we should never want to travel.

I will stop here. This is not a list of all of the pressing issues that we face, issues about jobs, sustainable economic growth, the size and role of government, public finance, and issues of legal rights. Nor have I addressed the growing economic inequality that divides our nation and that fundamentally distorts the social and economic mix that marked the height of our national success in the post-World War II era. But you’ve been a patient audience, and I will not tax your patience more fully. We cannot—and should not attempt—to create a Perfect Union. We can only strive to create a More Perfect Union. Our task is never complete. Human fallibility, our limited understanding of ourselves and the world around us, and the distorted lens of self-knowledge that we all have, make perfection impossible. But we must act. Political decisions are about choosing our future. It's messy and irrational; often comic, sometimes tragic, but it molds our future as a nation, as a community, as a planet. We can choose to strive to think and act rationally with a sense of love for this precious fleeting life that we are given, or we can descend back into the myriad hells of war, pestilence, and famine that have marked most of human history. I offer these proposals to you as my ideas for a better future for all of us.

Postscript: I read a couple of brief press accounts of the race. What a bunch of garbage. Wake up, Iowans!