We're All Populists Now; That's Unfortunate

This is a story about the failure of The People and how their failure led inexorably to the Iraq War. But before we can get to that a history lesson is in order about the development of a taboo so powerful it is making good government all but impossible.

The idea that there might be any taboo topics left in a country in which people feel free to talk about priests having sex with choir boys or the shape of the president's penis may seem almost preposterous. But while we have been busy adding to the number of subjects we feel comfortable discussing in public we have quietly subtracted one. Today almost no one wants to get caught openly acknowledging the limits of public opinion. We are all populists now. The voice of The People -- as measured daily and sometimes hourly in public opinion polls -- is the voice of God.

Given the expanding circle of areas into which democratic values have intruded the triumph of this dogma may appear to have been all but inevitable. The history of the United States is, after all, to a certain extent, the history of the unfolding of human freedom, the kernel of which was planted in July of 1776 when Jefferson exclaimed, "all men are created equal." All of the advances in democratic freedoms we have been witness to since the dawn of the Revolution have grown from that simple and powerful idea.

In a profound and disturbing way though our worship of The People has grown so rigid that we are in danger of losing touch with our own history. It is one thing to pay ordinary people the respect due them as human beings, quite another to pretend that everything they believe is beyond questioning. We used to understand this, but no longer seem to.

Ubiquitous among the papers of the Founding Fathers are palpable fears about The People's wisdom. No other self-governed society in history had ever lasted, after all. So the Founders fretted, like new cooks in a kitchen worried about the proper adjustments that needed to be made in a recipe conjured up on the fly. Quite often they acted with prudence, providing in the Constitution, for example, that merely one half of one branch of the three branches of government were to be subject to popular control. Some figures like George Mason expressed their suspicions about popular rule in terms we would regard as almost rude. "It would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper magistrate to the people," he opined, "as it would to refer the choice of colors to a blind man." Even Thomas Jefferson expressed misgivings about public opinion. When the popularly-elected legislature of his own beloved Virginia came under the sway of demagogues like his arch enemy Patrick Henry, Jefferson snarled that liberty was as much in danger from 173 despots as from 1.

Leaders felt free to issue warnings about The People from the era of the Founding Fathers down through the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression and the start of the Cold War. Even liberals, casting a glance over their shoulders at the mobs Hitler was rousing to a frenzy, worried openly about the susceptibility of Americans to the black arts of propaganda. They worried so much they got the nickname: "nervous liberals." Then suddenly, like a thunder clap, the carping, caviling, and outright condemnation of The People ceased abruptly.

What happened? Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States. It would be too simple to lay this dramatic change wholly at Reagan's feet, but he more than anybody played the key role in the evolution of democratic fundamentalism, as one writer put it. Reagan, whose effusiveness for the common man made him sound like his one-time political hero, Franklin D. Roosevelt, turned optimism into political gold. As John Patrick Diggins, a Reagan biographer, astutely observes, the Founding Fathers believed that "the people are the problem and government the solution" while Reagan convinced us that the people are virtuous and that government's the problem. "It worked," Diggins notes. "Reagan never lost an election."

As conservatives, following Reagan's example, joined in praise of The People -- the ordinary working class folks whom liberals had demonized as racists, homophobes and sexists -- they rung up victory after victory at the polls. That was the last anyone heard for a long time of conservatives complaining about The People.

What about liberals? Caught in the contradictions of their own ideology -- their professed love of The People and The People's seemingly misguided rejection of them at the polls -- they turned
angry, convinced that they were being punished at the polls not for their many mistakes but for their forthright stands on issues of conscience like civil rights and women's liberation.

It would have been helpful to Democrats to hold an honest conversation about the real sources of their discontent. But they couldn't without facing foursquare the myth of The People. So instead they entertained a series of excuses for their electoral failures, claiming in election after election that they had been cheated out of victory by politicians willing, like Richard Nixon, to engage in dirty tricks, or Reagan, who manipulated the media, or George H.W. Bush, who rode to power by slyly exploiting racial fears and faux patriotism.

What has all this to do with the Iraq War? We are used to thinking of the war as the Bush administration's failure. But it could not have taken place had ordinary Americans not been taken in by the administration's deceit, chiefly the dropped hint that Saddam Hussein was behind 9-11. One study by the University of Maryland found that nearly 60 percent of Americans were convinced that Saddam was helping al Qaeda when we undertook our invasion. A majority based their support for the war on this flagrant misunderstanding. A near-majority persisted in believing Saddam was responsible for 9-11 even after the 9-11 Commission flat out said he wasn't.

Why have we not had an open conversation about The People's failures? One answer is that it is more fun to beat up on the Bush administration and the media, both of which share the blame for the misinformation that polluted the public debate. But a more honest answer is that neither liberals nor conservatives want to break the new taboo whose history I outlined above in reaching a more balanced assessment. Neither want to find fault with The People.

And yet shouldn't The People come in for criticism, too? That al Qaeda and not Saddam was behind 9-11 was a well-established fact by the time of the invasion. While a rational argument could be made in favor of the war, the argument linking Saddam and 9-11, which won over most people, wasn't.

It's time to face that.

Comments

[radwriter]

HuffPost's Pick

Part two
However, no one then or now ever said The People were always right. The presumption of the Jeffersonian-Madisonians was that information would always be plentiful and that people would have the time to read about and discuss the issues. What they did not anticipate was the isolation that came with westward expansion in the early years and later with the compartmentalization that came with industrialization and the division of labor. They also did not forsee the success of the push for corporate monopolism and the consolidation of wealth and control of so many aspects of our lives, especially of access to information.
But for whatever reason, this IS where we are. In large measure this discussion of whether or not The People are to blame is gratuitous. So what? We still MUST set the ship aright. We still have to wrest control away from those few corporations that control so much of our lives. We still have to lock them out of the electoral process. We still have to restore the right of workers to band together into democratic unions or self-managed co-ops. We still have to undo the Constitutional damage that this administration has orchestrated with the gutless complicity of the Democratic leadership. We still have to develop foreign and trade policies that make sense for the long term benefit of all Americans.
It is important to begin with the systemic corrections instead of the sexy, superficial ones.

[radwriter]

Yes, most of the Founding Father were men of prominence within the narrow classism of the day. But as Benjamin Franklin responded ot Europeans amazed at the newly independant Americans' willingness to tax themselves and reject pomposity, "It is our overwhelming mediocrity."
He was referring not to any lack of intellect or achievement but rather to the minimal disparity of incomes and wealth.
While some of the Founding Fathers distrusted the people, many did not. The Madison camp clearly had little or no fear of the people. His original plan for the new pact had a unicameral legislative branch of elected representatives. While Madison is forever linked to Hamilton because of the Federalist Papers, his beliefs were mostly the opposite of those of Hamilton.
Franklin, while he said very little during the convention, worked hard at the evening discussions he often hosted to bring the fearful ones closer to the Madisonian view so that a compromise was possible along the lines held by Madison, James Wilson, G Morris, etc.
Washington, while he said nothing after he welcomed everyone to the convention, privately supported the Virginia Plan of Madison and, before and after the convention, refused all efforts to reduce the role of the general populace and enhance any role for elites.
The overwhelming faith of most of the Founders is visible for all to see in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments which leave all powers not expressly granted to the new govt. to The People.

[scooperss]

I'm cynical. I won't even pass along e-mail that talks about about something as truth without checking it out first.
Had several interesting conversations with my husband before the war. His statements that the government said blah blah blah drove me crazy.
Finally drug him to the computer and showed him UN reports on saddam and WMD's.
After that he went from a war supporter to a critic.
The truth was out there but people didn't look. The truth is out there now but people are too lazy or too trusting (how they can be is beyond me) to look.
You're right. Every time there is a conversation on c-span about Iraq, somebody calls in and said he was in on 911.
My brother-in-law considers himself to be knowledgeable but there's only one thing we agree on and that's that john mccain is not who people think he is. Otherwise he thinks we should have nuked the whole ME and saddam had WMD's and he was behind 911.

[jsarets]

Do we honestly believe that Bush wouldn't have invaded Iraq, as he had been dead-set on doing since before he announced his candidacy for president, even if the public wasn't buying the 9/11 link? No, because that wasn't even the starring argument.

George Tenet was right about the WMD argument being a slam-dunk, even if it wasn't really true. Back in 2002, very few even on the progressive fringe would have expressed certainty that Saddam Hussein did not have WMD. Nobody could prove that he didn't.

The argument from the left, as expressed by Barack Obama for example, was that Saddam Hussein is a petty dictator with out-sized global ambitions that must be contained but will ultimately fall victim to the same fate as any other petty dictator.

We couldn't have invaded Iraq without the imagery of 9/11, but the public supported the war because we didn't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. We were told that Saddam posed an existential national security threat, and at the time it seemed a lot more prudent to listen to the hawks than to trust the doves who were saying that Saddam was more bark than bite.

At its core, the public bought into a "better safe than sorry" argument. We didn't realize that there would be consequences if our justifications for war were ultimately discredited. That's a level of political sophistication that is difficult to expect even from well-educated laypeople.

[milo9]

I think in modern terminoligy, populists denotes a movement that advocates that the middle and working classes not be driven down to serf status; while the powerful are elevated to a medieval royalty class.

I look around and don't see a populist movement in the classical sense.

[Skepticat]

Unfortunately Mr Shenkman raises an uncomfortable truth.
In recent times the USA seems to have indeed become a DUMB-ocracy where legions of stupids have eagerly enabled the corrupt to misrule -and then return the very same rogues to office again. At least 28% if not more would still eagerly re-elect the same scoundrels. So much for "peasant wisdom" . As Pogo said " we have met the enemy and he is us.

However rule by elites is not a solution - that was the problem.

A group of greedy neocons shared Mussolini's belief "The people are mud" - and used the not so noble lie to swindle the citizens they were supposed to govern. The ideology may change in the future but this betrayal will continue to happen unless the citizens collectively smarten up and demand better.

[Titonwan]

I wasn't fooled. I don't trust people and it works for me. The gerbils that watched this all unfold are to blame. God help idiots because I won't. Case in point? Ron Paul. Only the established power really had a problem with him. But thanks to corporate media the gerbils were parroting their rhetoric. Obama is playing this game to an extent- just to get the gerbils on board. Hopefully after that we'll see some RADICAL change! Hell, getting back to normal would be radical.

[Spinobobot]

I'm glad you raise this point. I have serious reservations about populism. For instance, look at the response of conservatives to unpopular court rulings that expand civil liberties--attacks on "activist judges" that are "unaccountable" to the people. As was noted in a recent New York Times article, though, the US is the only nation in the world that elects judges. I won't repeat here the arguments for an independent judiciary, but there are clear advantages especially when it comes to ensuring the rights of minority groups.

The problem, I think, is an overextension of egalitarianism. We have forgotten about the advantages of expertise in decision-making. In matters of scientific policy, say concerning global warming or science education, wouldn't it make the most sense to have scientists play a major role in setting policy? The people, as well as their predominantly non-expert representatives, lack the knowledge to choose wisely. Shouldn't those who are capable of making the best decisions be the ones who have the most power in deciding?

It's sad the way that "elite" has become a bad word, but the fact of the matter is that in certain areas, people are not equal. (This is not to say that some groups are superior to others; I'm just talking about individuals here.) Populism is but a stone's throw away from demagoguery, fascism, and tyranny. The founders were wise in their reservations about ceding too much power to the people.

[BADEN]

I suppose it depends on who "WE THE PEOPLE" are - there are parallel universes at work here that transcends party affiliation, class affiliation, religious affiliation.

It's called the "HAVES" and the "HAVE NOTS".

It's called rampant out-of-control greed in the name of "Capitalism" (I've got mine, you get yours, but don't take mine").

It's call self - ish - ness - with a small 's'.

[Rick Shenkman - Huffpost Blogger]

In the book I on at length about who We the People are. It's a myth, conjured up by pols to create a fictional community whose interests are identical. In fact of course this is a diverse country with multiple interests, as Madison noted even in the 18th century. Therefore no single group can claim the mantle of The People--or truly govern in its name.

I hope that helps clarify things.

[xhibi]

I think some of you are missing the point of the article, but the author makes it a bit muddy too.

Or, there were several points he wanted to make.

Either way, the point I got is that there are a bunch of taboos in America and American politics, most probably instilled by the political cast over the years with anything but democratic intentions.

And one of those taboos is that public opinion is God, and that anything that is less than pandering to the people or at least not populisms, is dangerous for politics. What about that fact that about 70% of the people think that 9/11 was caused either by Iraq or by our own government? That is a public opinion, isn't it?

There are some very dumb people and very dumb things that a lot of people believe in America, and that is a fact.

Like, if you are a politician and you don't wear a flag pin all the time, you might not be patriotic.

Or the notion that, if you are a war veteran and/or POW, you have foreign policy experience. I mean how stupid is that notion? If you are a military person you have war experience, and if you're POW you have jail experience. How is that foreign policy experience?

This and other taboos like this are why most democratic nations in Europe and elsewhere have those notions of "Americans are stupid" and the likes.

[Rick Shenkman - Huffpost Blogger]

What I argue in the book is that we have a 10 alarm fire out of control and need to take notice. The fire? It's the gross ignorance of millions of Americans.

Why don't we notice this?

Because of the myth of The People. It's such a powerful taboo to criticize The People that we don't even notice the taboo.

We need the courage to face it. It's our most pressing democracy issue considering that more than half the people in this country were so misinformed about 9-11 as to think Saddam was behind the attack.

But it will take courage to break this taboo. Do we have the courage?

[MSB]

Rick,

I love your post. It might just be my own bias and naïveté, but I have always felt that our democracy is failing because our citizens are frankly, stupid.

There is an inherent paradox in a democracy that insists upon selfless and honest leadership. This leadership must find the questioning of its decisions as essential. In effect, the leader(s) must encourage the public to question the mandates and policies stemming from leadership (the public). An effective, and successful democracy MUST contain an informed and educated population. This population MUST have the capacity for critical thought so as to be prepared for such an essential democratic function. As critical thinking is the lifeblood of true democracy, education must be the cornerstone of a democratic government. This education must be empirical and logical; the philosophical added as critical thought established.

So, what true democracy demands is responsibility and tolerance. These are two ideals that are completely missing from our current national debate. In our country, as you allude to, it is entirely appropriate to give equal time to all ideas in a national dialog. While I would agree with the notion that we should be presenting all ideas no matter how far-fetched, we should also be free to mock the silliest of them. The problem is that the poorly educated citizens are not informed or honest enough to discern the silly from the relevant. (See the current administration.)

[DrSue]

The problem is that people are busy and count on the press to keep them informed. Go back and review the drumbeat the media created for war. War=Ratings and they knew it.

It is the fourth estate, not the people, who are failing America. They didn't have the guts to stand up to Bush and are just as responsible for the war.

Elitism and pure logic - how at home you would feel as a fascist.

[111]

Polls / statistics are manipulated.

Our form of government, a constitutional republic, requires that we trust the people we elect to 1) represent us 2) be honest 3) protect our interests. The problem is with our elected officials, those people entrusted with making informed decisions on our behalf.

We the people are not at fault for what has happened in Iraq - the fault lies with the people elected to represent us and with the president.

[Rick Shenkman - Huffpost Blogger]

To me it's a cop out to blame the leaders.

Sure Bush screwed up and so did the MSM.

But if millions hadn't been taken in by the propaganda we wouldn't have had a war.

As I argue in the book, if pols were angels we wouldn't need smart voters. But pols aren't angels, so we do.

[jhNY]

HuffPost's Pick

The Founding Fathers, as a class, were planters and merchants and professional men, and they originally extended the full rights of citizenship to white men of property-- people like themselves. They feared the tyranny of ordinary men, who by definition would always outnumber themselves, and they installed several impediments to direct democracy: the electoral college, the senate (senators were not elected by popular vote till later in our history) and the supreme court. I believe it was Alexander Hamilton who once said in response to someone's invocation of the the rights of the people, 'the people, Sir, are an ass.'

But the story of the nation is indeed the story of the expansion of rights originally recognized for white men of property only to include first the propertyless, then Blacks, then women. And we have all benefitted.

Yet for much of the history of the republic, the People have been under the manipulative assault of the Powerful by means of propaganda, information control and demagoguery, from which malign influence they have often been misled into terrible acts. And it's their fault. The People's fault, in that in their hands alone is the responsibility to become informed and to maintain independence and nimbleness of thought and analysis. It's a big responsibility, visited on very ordinary folks. But that's the way it works. After all, it's the People's government. At least in theory. Perhaps you'd like to think of it as the downside of democracy. But it's all we've got.

[speakingtruth2power]

Liberal populism is the cure for the cancer of corporate fascism.

Conservative, self-righteous populism is just more BUSHIT!!!!!!!!

[jesselee26]

in 2003, i was one of twelve people on a college campus who joined a student organization in protest to the impending invasion of iraq. granted i live in red state kentucky, but within a university of tens of thousands of people in pursuit of "higher learning" only twelve of us joined! amazing!

to me, that illustrates the problem with the trend of bowing down to every poll and demographic whim out there. our society has proven itself to be in general, shallow, obtuse and intellectually lazy, with no capacity for self reflection or curiosity.

did the government lie? yes. did a lot of well intentioned people get mislead? yes. but a people that doesn't question the authority it elects for itself, and allows itself to be won over by congratulatory pandering... what do we expect? it would be disrespectful to a lot of service men and women who lost their lives in this war to say that we deserved it... but i'll say we definitely could've done better by them than to send them off the way we did.