There is an expression in
politics referring to how legislation is made; it is likened to the making of
sausage, the public display of which is not generally desired. Furthermore, it
is unrealistic and even counter-productive for the American electorate to know
the intricate mechanisms by which a bill makes its way through Congress before
being signed by the president to become a law. Nevertheless, the strategic and
self-interested manipulation of public perception by elected representatives in
order that the electorate will have an overstated positive view of its
representatives, who can have more discretion and thus power with the vote of
confidence, is counter to an effective democratic republic, which after all is
distinct from direct democracy. I contend that the desire to falsely manipulate
popular opinion went into President Biden’s address on his decision to serve
only one term, as well as in the comments of high ranking members of his party
in support of his decision not to run for reelection. That there might be more
political capital, not to mention a better legacy, in being straight with the
American people is a possibility that seems to elude American politicians.
American political philosophy posits unintentional beneficial consequences from the pursuit of self-interest, which springs from self-oriented love, as does Adam Smith’s price-oriented theory of competitive markets. That such benefits are possible does not mean that a self-centric pursuit of one’s interest is itself normatively good, and thus laudatory. Indeed, Smith is careful to condition even the unintended beneficial economic consequence of the individual’s pursuit of one’s interest on the presence of competition wherein no individual seller, or oligopolistic group thereof, can sent a price by fiat. Smith even enveloped his economic theory on his other major work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the title of which speaks for itself even if such sentiments are in practice hardly strong enough against the love of greed even in a competitive market. Translated into political terms, the check-and-balance vital function in the separation of powers, or branches, of the U.S. Government, and even between the governments of the member states and that of the union, is an institutional means by which the ambition of individual representatives and even governmental bodies can be held back from overreaching at the expense of the liberty of the people. It is vital that the self-interest qua political ambition of elected representatives (as well as their respective appointees) be held in check not only by criminal law, but also by the very arrangement of political institutions within a government, and even between governments in a federal system.
Of course, in addition to institutional
checks and balances, elections should have consequences. An officeholder who deftly
trades monetary favors (aka campaign contributions) for support on legislation
favorable to the private interest (and thus the officeholder’s own interest in
gaining more power) but unfavorable to the public interest or at least the
interests of the electorate can be voted out of office at the next election.
However, the stealth that the elected representatives usually use to enact such
private trades render the electorate’s judgment and thus decision suboptimal.
In short, a lot goes on behind the scenes that is pertinent to an
electorate’s ability to exercise effective judgment in holding officeholders
accountable from the standpoint of the electorate’s interests. It is in
the political interest of elected representatives to create and sustain the
impression publicly of being worthy of the public trust, so more is needed to
counter this natural inclination among the powerful in line with the central principle
of a republic that the electorate—the popular sovereign—is superior to its
elected representatives—the governmental sovereign. For an agent to willfully
mislead a principal, taking advantage of there being too much “daylight”
existing between an elected representative and the electorate, is essentially
to turn a republic upside down.
Speaking from the Oval Office on
television on his decision not to run for reelection, U.S. President Joe Biden
said that “saving our democracy” is “more important than any title.”[1]
Actually, former U.S. presidents were in the practice of retaining the title.
At the time, President Carter, President Bush, President Clinton, and President
Obama were still alive. So, President Biden could expect to continue to be
referred to as such after his term as president. It was power that he was
giving up by not running for reelection. Although he casted his decision as one
of voluntarily putting the interests of his party and country above his political
ambition, the fact what that his two top advisors had just days earlier
explained to him why it was virtually impossible for him to win reelection. Additionally,
according to CNN, “Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi privately told President
Joe Biden . . . that polling shows that the president cannot defeat Donald
Trump and that Biden could destroy Democrats’ chances of winning the House in
November.”[2]
The press also reported that Pelosi also told the president that she would make
the polling numbers public if he did not bow out on his own within in a week or
so. Because the president took “the easy way” rather than “the hard way,” Sen.
Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ majority leader in the U.S. Senate, used a press
conference to characterize Biden’s decision as selfless and patriotic, when it
was actually a realistic assessment that he would lose power anyway by losing
the election. Because Biden took Pelosi’s “easy way” to make the decision on
his own, Schumer even said that he “deeply” loved the president. If it was
love, it was a very conditional sort.
As if Schumer’s declaration of
love were not over the top enough, Biden “presented himself as a truth-teller”
during his address. He even said, “The truth is that the sacred cause of this
nation is bigger than any one of us,” as if he had just selflessly given up power
to save democracy in America from a tyranny under Don Trump rather than just
been shown the exit by the other top leaders of the Democratic Party.[3]
He made no reference to his elderly infirmities and how they could be expected
to be worse during a second term, or the intractable electoral math, which in
turn was due to the obvious display of the toll that age had already taken on
his body during the presidential debate a month earlier.
In short, he was essentially
pushed out by his own party because he refused to do the responsible (and selfless)
thing by leveling with the American people that he should not serve a second
term even if he could. His decision was not really voluntary, as if he was
giving up something that he could otherwise have (a second term). His decision
was neither selfless nor patriotic, for he had held on to his nomination even
when it was clear that he would be too old to be president in a term that would
not even begin for six months. He did not “fall on his sword.” Like Schumer’s
false declaration of “deep love” for the president, Biden’s claim of giving up
power for the good of his party and the nation was a lie, even as he had the
audacity to say in his brief address, “When I was elected, I promised to always
level with you, to tell you the truth.”[4]
My point is not to criticize Joe
Biden or even other leaders of the Democratic Party. Decades earlier, when I
was a student at Yale, I had been very impressed in a small-group setting—at what
used to be called Master’s Teas at Yale—listening to Sen. Biden discuss the
federal deficits and debt and the implications for the international financial
system. I raise the case of his public address on his retirement from politics
to make a broader claim.
The president said in his
address, “The great thing about America is here, kings and dictators do not
rule. The people do. History is in your hands. The power is in your hands. The idea
of America—lies in your hands.”[5]
This case shows just how much the people’s elected representatives can mislead
the people in civic matters. The reality behind President Biden’s decision not
to run for reelection was much different, much less stellar, than what the president
and many elected Democrats presented to the people. The upshot is that the
elected representatives, including the president of the United States, are less
saintly—less willing to be selflessly patriotic—than the electorate has been
led to believe. The need to keep an eye on officials is greater than what is
implied by Biden’s address. Government of the people, through elected representatives,
is not at altruistic as the political elite, for selfish reasons, would like
the people to believe. Rather than trying to save American democracy, Pelosi
and Schumer did not want to see the president’s reelection campaign result in
Republican control of both chambers of Congress. This issue here is thus not
Joe Biden, or even the Democratic Party; rather, the problem is how little the
American people actually see and know of the real motives and strategies of the
political elite, which includes both parties.
Assessing candidates at election
time is likely not as effective as the American electorate believes on account of being subtly
manipulated from afar; more is kept from the electorate than it realizes
concerning the people running for public office. On Capitol Hill and in the
West Wing, more effort than the American people realize is put into how things
will be perceived by the people. For example, it is enough that the people
perceive members of Congress being vocally critical of powerful
CEOs, such as Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs in the wake of the 2008
financial crisis and Mark Zuckerberg of (formerly) Facebook during the user-data
privacy scandal, who contribute lots of money to political campaigns (which
generally is not well publicized), without actual legislation being enacted contrary
to the financial interests of the CEOs or their companies. It is enough that
the public sees angry elected representatives. The superficial
implication is that they are protecting the public interest so the electorate
can have confidence in its public officials rather than having to double the
effort to disentangle big business from Congress and the White House.
To put a private, or partial, interest
above the public good is to doom the later to interests that care little of the
good of the whole relative to the welfare of the part. The good of a whole is
never the same as that of one of its parts unless all of the parts are
identical. The interests of the United States do not reduce to those of Texas
any more that those of the European Union reduce to those of France. This is why
the political dominance of a large state in either union at the federal level
is problematic, such as was evinced by Germany in E.U. policy during the
European debt crisis.
The private (including political)
interests of an elected representative are, I submit, not generally speaking
well known by voters, who in turn are tasked with assessing the qualities of
candidates rather than merely voting on policy positions. Perhaps more of the
latter could be decided by referendum, leaving to elections the primary matter
of the sort of people who are to be elected to serve the public interest. Moreover,
popular sovereignty could stand to be strengthened, given the distance between
elected political elites and their electorates. Simply put, that distance
should be reduced, and journalism can go only so far, especially with
journalists relying of officeholders for interviews.
In the film, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s dog Toto pulls open the curtain that had been hiding the actual Wizard from view. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! This is one of the all-time iconic lines in cinema. And Toto too! is not far behind. It is in the Wizard’s interest to keep his actual condition—that he is just a person rather than a giant head with raging flames on both sides—hidden from view so he can continue to exercise extraordinary power by instilling fear. It is interesting to ponder what this uncovering might look like writ-large in America’s representative democracy. I submit that pulling open the curtain that acts as a beltway around Washington D.C., formerly a swamp, is vitally needed to restore the proper relationship between popular and governmental sovereignty in the United States.
2. M.J. Lee, Jamie Gangel, and Jeff Zeleny, “Pelosi Privately Told Biden Polls Show He Cannot Win and Will Take Dow the House; Biden Responded with Defensiveness,” CNN, July 18, 2024.
3. Eli Stokols and Lauren Egan, “Biden Is Passing the Torch ‘to Unite Our Nation,” Politico, July 24, 2024.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
