I'm reading a terrific book, Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined Its Citizens and Privatized Its Public, by Matthew Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg. The book is about how we have been changed from a popular democracy to a personal democracy, a democracy where the citizen typically faces government as a consumer and customer individually and privately rather than collectively as a member of a mobilized public.
The tale is complicated and about far more than the rise of conservative populism over the past decades, or what I call "The Invasion of the Body Politics Snatchers." Democrats and Republicans alike have had a hand in transforming the character of our democratic politics.
Crenson and Ginsberg show how democracy in the United States in the 19th century encouraged collective participation as the two parties used patronage to build strength, voter solidarity, and a mobilized electorate. This began with Andrew Jackson but extended throughout the rest of the 19th century up until the Progressive era, when reformers decided to replace political patronage and citizen administrators with expert, career personnel. In a similar way, and after WWII, labor was weakened by Taft-Hartley and collective bargaining was undercut and strong unions began to take a beating.
The state militias over time encouraged strong political participation and careers in politics. Abraham Lincoln first came to public notice in his brief stint in the Illinois militia as a leader. By the end of the 19th century the idea of a small, professional army that is permanent party relegated the militias, and ultimately the National Guard, to the back seat.
Even the financing of our wars and raising taxes through citizen bonds and other devices is part of this story.
During the Great Society citizen mobilization with various community action programs was soon replaced by "public interest" groups, conservative and liberal alike, who basically mobilize nothing more than mailing addresses, money, and who rely on foundation support to keep afloat. These are interest groups who operate without real membership, without mobilizing active participation by large numbers.
The upshot is that democratic mobilization of citizens on behalf of, say, national health care reform, is a pipe dream. The result is we rely on others to tell us what happens, each time this issue fails, instead of joining with thousands of others in organized action, playing a direct role ourselves in struggling for change.
I have written here about my time in New York waiting for Mario to run for president and holding my breath with the thought that we might finally have a shot at a decent national health plan. While we had 12 town meetings across the state on the issue, and while Citizen Action played a big role in mobilizing interest, I basically functioned as the health department expert adviser, cut off from meaningful democratic participation.
The book even helps me understand my time as mayor of Bisbee, Arizona. Because democratic participation is so limited and sporadic, the result is that a handful of "activists" can dominate the local newspapers, pretending to represent the public.
How much better it would be if there were meaningful voter
participation during and between elections, giving us a full taste of
democracy.
When the Supreme Court was deliberating during the Bush-Gore impasse there was hardly a peep out of the electorate. What would have happened if hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters descended on Washington and refused to leave until the vote counting in Florida was allowed to proceed? I know, people will say this is what Mexico did. Well, maybe Mexico got it right. Isn't it time that officials were more fearful of an aroused and active public? If more people took to the streets about Iraq couldn't we shorten this disastrous war much sooner?
Instead of some vague imaginary, the idea of the "public" in our democracy should stand for acting together, collectively, in support of political goals instead of answering telephone surveys or sending e-mails to your local member of Congress.
What's bleak about the book is that we are deep into a systemic transformation of our democracy in ways we still don't truly understand, with few good ideas about how to turn things around.
Matthew Crenson was one of my professors at Hopkins and came there as a young assistant professor as I entered graduate school in 1969. His specialty is urban politics and he got his Ph. D. at Chicago where, as I recall, he studied under Edward Banfield, the nation's leading authority on urban machines and urban politics and democratic mobilization. Today, Crenson is our leading authority on this type of politics. In his class on urban politics he regaled us with tales of Baltimore machine politics, one of the last important political machines in the U.S. He served on my dissertation committee.
My time at Hopkins was wonderful if a little strange. We lived in DC
and I commuted every day by the train to Philadelphia in the morning
and in the evenings. I was 10 years older than the rest of the
students, in my early 30s. Crenson wasn't much older than the other
students and a terrific teacher. I had spent time in Baltimore with
Carole, early in our marriage, but really never got to know this
fascinating city first-hand.
I wound up in public health, much to my good fortune, and I had some
wonderful teachers at one of the best universities in the U.S. I
regret losing touch.
I did manage to watch Hopkins defeat Duke at lacrosse a few weeks
back. I had to keep my mouth shut around our Duke friends. Hopkins blew a big lead and then almost lost it, but held on at
the last minute. I had never seen lacrosse until my time at Hopkins,
and then that's almost all you saw around the campus as students
everywhere had their sticks out, practicing and playing.
A coincidence: I have just discovered Laura Lippman, a mystery writer whose main character, Tess Monaghan, is a woman private eye and former newspaper reporter in Baltimore, as Lippman was. Carole is from Thurmont, Maryland and I'm enjoying reading Lippman's novels about a wonderful town with the best seafood in the world. I just finished The Last Place, another terrific book.
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