It’s always lovely to have a destination, even if it changes along the road. Americans have never been unified about what the town looks like at the end of the road. But there was a time when disagreements over which route to take didn’t turn into food fights. Although they’re fun, someone has to clean up the mess.
There’s no better way to start a food fight in a representative democracy like ours than by tossing a virulent strain of populism into the fray. It mimics the mechanism of one-person/one-vote direct democracy, which makes it popular. The popularity derives from the idea that “My Voice is Heard.”
Fortunately, during the Enlightenment, some industrious intellectuals put the idea to thought and debate, played the tape all the way through, and decided, “That’s a terrible idea.” Thankfully, the scrappy, somewhat dysfunctional crew that created our Constitution agreed with them.
The debates were acrimonious at times, but they finally arrived at the system still in place: three branches of government, checks and balances, and all the other stuff that bored us in civics class.
Even so, they knew it was impossible to eliminate the specter of populism from the equation entirely, and it kept them up drinking at night.
A representative democracy empowers the government with the mandate to smooth out sudden shocks to the body politic. Carrying on with my questionable road trip metaphor, would you rather have a pleasant driver focused on the road or one who is tailgating for two hundred miles and constantly jamming on the brakes to avoid collision?
The latter is populism. Everyone gets whiplash. And since any populist movement worth noting requires branding based around a demagogue, they eventually die off.
But no worries, the Constitution allows for cleaning up the mess.
Peace out,
