I woke up today feeling controversial. So, when I sat down a few minutes ago to begin this column, this is what I wrote:
I hate democracy. I love America. This works for me because America isn’t a democracy.
Should I ever decide to run for public office, I’m guessing these words will be ominously recited in a message approved by my opponent. But I’m sticking to them, for this sentiment was born long before my current combative whim. I can trace it back to the high school classroom where I sat a number of years ago, studying ancient Greece.
We were discussing Athens, the closest governmental system to pure democracy ever attempted (though a minority of the total population formed the public assembly). My teacher asked about the pros and cons of the system.
The pros were obvious: Everyone gets a say in the policy that affects him or her; all perspectives have value; this value is retained when all perspectives are considered; and powers are less corruptible when all have equal power.
And then he asked for the cons. Someone mentioned there wasn’t viable space to hold all of a nation’s citizens. Another mentioned time—coming to decisions would take too long.
These were valid concerns, yet I couldn’t help but realize that they weren’t very tall hurdles in the modern day. Everyone could vote on all the issues every day by using smart phones. But then, my teacher added:
“Also, think about the quality of the debate. They can’t have their whole population spending all day getting informed about the issues the polis is facing. So people don’t know what’s going on. And they can’t discuss—imagine a debate in a Greek amphitheater, hundreds of people lining up to participate. You can’t have a constructive dialogue about best policies in that situation. Imagine sound-bitey speeches and overly simplistic concepts catered to the uninformed masses. It’s not exactly a recipe for good decision-making.”
So this was why the United States was never a pure democracy—why we were conceived as a republic.
Republics are about specialization. Anyone in the modern world understands specialization’s benefits. I don’t spend days reading manuals on how to fix my car’s air conditioning. Instead, I take it to a mechanic who knows how to fix a car.
Say the nation is considering something like engaging a Middle Eastern country that has used chemical weapons to slaughter as many as 110,000 of its citizens. The people who make this decision should have studied the situation for as long as humanly possible, which will allow them to identify which experts they need to consult so as to begin weighing their options.
For a long time, I heard people talk about the situation in Syria—or even issues that are easier to grasp, like abortion and gay marriage—and was often offended by how hideously uninformed they are. I got cynical. I thought people were stupid.
But I wouldn’t consider someone to be stupid if he doesn’t know how to fix a car. It’s not his specialty, so his opinion just doesn’t matter.
So why do we try so hard to make our opinions matter in the political sphere? Politicians give speeches exalting our great democracy, not our great republic. From day one in school, I have been told that my own opinion is of paramount importance no matter how qualified I am to hold it.
My entire political world strongly resembles that Athenian amphitheater: Politicians give speeches full of sound bites, catering their messages to the woefully uninformed; too many people line up to talk, so they shout over each other in order to get a word in; pundits rage from TV screens; my friends and I rage at dinner tables; and none of us know what we’re talking about.
We then judge candidates’ decision-making skills based on how well their decisions match up with our own. In debates, we don’t provide candidates with a situation and the relevant information and watch their decision-making process. Rather, we go down a checklist and see if they agree with each of our own unstudied inclinations, which really winds up turning us into a direct democracy. The policies that have the most popular support, embodied by a candidate, are voted in.
Politicians are supposed to make their platforms, before they even start their jobs, and then never deviate—when the whole point of their job is to make the best decision by processing the new information they receive!
When we vote, we’re hiring someone for the job of making the government’s high level decisions. We’ve somehow got this idea in our heads that it’s OK—that it’s ideal—to hire yes men, people who agree with us as much as possible instead of people who simply represent the best of our capabilities and ideals.
We can change this. The campaign process should be the interview process. Counterintuitive as it may seem, let’s not make it about the issues. Instead, let’s figure out a way to measure candidates’ intelligence and education, their composure and their kindness. Let’s find a method of measuring candidates’ judgment, their knowledge and their integrity.
Let’s face it: I get Bashar al-Assad and—who’s the other one from Egypt? Well, anyway, I get them mixed up. I don’t want myself running the country. I want someone better.
Ellie Schaack is a Trinity junior. Her column runs every other Monday.
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