We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
-- Preamble, US Constitution
Remember back in the 1990s when boatloads of academic morons debated "the end of history?" The argument ran that, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, democracy and free-market capitalism had prevailed, and that the rest of time would be merely about sorting out the details of global democratization.
But the democratization that once seemed inexorable is now increasingly in retreat. Credit George W. Bush and company with a significant role in the rollback – really the growing crisis – of democracy.
It all started in 2000. (Please join below the jump)
First a word of background. I am married to a Chinese ex-pat, who became an American citizen in the 1990s. We know many other Chinese ex-pats through social and professional circles. In the 1990s, many of these folks used to proudly self-identify as being of the "Tiananmen Square" generation. Upon getting US citizenship, almost all the expats I knew well took their civic obligations very seriously, registering and voting in every election – debating candidates and ballot initiatives far more seriously and earnestly than most of my non-immigrant friends.
Though many became US citizens, Chinese emigrants usually maintain strong interest in, and ties back to, China. Social gatherings would often include discussions of how democracy would come to China, with the consensus that it would surely follow economic growth as the day follows the night. By that point, most Chinese had already concluded that their country had played it smarter than Russia. By emphasizing economic growth before openness, their country was able to concentrate and forge forward toward the prosperity that would support democracy, while Russia had essentially fallen apart. Whether this thesis was true or not, it was still something of a point of determination and pride that China would one day, at last, join the world’s leading democracies. Democracy would surely come to China within a generation.
Having gotten past the concocted scandals of Whitewater and Monicagate, with the economy booming, my household was optimistic that the 2000 elections would result in broad repudiations of Republican excesses and a return toward sanity in our politics, and that the United States might continue to light the way for other emerging democracies.
Entering the Tunnel
Then George W. Bush and company stole the 2000 election. When one steps back beyond the legal debates and technicalities, there is absolutely no question that more people awoke that day in Florida and went to the polls with the intention of voting for Al Gore than went with the intention of voting for George W. Bush.
(In their utterly botched post-election strategy, the Gore team decided to stumble into the Republican game of trying to count some ballots not others, disqualify some ballots, not others, and squandered their moral advantage, utterly dooming them when they pursued weak legal strategies and made tactical mistakes and miscalculations in the recount game. The simple refrain from day 1, and forever after, should have been count every vote. People seem to forget, but there was nothing inevitable about the election being decided in the middle of the night by the Supreme Court -- Gore's team got out-played. It boggles my mind that after that kind of failure under pressure, when it really, really counted – setting aside his self-congratulatory capitulation in the name of "national unity" – that anyone could view Gore as a potential Democratic savior today. How many think Bill Clinton or Lyndon Johnson or John F. Kennedy or even Harry Truman would have gone down so haplessly?)
Though little noted in the US, the lesson Bush’s electoral theft taught the world was that democracy -- far from being inevitable -- didn’t even work in the United States.
In fact, democracy didn’t really even seem to matter when such an obvious miscarriage of justice could float by with so little objection by the American people. (Remember how Bush winning the White House after losing the national popular vote by 500k votes was at least, surely going to result in the abolition of the electoral college?).
Of course, democracy is much more than plebiscites (the lesson that, remarkably, neocons only seemed to learn after the disastrous melt-down in Iraq).
The Republican assault on our democracy would soon permeate beyond elections to besiege all corners of government and all articles of the Constitution.
Dick Cheney's struggles to exorcise the demons floating in his mind from the Watergate era merged seemlessly with the dottering of an oblivious President, who surrounded himself with half-witted sycophans, and a Congress with a blueprint to reconstruct a towering, baroque version of the 19th century spoils system under the ideological cloak of "privatization."
But it was a plebiscite – the election of 2004 – that really brought home how broken our democracy is, and which invited even darker interpretations abroad, in countries formerly struggling toward democracy, about the real desirability of democratic institutions in the modern era. Beyond the rise of non-secure, paperless, electronic voting – which my foreign friends all assumed had surely been at least marginally abused – it was jarring that anywhere near half of Americans were willing to vote for Bush and to return Republican majorities to Congress.
How was this possible after all their appalling post-9/11 atrocities and blunders? The 2004 election – after Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Tora Bora, and the unfolding disaster on the ground in Iraq – suggested to people elsewhere the world not only that democracy in the US was failing, but that the whole system of democracy, itself, did not seem to work.
It is easy to construct the cynical argument. Maybe "democracy" is all just a sham – window-dressing disguising hierarchical, militaristic, non-meritocratic kleptocracies. Places like China already have that. Why bother with the window-dressing? Further supporting this argument were the rise of Berlusconi’s Italy and Thaksin’s Thailand, where media-savvy, media-dominating corrupt right-wing regimes – borrowing heavily from the Republican playbook – were running roughshod over democratic institutions and the rule of law in those two countries.
At the same time, Iran, Russia and Venezuela have taken major steps backward toward totalitarianism, even while maintaining their nominally Democratic institutions. In these instances, huge petroleum sectors and exploding oil prices surely helped. In each case, the leading parties argued that true democratic voting and institutions designed to help provide impartial justice were hindrances to "doing what is right" by "God" or "the people" or "the masses." Soaring anti-Americanism also provided ample cover.
In this same era, expansion of the European Union also seems to have hit a wall, as have the prospects for a meaningful "EU Constitution." How many people now really expect Turkey to ever be admitted?
Countries such as Ukraine and Georgia seemed to represent progress for democracy, but now the nascent democracy in those countries looks increasingly threatened (partly thanks to Russia). And democratic institutions and progress in Mexico, Guatemala, and even Costa Rica now seem to be in trouble. Looking back to established democracies, the Economist this week reports on the dysfunction of Japan’s democracy -- partly triggered by a political stalemate resulting from the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, a situation made inevitable by Bush's world historic blunder in Iraq -- and France’s Sarkozy looks to me like another executive fascinated with the notion of expanding "executive power."
Oblivious Bushy Neocons
Meanwhile the shameless propagandists of the Bush Administration, and their apologists, have crowed about the dramatic progress toward Democracy represented by "purple fingers" in Iraq -- as millions of Iraqis voted for candidates of their own religion and/or ethnicity with little sense of what policies these candidates or parties might represent (which is only fair -- the candidates themselves had little idea of what policies they favored). These representatives subsequently took office, formed a broken government, and have accomplished essentially nothing.
Next neocons will argue that the 2 million+ Iraqi refugees is an extension of progress toward democracy – "people voting with their feet!"
Built around the engine of a domestically-focused, ruthless political-graft machine, Bush Republicans calling the shots are still utterly ignorant of the utility and tactics of "winning hearts and minds."
To a global audience, there has always been an obvious, devastating, immediate flaw in the neoconservative self-positioning that they have worked to advance the spread of democracy in the middle east and elsewhere: when they conspicuously hold so little regard for democratic institutions in the United States, how could they possibly be sincere or effective advocates for democracy elsewhere?
Not with a Bang, but a Whimper
The aftermath of the 2006 US elections can have done nothing but further shake confidence in democracy in the modern era. Democrats won a narrow Congressional majority, when a historic landslide might have been expected (how could the Republicans have done worse on their watch?).
Having that narrow majority, Democrats have squandered their popular support and done little to effectively police or reverse the policies of the most misguided, least competent administration in U.S. history. And then this Congress even – cluelessly – endorsed that Administration’s disregard of the US Constitution by passing an atrocious FISA extension.
Of our Chinese friends, about half have now changed their long-term plans and gone back to China, to try to get in on the boom. No one we know – here or there – talks about democratization in China anymore. Among those Chinese who have stayed, and live nearby, a recent social gathering revealed that many did not vote in the last couple US primary and general elections ("why bother?"). So much for the Tiananmen Square generation bringing democracy to China.
Bush policies abroad, and assaults on democratic institutions at home, by the anti-Americanism, and cynicism about democracy they have inspired, have been a huge gift to would-be tyrants and autocrats everywhere – from China (where U.S. corporations are, further, making a killing helping to create an Orwellian surveillance-state), to Iran (where the reform movement appears to have now been completely shattered), to Russia (which now has a Potemkin parliament), to North Korea (where US policy has been a particularly mind-blowing tragedy of bungles that seems to have been ignored among all the other amazing bungles), and beyond.
Bush's secret fan club extends well beyond Osama bin Laden and friends.
We’ve all appreciated the stakes of reversing the policies and corruption of the Bush administration for the future of the United States. Before we Democrats settle back into 16 more months of ineffectual posturing and whiny capitulation, I would ask that our leaders in Washington and elsewhere also think hard about what this continuing failure of our democracy could mean for the future of all humanity.
Because its clear that the world is watching, and drawing conclusions about the value and place of democracy in modern times – conclusions that would drive 10 generations of our forefathers to utter despair over the legacy and leadership we have squandered.