I was struck by the Norweigian response to the terrorist attacks in Oslo. In an interview, an English-speaking questioner seemed to be pressing Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg to admit that perhaps Norway needed more strict anti-terrorism laws, or an expansion of that government's power over its people.
"The Noweigian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation."
The Guardian
Contrast this with our own country's response to political hostage-taking being concluded this week by the Tea Party faction of the Republican party. The proposed solution is, in essence, LESS democracy. The plan, as it has been leaked to the public, involves a "Super-Congress" of 12 persons to speak for the 535 Members of Congress...
who are supposed to speak for the 300 million of us. How is that democratic, let alone "more democratic?" What that is, is the act of both parties abdicating their right and their responsibility to act in the common interest in order to appease political hostage-taking by a faction of the far right.
But note some of the other biases: the unspoken expectation from the English-speaking press was, in the wake of a national tragedy, that Norway would compromise its traditional values of inclusive democracy and return to some kind of anti-terrorist Star Chamber. PM Stoltenberg indicated his belief in the opposite, that the correct way to fight racist terrorism is with greater openness and greater democracy.
If only we had a single leader of consequence of PM Stoltenberg's stature here in the US...
(ahem)
But anyway, I bet people never thought that when they were raising money, volunteering at phone banks, or pounding pavements for Barack Obama a reduction in the net amount of democracy (small d) is what they thought they were getting.
Now that we know better, I have to confess that I've wanted to hit on this point ever since the Democratic party took back the Congress in 2006: once the progressive/liberal/DFH side has some power, how do we transform that power to expand democracy (again, small d) in order to ensure a truly "more perfect union" in the future?
I'm fairly certain that the answer does not lie in "Gangs of Six" or twelve or special commissions that meet behind closed doors. I think the mere fact that they are commonly referred to as "gangs" is indicative of the relative amount of public participation they involve.
The bottoim line is that I was hoping (there's that word) that the Democrats would recognize that democracy (small d) is their best interest as the liberal/progressive/DFH party. My bad, I thought I was part of their constituency.
But I wasn't the only one who made that error. Millions of other Americans did as well, and the frustration I see at Daily Kos and the frustration echoed even in places like Redstate illustrates well just how out-of-touch our leaders are with their people.
Polls are an imperfect metric, to be sure, but large majorities of Americans favored single payer, but that was not even seriously considered as an option by the Obama Administration. Large majorities of Americans want the US out of Iraq and Afghanistan, yet the Administration is cajoling the Iraqi government to allow a significant force to remain in Iraq past the termination of the Iraq-US Security Agreement at the end of the year, and Afghanistan seems to be following a similar trajectory. Large majorities of Americans wanted to see the deficit reduced by increases in taxes. Large majorities want to see the Bush tax cuts expire. Yet there is no increase in revenues in the current deal, and the expiry of the Bush tax cuts is not about to happen anytime soon, and as Kos indicated, might not happen at all, despite the promises of the President.
The solution, as I see it, like PM Stoltenberg, for our failure of representative democracy at the national level is more democracy, if not at the national level then at the local level.
Lobbyists and interests have power in Washington and in statehouses because those are the levels of government that are harder for constituents to reach. Advocates and activists can usually have a much greater impact at town/village/city/county levels, and in some smaller states (I'm looking at you, Vermont) the state level as well. Not surprisingly, those states are often better run and have less lobbyist pressure than larger ones. States like Alaska are the exceptions that prove the rule, because the North Slope oil money is an interest worth pursuing far in excess of what the state's 675,000 citizens would otherwise merit.
In order to really succeed, democrats must work for the death of the Democratic and Republican parties in their current forms in the interest of granting more democracy and more legitimacy to Americans as a whole.
I believe that a system works better with ten parties than with two. The moderate middle 15%, which often votes Republican, is more amenable to persuasion and pressure if detached from the rabid 25% that make up the Republican base. Likewise, Democrats have a tendency to shift rightward to capture that 15% where elections are won and lost in a two-party, first-past-the-post political system. If a more parliamentary or coalition approach were used, the slow-motion train wreck we have all been watching in horror for the past few weeks over the debt ceiling would have been what it should have been: a no-confidence vote in the center-right coalition government followed by the formation of an alternative government which would have excluded the 25% Rabid Tea Partiers and included some coalition of progressive and centrist parties to get the damn thing done without gimmickry. Which, polls have indicated, is more or less what the average person wanted.
In order to lead, places that are the deepest blue can lead by trusting in the generally progressive nature of their populations (Hello again, Vermont!) by building multiparty systems at the state and local levels which will grow alternate parties and give voice to those segments of belief. Yes, even Vermont's Tea Party might deserve a seat or two at Vermont's table. By being more inclusive and more representative of people's actual beliefs, the system is strengthened by being somewhat less susceptible to influence by monied or special interests (which we thought we were getting with President Obama). Bringing the Galtians and the radical left into the discussion has the benefit of hearing their good ideas and exposing their delusional ones to the harsh light of reason and discussion. Less marginalized, they often tend to become more reasonable, especially when having to work in coalitions. This has been the experience of countries like Norway, where parties that identify as "conservative" have governed with policies far to the left of what our supposed "center-left" party has generated.
I have seen plenty of good ideas for such reform here at Daily Kos: Instant-Runoff Voting and proportional representation are good examples of these. But people need to see American examples of how parliamentary systems can work here. Unfortunately, folks with money and power can easily scoff at successful foreign systems, as was the case with socialized health care and Michael Moore's SiCKO, and that ploy works.
But once an innovation takes root, and once alternatives to the Democratic and Republican parties exist and are seen as viable participants in the political process, rather than gadflies or kooks, that innovation will lead to replication.
The people want good government. The people want democracy.
I believe more democracy will help us to confront the troubles facing our country. Less democracy will lead to our decline and failure as a nation-state. As a progressive community I urge you to consider ways to expand representation in your communities to save the country as a whole.