Bad for Democracy: How the Presidency Undermines the Power of the People
by Dana D. Nelson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Dana D. NelsonEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-09-19
ISBN: 0816656770
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
Book Reviews of Bad for Democracy: How the Presidency Undermines the Power of the People
Book Review: Excellent analysis of a serious problem, but a weak "solution"
Summary: 4 Stars
Dana Nelson has a word for what many progressives sense is wrong with presidential governance in America, from ideas of the "unitary executive" on down.
That word is "presidentialism," and needs to get on more people's lips.
That said, for progressives wedded to the Democratic half of the two-party duopoly, Nelson has bad news for you.
Carter advanced presidentialism. So did Clinton. And, in all likelihood, so will Obama if he gets elected. Kennedy did it, too; Nelson says the Green Berets may have been his presidentialist response to the "New Frontier" of Vietnam.
This is the type of book that, if you're like me, you'll have higlighter out and running over many passages. (Actually, for me, it was a pen underlining many spots, so that I could write marginal notes as well.)
Presidentialism, in a phrase, is not just presidents, and their staffs, attempting to ever-strengthen the powers of the presidency. It's also citizens -- voters -- investing the office with godlike powers, character and mystique that not only go far beyond what the Founding Fathers intended, but are actually part of what they feared about a strong presidency, as Nelson shows.
And, presidents of both parties have played on that as well.
Briefly looking at whom she identifies as the first presidentialist president, Andrew Jackson, then taking a bit longer, yet brief, look at Lincoln and his Civil War exigencies, Nelson says the first more modern threads of presidentialism start with Grover Cleveland, the first president since Jackson to seriously use his veto for political and not just constitutional reasons.
That, in turn, influenced a Ph.D. history professor at Princeton on his theories of government. A professor named Woodrow Wilson.
Then came FDR's response to the Depression, and presidentialism, primarily but by no means solely in foreign policy, has had pretty much an upward ride ever since.
Again, progressives wedded to the Democratic Party -- past presidents of both parties have worked to expand presidential power, and have worked to "play" the public to support this.
What's the problem? Nelson says that this risks becoming antidemocratic, squeezing public participation in our country's political process down to a quadrennial plebiscite at the polls.
Along with that, she said, has come the parallel rise of zero-sum politics, where discussion, as well as compromise, are disdained. Parallel to that comes the clumping of people by political pairing into neighborhoods of similarity.
All good concerns.
Excellent analysis...
Until the conclusion.
Nelson specifically says on the second page of the conclusion that she is not talking about a "magical kumbaya moment" in what changes she advocates.
But, methinks she doth protest too much.
Volunteerism used to increase political involvement, not just volunteerism? Might work, but I doubt it. Leaderless organization? The Founders' dissing of Hamilton aside, and John Yoo's ahistorical appeals to him, Americans have tended to like strong-leader presidentialism, and Nelson herself admits that.
What's unbelievable is that Nelson either ignores or rejects the obvious solution -- parliamentary government. She also, although giving lip service to things like proportional representation, ignores the need for public financing of congressional campaigns, including with third-party funding possibilities, the use of instant runoff voting, and the restoration of the legality of fusion candidates. (Most states have explicitly outlawed them.)
And, that's why I give her book four stars instead of five. She offers primarily nonpolitical solutions to political problems, and does come off a bit kumbayish. (As a left-liberal of some sort myself, albeit a scientific-minded skeptical one, I feel comfortable with that phraseology and assessment.)
Parliamentary government would of course need constitutional amendment. IRV and fusionism would need state law changes -- which could be done more easily if sent to states as a tie-in with Help American Vote Act version 2.0. In short, those two are far from impossible.
But, they would both undermine the two-party duopoly, as parliamentary government would. (See David Lazare's "The Frozen Republic" for the best treatise on America's need for parliamentary goverment.)
I was kind of disappointed, even disillusioned, by the weak tea conclusion of a book that had such excellent insight in every previous chapter. I'm also disappointed that Nelson doesn't appear to be thinking more outside the two-party duopoly box.
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