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The Conquest by Presidentialism
By David Sirota
23/08/08 "ICH"
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You have to hand it to John McCain -- his campaign ads are
(inadvertently) the most incisive commentary on the death of
Jeffersonian democracy ever broadcast.
Superficially, they lambaste Barack Obama's worshipful crowds
and messianic promises that a heavenly "light will shine down"
on his candidacy. But what the ads really lampoon is what
Vanderbilt professor Dana Nelson calls presidentialism: our
paternalistic view that presidents are godlike saviors -- and
therefore democracy's only important figures.
"The once-every-four-years hope for the lever pull sensation of
democratic power blinds people to the opportunities for
democratic representation, deliberation, activism and change
that surrounds us in local elections," she writes in her new
book, "Bad for Democracy: How the Presidency Undermines the
Power of the People."
In a country whose anti-royalist founders constitutionally
constrained executive authority, what explains the metastatic
growth of presidentialism? The evisceration of journalism and
social movements.
The media's Watergate triumph sired the current Age of
Stenography. With personal glory the new priority,
correspondents figured out that transcribing White House
prognostication is a far easier way to gain notoriety than
Woodward and Bernstein's shoe-leather investigations. The result
is journalism run by grotesque sloth and vapid speculation-the
kind exemplified by The New York Times' top three political
correspondents this week. As inflation hit crisis levels and the
Russia-Georgia conflict inched the planet toward World War III,
these "reporters" devoted a stunning 2,148 words to fact-free
guesses about selections for vice president-a position with no
power and zero impact on ordinary people's lives.
Media consolidation and cost-cutting have sped up this decline,
turning many local news outlets into collages of wire copy and
presidential punditry from D.C. bureaus. Meanwhile, the 21st
century's most celebrated model of "grass-roots"
movement-building is MoveOn.org -- a top-down group whose
primary function is to land stories about itself in Washington
gossip rags and send e-mail spam about presidential candidates.
The resulting noise reiterates one message: The only thing that
matters is 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Why is this dangerous? First and foremost, by ignoring local
elections and issue-based organizing in favor of presidential
politics, activists make presidential progress less likely.
"Even the best presidents need social movements to accomplish
transformational change," warns community activist Deepak
Bhargava in The Nation magazine's latest White House-centric
edition. "FDR could not have succeeded without the agitation of
the unemployed workers' councils and the unions, and LBJ's
greatest accomplishments were made possible by the civil rights
movement."
Worse, presidentialism leads us to ignore the arenas where
issues are already being sorted out.
For example, how many of the Democratic convention delegates
incensed by the Obama-McCain energy brouhaha have any idea that
just beyond Denver's Rocky Mountain horizon, a battle over
Colorado's massive gas reserves will more immediately impact the
national energy crisis than the inane presidential
back-and-forth about offshore drilling? Better yet, how many
Democratic enthusiasts donning Obama T-shirts know who their
state representative or city council member is-or even what a
state legislature or city council does?
In his upcoming book, "You Can't Be President," journalist John
MacArthur ponders the depressing answers to these kinds of
questions, reminding readers of Alexis de Tocqueville's
19th-century writing.
"It is in vain to summon a people, which has been rendered so
dependent on the central power, to choose from time to time the
representatives of that power," he observed. "This rare and
brief exercise of their free choice, however important it may
be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of
thinking, feeling and acting for themselves, and thus gradually
falling below the level of humanity."
Published 168 years ago, the passage is a prescient warning as
the upcoming Democratic and Republican conventions toast
presidentialism's conquest of democracy in America.
David Sirota is a best-selling author whose
newest book, "The Uprising," was released in June. He is a
fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member
of the Progressive States Network, both nonpartisan
organizations. His blog is at
www.credoaction.com/sirota.
© 2008 Creators Syndicate Inc.
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