[Reader who have not done so may wish to read Part I of this column, published earlier this week.]
Though occasioned by the conditions of the time, the default of information that made representation necessary in the circumstances of America’s founding generation represents a condition for government that has been, and will be, universal, so long as governments have the duty to organize and focus the united capacities of the people in defense of the community they comprise.
In all its various forms (including politics) warfare demands secret measures. Things must be kept from the enemy. But, perforce, this means keeping them from the public as well. Because the prospect of war persists representation is an inevitable feature of government, even when it derives its powers from the consent of the people.
Thus, Alexander Hamilton was correct to insist (Federalist No. 26) “confidence must be placed somewhere.” Since the power to defend the community in exigent circumstance has, perforce, to be delegated, representation is not just as a way of assuring respect for the will of the people. It is essential for their security. Better to live in a state surprised by reports of an unexpected victory than in a nation surprised by an enemy’s preparations for its destruction.
The ideologues who oppose what is now called the Electoral College approach to selecting the president and vice president of the United States harp on the notion that America’s founders simply had contempt for the people’s judgment and capacity. This adeptly foments resentment against the founders, but it is a transparently deceitful portrayal of their regard for what they called the “genius of the American people.”
George Washington and others who constituted America’s upper class at the time of the revolution in fact had a high regard for what they called the “genius of the American people.” It has much to do with their willingness adamantly to oppose the British sovereign’s suppression of self-government in America. To do so they emphatically embraced the view that that just government could not be maintained without “a due dependence on the people”; that elections were required to secure that dependency; and that the America people had already proven their capacity to take on the responsibility it entailed.
But they also took frank account of the history of human events, which offered no example of enduring “democracy.” Governments that simply depended on the power of the people ended up in disorder, defeat, culminating in the subversion and overthrow of democratic rule. Since its forces depend on transient passions, rather than rationally apprehended permanent interests, democracy sustains itself only so long as those passions are in effect. But to sustain them requires demagogues who inflame passion and focus its power against some object of hatred, resentment or revenge.
Knowing this, the enemies of democratic rule always have a way to achieve the goal the Italian fascist Mussolini famously articulated – to defeat democracy using the weapons of democracy. To be effective, the energy of the people must be brought into focus. But since the first use of that energy is to inflame them, what is to keep any one of them from being consumed in the flames? Though intended for use against the oppressors of the people, democratic power is inherently self-destructive. At first, the present passion of the many is used to gather and mobilize them as a weapon against the few. When the few have been dealt with, the organized force of the many, their passions allayed, disintegrates. But the fear engendered by the destruction those passions made possible, persists. It is therefore available to empower government forces that, for their own purposes, intimidate and control the many as individuals.
The people can avoid becoming the subjects of this oppression only if, and when, they learn to marshal their passions deliberately. They must focus them in a controlled way, one that reflects their self-conscious own choice and responsibility, rather than their susceptibility to passions that are inflamed and brought into focus by others, who in fact act for themselves rather than for the people. What James Madison called the Constitution’s “scheme of representation” aimed to encourage this deliberate self-government in the people of the United States.
This scheme made sense to the founders because experience permitted them to believe that the people of the United States were, in their character and practices, already disposed to govern themselves. This disposition was largely an effect of the Christian religion, which ought to lead those who practice it to see themselves, and their fellow-believers, as subjects of Christ, striving to represent the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, as Christ’s example encouraged them to do. With the standard of Christ to guide them, they have a common sense of right, which they can recognize and respect in others. A constitution of government that called upon them periodically to exercise that common sense would strengthen and preserve it, the way regular exercise strengthens and develops the body.
Theses reflections allow us to see the Constitution’s provisions for electing the president and vice president of the United States as the founders saw them. They are not a judgment that warily disrespects the capacities of the people. They are an expression of confidence in the moral strength and judgment of the American people, so long as they act in keeping with their good faith. For that faith gives them the will to make God’s just rulership the enduring standard for their self-rule, especially when they choose their representatives in government. And that will for justice constitutes the enduring permanent interest that can turn the unruly impulses of transient passion into long-lasting serviceable fuel for the just powers good government requires.
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