Ezra Klein: Democracy

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June 26, 2007

Democracy

Stanley Kurtz whines:

Something about this immigration battle doesn’t sit well. For all the bitterness of our political battles, there’s at least the sense that the government responds to the drift of public opinion. The Republicans in Congress turned into big spenders and the war in Iraq went poorly. As a result the Democrats prospered in 2006, if narrowly. That’s how democracy works. Our politics are often angry and ugly (and that’s a problem), but this is because the public is deeply divided on issues of great importance. Deep down, we understand that our political problems reflect our own divisions.

Somehow this immigration battle feels different. The bill is wildly unpopular, yet it’s close to passing. The contrast with the high-school textbook version of democracy is not only glaring and maddening, it’s downright embarrassing.

How many times have polls shown that Americans want a timetable for withdrawal? How many times have Republicans and the White House beat legislation in service of those sentiments back? And how many times has Stanley Kurtz written angry posts demanding that the government accept the will of the people?

Kurtz is all for small-d democracy. At least when its outcomes agree with his prejudices.

June 26, 2007 | Permalink

Comments

Of course this immigration bill is going to pass. The moneyed corporate interests want it to pass; and if there's anything that unites all politicians it's the valuation of people who give them money over people who don't.

Posted by: Wells. | Jun 26, 2007 12:16:40 PM

I'm not even sure that Kurtz necessarily agrees with the substantive details of the immigration proposal. It's just a product of high Broderism, so QED it must be good.

Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | Jun 26, 2007 12:30:39 PM

"How many times have Republicans and the White House beat legislation in service of those sentiments back?"

should be....

"How many times have Republicans and the White House suggested a veto of those sentiments, causing Democrats in Congress to quiver in their Nike "We're tough on terror" Cross-Trainers and ultimately remove any language regarding a timetable?"

There you go. All better.

Posted by: mike | Jun 26, 2007 12:33:41 PM

The quality of political discourse and reason has deteriorated markedly since Reagan took office as President.

Eve Fairbanks, TNR: "To believe that . . . our behavior as citizens flows, robotlike, from the way we are manipulated by buzzwords — is to see us as Shakespeare saw those laughably malleable Romans in “Julius Caesar”: they are inspired first to hate Caesar by Brutus’ speech and then to love him by Antony’s, in the space of minutes. This scene is terrifying because it reveals that even though Caesar has just been assassinated to preserve the Republic, the Republic is already dead. Its people are unfit for it. So, too, with us, if our minds are governed by keywords."

A substantial part of American democracy has died, and that is a critical element in the paralysis of governance.

On immigration, a substantial part of the democratic polity is ready to be decisively swayed by buzzwords. "Amnesty" is anathema to them simply because they do not like the sound of it. Another part is determined to see only racism at work.

Iraqi policy is similarly paralyzed by the fear politicians have, of the zombie voter -- the ill-informed, independent voter -- whose political "convictions" are against failure and for success, and go no deeper than that. The zombie voter is sure the country is on the wrong track, but will not think about Iraq long enough or deep enough to commit to the view that it is time to give up and get out. The zombie voter remains ready to believe that success is just six months away, and will be just as ready a year after withdrawal is an accomplished fact, to believe that liberals stabbed-Bush-in-the-back and that's why the U.S. failed in Iraq.

Posted by: Bruce Wilder | Jun 26, 2007 12:58:51 PM

I'm not sure what his evidence is that the bill is wildly unpopular. His side is citing that Rasmussen poll, which shows that a lot of the public is against the bill and prefers an is that 1/4 to 1/3 of the voters are incensed about illegal immigration. The great majority of voters don't share their outrage, but their attitudes toward a path to citizenship vary from mildly opposed to mildly favorable. There's just not nearly as much vehemence within the group that one might call anti-anti-immigenforcement-only approach. Yet in a recent Gallup poll, 78% of respondents favored a path to citizenship for illegals currently living here. I wouldn't take either poll result to the bank, as the responses would seem to differ according to what the questions emphasize.

My own sense, politically, is that the voters who are incensed about illegal immigration are easily a minority, but all of the energy is on their side. Of all the people to the left of them, which would include both the supporters of the bill, and those whose only objection is to the guest worker provision, there isn't nearly the vehemence to get the current illegals out of the shadows.

If you asked everyone to rate the importance of the immigration issue on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being most important, nearly all of the 5s, I bet, would be from immigration hardliners. But that just means all of the anger is on one side, not that there are any votes to be picked up there.

Posted by: kth | Jun 26, 2007 1:02:27 PM

that compound mess on line 7 should merely read 'enforcement only'; must preview first, and slow down with the ctrl-x/ctrl-v.

Posted by: kth | Jun 26, 2007 1:04:49 PM

The Republicans in Congress turned into big spenders and the war in Iraq went poorly. As a result the Democrats prospered in 2006, if narrowly. [...] Somehow this immigration battle feels different. The bill is wildly unpopular, yet it’s close to passing. The contrast with the high-school textbook version of democracy is not only glaring and maddening, it’s downright embarrassing.

And yet it took until 2006 for the reversal Kurtz mentioned to have happened. So now he's writing about the immigration bill in 2007 ... but it might take until 2010 for the chips to fall on that one politically. In 2002-2003 when many of the legislative actions with which people got fed up were being passed, would Kurtz have been complaining about the "failure of democracy"? No ... he would have been lauding it for killin' terrorormimists or somethin'

And anyway this lag, pace Kurtz, is actually the textbook way it's supposed to happen. Note that, as Republicans used to be wont to point out (if for nothing else, because they figured people would get 'republic' and 'Republican' confused -- even though the faux populism of the Republicans about "activist judges", etc., is arguing against us being a 'republic' and not for it) we are a republic not a pure democracy. That our laws are somewhat insulated from short-lived bursts of popular will is not a bug but a feature.

Sheeze ... doesn't anyone read the Federalist Papers anymore?

Posted by: DAS | Jun 26, 2007 1:29:22 PM

kth says: Yet in a recent Gallup poll, 78% of respondents favored a path to citizenship for illegals currently living here. I wouldn't take either poll result to the bank, as the responses would seem to differ according to what the questions emphasize.

Indeed. Quite indeed. USAToday lied through its teeth about the poll in question; details at my name's link.

What you can do about today's Senate vote here. The same technique could be applied by "liberals", not matter their "prejudices".

Posted by: More about that poll... | Jun 26, 2007 1:45:57 PM

I don't think the question of whether there's massive opposition to the bill can be answered by polling - ask the right questions, and you can get majorities to agree to a path to citizenship and then get a majority to say they don't approve of amnesty. I'd say the more telling thing is that conservatives - especially over at NRO, and RedState, and Michelle Malkin... just for starters... are all reflecting wide scale displeasure with the bill's provisions. And who's in favor of it? Well... that's not entirely clear; the NY Times yesterday did a long piece pointing out that Silicon Valley execs hate it, Daily Kos did a post yesterday pointing out the Temp Worker program is awful, and mostly what's coming from the left (at least the blogs) is... silence. Immigration groups and other concerned progressives aren't so much in favor of the bill as they are in favor of something that can get the ball rolling, and they'll take this, admitting it's pretty bad, rather than get nothing. So I'd say, yes, this does seem to be a bill that no one actually likes, and yet it keeps moving, zombie-like towards passage (though my own bet is that it's going to die, probably by next week).

All of that said, Kurtz is a hack, easily one of the weakest National Review writers imaginable, who whines and complains at almost everything that flies in the face of his own, rather eccentric, conservatism. His obsession with Scandinavian social standards as part of the gay marriage debate alone sets him apart as truly off the reservation, but the bigger problem is that even with boilerplate observations like the one here, there's just not enough rigor to his thinking. And I'm not saying that as someone who's especially rigorous, but I think one should be aware of one's limitations and work within them, not keep calling attention to them.

Posted by: weboy | Jun 26, 2007 2:46:06 PM

George Bush is showing leadership on this issue. Yes, Kennedy also deserves equal credit. However, the headlines typically read, "Bush and the Democrats...". Ironically, George Bush is working with Democrats when his popularity can not get any worse.

Also, the Democrats have not taken a clear position on the issue. The candidates for president have only stated wether they do or do not support the bill. They have shown no leadership. I also can not blame then, just look at the beating McCain is taking.

Finally, a third component is needed to compliment a path to naturalizationa and the guest worker program. The United States needs to develop a responsible economic relationship with Mexico. Clinton's NAFTA, and Zedillo's privatization of Banks and Telecommunications resulted in the creation of about 14 new Mexican Billionaires, an increase in the gap of the rich and poor, and 10 million Mexican immigrants. Mexican immigrants will continue to arrive until there is equity between the two nations.

Posted by: jncam | Jun 26, 2007 3:27:52 PM

However, the headlines typically read, "Bush and the Democrats..." - jncam

With proper spin, this could be used by the GOP to make it so people blame the Dems. for Bush and forget Bush's a Republican.

In general, the whole immigration bill morass could very easily have been spun into a "Harry Reid's an incompetent Senate leader, so you can't trust the Dems. to lead America" ... that the media hasn't been able to do this is indicative of how weak the GOP's spin apparatus and their friends in the media are.

Posted by: DAS | Jun 26, 2007 4:29:31 PM

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