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Virginia Tech/In Memoriam
"We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness ... We will prevail ..." -- Nikki Giovanni, University Distinguished Professor, poet, activist
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With the prevalent critique of political journalism coverage as a "horse race," it might be time to reexamine the role of the citizens who consume news and serve as the truly essential part of American Democracy.
The Veneration of the Vote and the Cipher of Citizenship
Headlines about all-time lows for presidential and congressional approval ratings have been commonplace leading up to the mid-term elections and, so quickly after, the “upcoming” presidential elections, but seldom is it asked how this apparent discord reflects upon the U.S. citizenry.
If Alexis de Tocqueville was right and in a democracy the people get the government they deserve, what have Americans done to deserve this government?
The more fundamental question of what the dominant conception of American citizenship has come to encompass may hold the answer. In the century following two major suffrage movements, it appears as though the citizen’s duty has been whittled down to include voting and voting alone.
Non-voters are subject to being discredited and disregarded, but individuals who fail to exercise other participatory rights such as those of speech and assembly are not subject to such exclusion from public discourse. Those who were once disenfranchised are encouraged to effectively settle for the gains of their predecessors rather than to pursue the spirit of popular sovereignty, a concept of which suffrage is only one component.
Voting is the simplest form of civic participation to be sure. While widespread participation and the pursuit of effective self-governance are challenging endeavors, an appointment-based decision between two choices eliminates complexity and creates a sort of lowest common denominator definition of citizenship.
Effectiveness does not accompany simplicity in this instance, however, as the vote as the essence of citizenship presents citizens with a pair of paradoxes regarding the act itself.
First, voting is essentially a stand-in for direct democracy, a loss of power rewrapped as a right. James Madison once wrote that monopolies were inherently repugnant as “sacrifices of the many to the few,” but is not voting a transfer of power from the many to the few? In this light, voting seems rather perverse as the sole criterion of civic participation.
Secondly, the voting process forces Americans to reconcile the “one person, one vote” mantra with widespread contempt for the common man and to consider whether the ordinary or the exceptional is most desirable in leadership. In an era dominated by a Connecticut billionaire with a down-home Texan persona and an emergent rhetoric that blurs the line between moderate politics and meaninglessness, America must consider if its leadership is composed of its most distinctive characters or its very least.
The pertinence of these considerations is almost undeniable when one considers that a second-term president and a legislature of the same majority party have experienced such an about face from the electorate. Presidents Clinton, Roosevelt and Reagan all had approval ratings in the 60s throughout their second terms despite turmoil surrounding their later years in office, which suggests that there is something particularly unexpected about the current political climate.
A more critical and better-informed public would have been more likely to consider the duplicity of the current administration and the ineptitude of the legislature in combating it during President Bush’s first term. For example, legislators who claimed they did not have time to read the Patriot Act before its enactment surely had a moment to peruse it before they extended the majority of its provisions five years later.
But if America is truly planning to “throw the bums out” of office, the citizens of the United States will need to critically re-examine both their evaluation of candidates and their narrow, myopic view of civic participation. Politics is not a biennial event, it is an ongoing process that is predicated on an active citizenry.
Without reconsideration and redefinition of an increasingly vacuous concept of citizenship and U.S. political institutions, the American people can expect more of exactly what they deserve.
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