Balkinization: Pretty Boy Democracy

Pretty Boy Democracy

Mark Graber

A good deal of my recent work focuses on non-legal aspects of constitutionalism. For example, constitutional law requires that the president be 35 years or older, a citizen of the United States, and get a majority of the electoral vote, etc. Any person who meets those standards is legally qualified to be president of the United States. But the constitutional qualifications were also designed to privilege a certain kind of person. Thus, we might ask constitutional theory questions about a) whether George Bush or Bill Clinton was the sort of person whose election the constitutional system was designed to privilege and b) what sort of persons does the constitutional system for elections presently privilege. Here is some brief thoughts.

The constitution of 1787 was designed to privilege the election of best persons, men (not women)who had a reputation for political integrity and competence. You voted for George Washington because you trusted Washington would do what was right. The constitution throughout much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries privileged the election of party leaders. You voted for James Polk, Grover Cleveland, and John Kennedy, because you were members of their party and supported the party's general platform (this requires lots and lots of qualifications). The constitution of the twenty-first century increasingly privileges the election of pretty boys. Think of Lynn Swann running for governor of Pennsylvania on the ground that he was a star football player and looks good on television. People vote for candidates because they like them personally and feel the candidate is in some ways like them. Clinton plays the saxophone. Bush plays at being a homey frat boy. There are increasingly no policy implications to elections, as was the case with party elections, nor are there much governing implications, since no one really thinks Swann (or Bush) is that competent a governor. What matters is how one appears in the media.

If this is the case, then tinkering with constitutional law is likely to have little impact on public problems. The crucial issue is a)whether I am right about the increase of pretty boy democracy in a media age, b) whether pretty boy democracy is a viable means of governing a twenty-first century polity (maybe it is, maybe the advisors do the real governing), and, if not, c) is there anything culturally or constitutionally that can be done to return to either a partisan system, where the president and other political leaders actually have a mandate to pursue certain policies or an elite system, where the president and other political leaders can be trusted to make intelligent decisions.

Posted 8:55 AM by Mark Graber [link]

Comments:

Mark,
I'm not sure how you get from the unquestionably accurate statement that "constitutional law requires that the president be 35 years or older, a citizen of the United States, and get a majority of the electoral vote, etc. . . . Any person who meets those standards is legally qualified to be president of the United States" to the premise that "the constitutional qualifications were also designed to privilege a certain kind of person." Well, yes - they priveleged those who were over 35, citizens of the United States from birth, and so on. While the political realities of American history have tended to favor certain kinds of individuals, those political realities are not enshrined in the Constitution. This tension becomes explicit when you assert that "[t]he constitution throughout much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries privileged the election of party leaders" - an impressive feat for a document that not only fails to mention parties, but is routinely bewailed (including, IIRC, by one of your co-bloggers) for failing to anticipate and accomodate the advent of parties.

Whether certain people are priveleged in our political system or not (I think we would all agree they are), it is hugely mistaken, I feel, to conflate the extant American political culture with the immutable commands of the Constitution. Thomas Bracket Reed warned that "one of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation"; that applies - if anything, a fortiori - to those who would try to make everything into a Constitutional question, which really does seem to be the liberal pathology of the modern era.

# posted by

Simon : 1:57 PM

whether I am right about the increase of pretty boy democracy in a media age

You could argue that most of the ex-generalissimo Presidents were effectively "pretty boys." Political parties effectively formed around Jackson and Harrison, instead of either of them coming out of a party background. Taylor had probably never voted in his life before being nominated for President. Eisenhower is said to have had to choose two things before he could be nominated: a religion and a political party. The major exception is Grant, who was pretty strongly identified with the Republican party for obvious reasons, though he was hardly from its Radical wing. (Several other 19th-century Presidents had been lesser Civil War generals but were Republican politicos before they were generals, tending to support your point: Hayes, Garfield, Harrison.)

# posted by

Jack Keefe : 3:25 PM

I agree that Eisenhower was probably not a classic party leader. But it also won't do to put him down as a mere ex-generalissimo, let alone a "pretty boy" He was by many accounts I've come across a very smart, competent leader and politician (if not one I'd have voted for).

I almost didn't post this, thinking it's a digression, but I think it also shows how hard it is to neatly classify presidents this way. There's an element of showmanship to politics, whether it's playing sax or saying "I will go to Korea" or whatever your favorite example is. If it and/or celebrity predominate, maybe that's "pretty boyism", but there really only seems to be one president who fits the bill. Unfortunately...

# posted by

Thomas Nephew : 1:17 AM

Perhaps Lance Mannion is implying something similar to Graber's point here and here.

# posted by

Thomas Nephew : 1:58 AM

Well, taken all in all, the United States of the past 25 years (Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush) has been a fabulous success, as measured by per capita GDP (also by other things), so pretty boy democracy seems like a pretty good system. To the extent that political parties and party bosses have more power in Europe, the results aren't much an advertisement for that system.

# posted by

sean : 3:42 PM