[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 149 (Thursday, December 1, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: December 1, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
               SHELDON WHITEHOUSE'S THOUGHTS ON DEMOCRACY

  Mr. PELL. Mr. President, I would like to call the attention of the 
Senate to a very thoughtful article written recently by the new U.S. 
attorney for Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse.
  Mr. Whitehouse, who was my choice for the post of U.S. attorney, has 
a distinguished record of public service, having served as executive 
counsel and director of policy to the Governor of Rhode Island before 
being named director of the State's department of business regulation 
in 1992.
  A graduate of Yale and the University of Virginia Law School, he 
clerked for a State appeals court judge in West Virginia before 
returning to Rhode Island to practice law in 1983. Two years later, he 
joined the civil division of the Rhode Island attorney general's 
office, specializing in utility regulation.
  It was against this background that Mr. Whitehouse reflected on the 
current plight of government and the democratic process, in an article 
entitled ``Learning to Live with Democracy'' which was published in the 
Providence Journal of October 15, 1994.
  His article is a plea for citizen involvement as an antidote to the 
current mood of disenchantment with electoral government. The mood is 
nothing new, Mr. Whitehouse reminds us. It results from the inevitable 
tension between the promise and actual performance of democracy, which 
now is accentuated by the superficiality of the electronic age. 
Americans must ``learn to become discerning consumers of information 
about government,'' he says, and must ``avoid the easy lure of 
cynicism.''
  Mr. Whitehouse has given us much food for thought and I commend his 
article to the attention of the Senate. I ask unanimous consent that 
the article entitled ``Learning to Live with Democracy'' be reprinted 
in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                    Learning To Live With Democracy

                        (By Sheldon Whitehouse)

       ``There is a compelling need for a revaluation of our 
     public attitudes toward political life. The national attitude 
     that politics is somehow a degrading occupation for which no 
     man of intelligence or ambition should aspire is becoming too 
     deeply ingrained in our national thinking.''
       Robert F. Kennedy opened a speech with that very sentence 
     on the day I turned four years old.
       Now my own daughter has passed her fourth year. In the 
     intervening generation, the view that political life is 
     degrading has become more widespread. A recent survey by the 
     Volcker Commission on Public Service showed that only 3 
     percent of college honor society students ranked the federal 
     government as their ``most preferred employer.'' State 
     government rated less than 2 percent, and local government 
     less than 1 percent.
       What is the trouble with democracy that keeps this problem 
     so current across the generations?
       To say that it is the degraded nature of politicians is too 
     easy. There is a natural tension built into democracy that 
     may explain it better: On the one hand, we need to believe in 
     our democracy in order for it to work; on the other hand, the 
     way it works makes it sometimes hard to believe in. The 
     opposing forces creating this tension have been described in 
     the words of two of democracy's heroes: Ben Franklin and 
     Winston Churchill.
       Benjamin Franklin warned that we must have a good opinion 
     of our government if it is to serve us well (note: not vice 
     versa). He said: ``Much of the strength and efficacy of any 
     government, in procuring and securing happiness to the 
     people, depends on opinion, on the general opinion of the 
     goodness of that government as well as of the wisdom and 
     integrity of its governors.''
       At the end of World War II, Winston Churchill rose to speak 
     in Parliament. Churchill was the political embodiment of the 
     wartime courage of his small nation. Under the circumstances, 
     he could be excused for exaggerated praise of democratic 
     government. Instead, Churchill said, ``Democracy is the worst 
     form of government, except all those other forms that have 
     been tried from time to time.''
       The tension exists because Ben Franklin and Winston 
     Churchill were both right. In a nutshell, that's the trouble 
     with democracy: How do we, the people, keep a ``good 
     opinion'' of this ``worst form of government''? Democracy is 
     never going to be easy; and we shouldn't expect it to be 
     easy. The ancient Greeks had one name for those who 
     participated in their democratic process and another name for 
     those who did not. Those who were involved were called 
     civites. From this ancient word comes a host of modern terms: 
     civil, civilization, civic, city, citizen, civilized. Those 
     who were not involved were called idiotes. Perhaps the Greeks 
     were giving us a hint.
       Indeed, Pericles said of democratic Athenians that they 
     ``regard the man who takes no part in public affairs, not as 
     one who minds his own business, but as good for nothing.''
       Not only is democracy not easy, it's getting harder. We are 
     now on the edge of a third major revolution in U.S. 
     democracy, and these revolutions increase our obligations as 
     citizens.
       The first was our ideological revolution denying the divine 
     right of kings to govern, and establishing self-governance by 
     the people. We often refer to the war of 1775-83 as the 
     Revolution, but the real revolution was the emergence of this 
     idea.
       In the second, quieter, revolution, the benign and 
     idealistic paternalism expected by the Founding Fathers was 
     overwhelmed by vigorous local political representation. This 
     second revolution is represented in U.S. history by the 
     election of President Andrew Jackson. The recent passing of 
     Tip O'Neill perhaps marks the end of that ``all politics is 
     local politics'' era.
       Before these two revolutions, political life for the 
     average citizen was very simple: You obeyed the king and paid 
     your taxes. The first revolution made life more difficult: It 
     gave us the obligation to select our own government from a 
     small meritoracy of educated, property-owning white men. The 
     second revolution required us to seek among a broader 
     candidate pool the white male who best represented our local 
     community's interests, and required us to decide for 
     ourselves what those local interests would be.
       In the modern age, elected officials are of every race and 
     both sexes; local issues compete with national, 
     international, economic, ideological and factional issues for 
     our attention. It is a great achievement that our political 
     mainstream is becoming broader and more diverse, but it makes 
     our job as citizens harder than ever.
       The difficulties compound as government and politics try to 
     find their way in the electronic information age. Look at 
     what is happening to politics and government already, as we 
     enter this third revolution. Devotion to image and appearance 
     has replaced loyalty to party and constituency. The old-
     fashioned ward heeler is out; the opposition research 
     consultant is in. Hundreds of single-issue special interests 
     besiege the political process, each ready, willing and able 
     to deploy vast arsenals of dollars and disinformation on the 
     electronic superhighway at the first whiff of threat.
       Political aspirants themselves are willing to attack the 
     institutions they seek to join, to gain an advantage in 
     getting there. And of course there now seem to be no holds 
     barred between candidates in political contests. Our sources 
     of information about government and politics--the media, 
     opposition research consultants and spin doctors--are all 
     richly rewarded by concentrating on the superficial and the 
     scandalous. All of these changes make the information we 
     receive more negative, more divisive and more simplistic.
       How could we possibly keep a ``good opinion'' of this mess? 
     First, we need to get smart. We must learn to be discerning 
     consumers of information about government.
       We should no more rely on the information these sources 
     feed us than we should rely on McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts 
     for our food. A junk food diet of information creates a 
     public that is more likely to know what the yacht ``Monkey 
     Business'' is than what the national debt is. (I looked it 
     up: Roughly $4 trillion.) We've gotten a lot smarter about 
     our food diets, and we're healthier as a result. Now we need 
     to get smart about our information diet. We need to encourage 
     legitimate efforts to expose and address real problems, and 
     reject media scandal-mongering, interest group propaganda and 
     partisan political posturing; we need to separate the real 
     food from the junk food.
       We also need to avoid the lure of easy cynicism. The harder 
     the task of being a citizen becomes, and the more we are 
     required to think for ourselves, the more seductive is this 
     lure. Cynicism about government hurts us. It hurts us in two 
     practical respects. First, it is an excuse for us an 
     individuals to draw the limit on our obligations as citizens 
     to participate in our own democracy. It is an excuse to 
     become idiotes rather than civites. Second, as Ben Franklin 
     pointed out, cynicism about government actually weakens 
     government's ability to do the things we need government to 
     do.
       This is not to say that we should ignore misdeeds in 
     government. We must root out misdeeds and corruption with a 
     vengeance.
       But we must also recognize that cynicism about government 
     has its own price.
       And we need to understand the problems we find in 
     government to be a call to action, rather than an excuse to 
     condemn. There comes a point when the accumulation of 
     contempt for government, like a run on a bank, threatens the 
     viability of the institution itself.
       It is time to restore our faith in our beliefs and our 
     principles, and it is time to be prepared as citizens to act 
     on that faith. The most precious thing we as a country have 
     to provide to ourselves, to future generations, and to the 
     world, is our democracy. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, 
     ``Our constitutional system has proved itself the most 
     superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has 
     produced.'' It has provided unparalleled civil liberties and 
     economic freedoms to our people, it has survived a bitter 
     civil war and emerged strengthened; and it has sheltered and 
     sustained for more than two centuries the growth of an ever 
     fairer and more prosperous society.
       The battle is a long way from over, but our democracy 
     remains the model for freedom-loving people around the world.
       We all want to restore our faith in our government; to do 
     so we need to solve the riddle of keeping a ``good opinion'' 
     of our ``worst form of government.''
       The question is, how do we do it?
       The answer is the one that Greeks hinted at when they 
     called the group civites and the other idiotes. It is self-
     evident in the phrase ``participatory democracy.'' It is 
     contained in the central phrase of Abraham Lincoln's 
     description of our government as ``of the people, by the 
     people, and for the people.''
       The answer is to get involved. Inform yourself. Don't be 
     discouraged. Get involved in government yourself. (Don't be 
     afraid to start small. Your local school committee or town 
     council probably makes a bigger difference in your family's 
     life than the U.S. Supreme Court.)
       The way to a good opinion of this worst form of government 
     is to restore our belief in its principles.
       The simple way to restore our belief in its principles is 
     to participate in it and participate in it and participate in 
     it, until we respect those who participate in it.

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