If headlines from the United States and Europe are to be believed, old democracies will be eclipsed by so-called benevolent dictators who will do away with all the tiresome "yes, but..." discourse and confidently make necessary decisions. If believers in true democracy don't act up, this may indeed describe a near future.
What binds many European countries and the United States? These days it appears to be a yearning for a "strong man," a benevolent dictator of sorts who will ignore the wishes of troublesome minorities -- political, ethnic, or combinations of both -- and who will carry out the wishes of another, larger minority without bothering too much with the arguments of others.
Many people appear tired of subway democracy: an arrangement in which successive administrations, when taking office, seem to simply jump on a moving train of government whose schedule and stops are already set. They see leaders preaching that There Is No Alternative, and whose sole power appears to be speeding the train up or slowing it down -- the direction is always a given. Disillusionment then awaits those who expected the train to veer radically off course.
An example of this is Greece, where the radical-left Syriza party took office by promises of finally moving the train of government in a different direction. Yet the eurozone subway system provided no alternate routes, and Syriza in the end chose to stay the predetermined course. As a result, many a former Syriza voter stayed home when the next election came, opting not to bother to vote. Syriza gathered enough votes to stay in power to form a new government, but with a smaller mandate.
As with revolutions, people usually know who they want thrown out of office, but they often have little idea of what is to come after the bums are out. This is where opinions invariably start to diverge, often culminating in a minority of minorities somehow (but often enough through force) seizing power and foisting their radical minority opinions onto the divided majority. That divided majority then invariably rebels to spark another revolution at the ballot box.
Examples beyond Greece abound. They take different shapes and forms. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has actively done away with a range of the institutions that remained to give voice to minorities, taking harsh action against the opposition, the judiciary, and the media.
In Poland, the recently elected Law and Justice party, or PiS -- vilified for its corruption and extremist practices during its first stint in office -- is doing the same. It even went so far as to send a team of soldiers to a NATO intelligence-gathering operation to remove the leading Polish member of the leadership, thought to be a political opponent of the PiS.
In The Netherlands, the Freedom Party, with its promises to throw the bums out and make the country great again, is leading the polls, while in France the popular Front National of Marine Le Pen vows to do the same.
The irony is that this wish to return to some shape of greatness points to moments in time when the country was doing just fine under the leadership of the so-called bums.
Take Donald Trump. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly to what timeframe he wants to take his country back. Should he be referring to the 1950s, for instance, when the United States economy was growing fast, then his voters should know that those years were the epitome of what they appear to be opposing now: the years of compromise and consensus under President Dwight Eisenhower. That, and a progressive income tax that topped out at a 91 percent rate.
The 1960s, then? Hardly a nice, quiet, and safe society. The 1970s, perhaps? Like the '60s, that was a time of great societal and political upheaval. The 1980s? The current Trump or European supporters who lived then may remember the ‘Me'-society they hated. OK, so how about the 1990s? Oh no, that's Clinton country.
So perhaps a timeframe from long before that? Maybe the years of Franklin D. Roosevelt are a popular reference. He pulled the United States out of a depression, creating jobs, successfully fighting poverty, and restoring pride. Sure, government expenses during World War II helped to ensure that everyone had a job. But that was still the government at work for the people.
Perhaps it is time that voters in the United States and Europe took a long, hard look to understand when they were happy, and when they were not. Turns out, they were most happy at times when they had jobs and were assured that their children and their grandchildren saw the promise of an equally rich future.
And so here lies the challenge to the bums: to reroute the subway democracy. Instead of accepting the subway schedule as it is, or promising to take the train to where it cannot go, tear up the schedule altogether and build new subway tubes. Franklin Roosevelt did that. And the facts show that a leader like Barack Obama has done just that.
Perhaps listening to someone like Ron Haskins is worthwhile. Haskins is a lifelong Republican working for the Brookings Institution think tank. He recently wrote a book about evidence-based policy that works -- so not policies based on expectations or assumptions, but literally on returns on government investment as instituted by the Obama administration.
Democracy-loving politicians in Europe would do best to take a page from the Obama script.
(AP photo)
