The process of change would be unapologetically elitist. Gather small groups of the great and the good together to hammer out bipartisan reforms — on immigration, entitlement reform, a social mobility agenda, etc. — and then rally establishment opinion to browbeat the plans through. But the substance would be anything but elitist. Democracy’s great advantage over autocratic states is that information and change flow more freely from the bottom up. Those with local knowledge have more responsibility.
Pointer from Tyler Cowen. An example of what Brooks may have in mind is the Regulatory Improvement Commission suggested by the Progressive Policy Institute.
Originally conceived by PPI economists Michael Mandel and Diana Carew, the RIC is modeled after the highly successful military base-closing commission. It would consist of nine members appointed by Congressional leadership and the President to consider a single sector or area of regulations and report regulations in need or improvement, consolidation, or repeal.
The spirit of the proposal is fine, but I do not see why we need a commission appointed by Congressional leadership. Any Administration has the power to improve, consolidate, or repeal regulations, without requiring a special commission.
Modern democracy gives rise to what Kenneth Minogue called “fantasy despot syndrome.” You imagine that policies would be wise and benign if you became despot, and then you project this onto your favorite candidate. Each of these steps involves an error. It is unlikely that your policy ideas are so wonderfully wise and benevolent, and it is very unlikely that your favorite candidate is going to follow wise and benevolent policies. With Barack Obama, I believe that Brooks committed both of these errors.
Brooks can be very insightful, but he has a wet dream any time he contemplates “unapologetic elitism.” I don’t find it such a turn-on. Being somewhat older than Brooks, my visceral attirude toward elites in power is much more strongly influenced by the Vietnam war.
Both David Brooks and Tyler Cowen seem to have liked The Fourth Revolution. I am almost finished with the book, and apart from an anecdote here or a statistic there, I do not feel I profited from it. It felt dumbed down, either because they were trying (probably unsuccessfully) to appeal to non-libertarians or because that is how they roll.
Sorry if I seem off my meds today.
The reference to Kenneth Minogue is quite apt; and if we look into his last writings we find he confirms “Democracy is a process.” The wordsmiths (intellectuals) of today’s world, such as David Brooks and John Mickelthwait, etc., all conjecture Democracy as a “condition;” usually as comprised of unspecified or assumed relationships.
“Democracy is a process.” As a process it is *one* of the “tools” for the operation and direction of a social order. It is the *use* of the tool which determines its effects. The use of that tool, and its effects, are, in turn, determined by the characteristics (qualities) of the members of the polity, which thus determines how that tool is used as well is the objectives for its use.
Most of the suggestions occurring to the wordsmiths relate to the substitution of other tools for the operation and direction of the social order. Implicit in the suggestions for commissions, committees of the “great and good” are all implications of inadequacies of the polity to use the tool of the Democratic process.
Perhaps the real questions are: Is the Democratic process a tool of limited use? Are we attempting to use the tool for too many or inappropriate tasks? Are there inadequacies and can they be corrected in the polity which has access to the use of this tool? In the case of the United States, has there been a change in the characteristics of the members of the polity that has changed the uses made of the tool of the Democratic process?
Are we not seeing evolution and devolution rather than revolution?
Hmm. Democracies choose a lot of bad policies, both because of Bryan Caplans’ voter biases and because of public choice problems. When you’re a public intellectual like Brooks, it’s hard, I wager, not to notice a big gap in a lot of places between actual policies and what anyone with a brain can tell would be good or at least more sensible policies. And noticing this gap, the temptation to want to squash the democratic forces which created these gaps and put in charge someone or someones to Set Things Right is awfully strong.
So I guess I’m at least a little sympathetic to Brooks on that score. That said, you’re right that the hubris of the elite is a danger, and beyond that, I think his specific prescriptions are really just bromides. Gathering “small groups of the great and the good together to hammer out bipartisan reforms” sounds like a great idea up until the moment you remember that the reason the issues he cites haven’t been addressed already is that our various political factions have some pretty staunch disagreements about them, so simply reducing the players involved to a small committee won’t guarantee a useful agreement is produced unless a steel cage match is involved.
Likewise, the next step, “rally establishment opinion to browbeat the plans through,” is rather dubious. The Washington establishment holds, I think, a lot less sway than it used to; maybe Brooks, being part of it, hasn’t gotten the memo. Thanks to gerrymandering, ideological sorting, and the fragmentation of the media online, the ability of the Establishment to browbeat either the public or members of Congress has been seriously curbed, for better or worse.
The venal, self-serving bipartisan Establishment seems to get its way on quite a few issues, regardless of the views or interests of ordinary voters. For example, this bipartisan establishment has essentially refused to enforce US immigration laws in a meaningful way for the last 40 years, after it had already radically liberalized them in the 1960s. No doubt, most readers of this website agree with the establishment consensus on this issue, and are bitterly disappointed that the rank-and-file Republicans in Congress (against the wishes of their “leadership” and donors) are so far barely holding off further liberalization through what is comically referred to as “Comprehensive Immigration Reform.” But that the Establishment has already basically gotten its way on immigration is undeniable.
I can think of a laundry list of other issues on which the Establishment has been getting its way. In none of these cases does it appear to me that the Establishment gives a rodent’s posterior about the long-term best interests of the nation (meaning, the nation’s existing citizens and their future descendants, considered collectively). But what do I know. I’m just a citizen.
Yeah, that’s a fair point. Maybe it was Arnold’s mentioning Vietnam, but I was thinking of how there’s no Walter Cronkite anymore to explain to the American people that the wars waged (ostensibly) on their behalf have become unwinnable.
Authorities of many kinds seem to carry less weight these days. Witness the collapse of both American Catholicism and mainline Protestantism, which at one time not too long ago were competing authorities. Washington insiders like Brooks and his ilk still get their way an awful lot, sure, but how much of that is just good ol’ interest group capture (e.g., think of how many businesses, large and small, love the cheap labor that comes from essentially open borders) and how much of that is simply a result of the lack of an effective opposition?
Setting up Walter Cronkite as some sort of brave truth-teller is hilarious. I hope you’re not being serious.
“Authorities of all kinds seem to carry less weight these days.” I don’t think you’re paying attention. You’re right that the Catholic Church has lost authority for many reasons (good and bad), but there are other “authorities” that have replaced it, mostly for the worse. The media, including pseudo-thoughtful conventional-wisdom pushers like Brooks, is one of these institutional authorities. The public’s growing acceptance of same-sex marriage, for example, is deference to the decree of the authoritative institutions in our society, over the last decade or so, that it is now a moral imperative to accord same-sex relationships the same status as opposite-sex relationships. Whatever you think of same-sex marriage (an issue I’m not interested in debating here), I think the top-down dynamic is obvious.
The Mainline Protestant churches, like the non-Orthodox branches of American Judaism, have joined the new establishment and no longer have any independent authority of their own. These religious movements, in an effort to remain marginally relevant, lend the remaining prestige of the religious symbols they curate to whatever crusade the new establishment is leading. In areas other than sex and reproduction, the Catholic Church largely follows the same path.
I am too young to have watched Cronkite on TV. I just meant that he was a single individual who once upon a time wielded an awful lot of influence as a trusted authority. Are there any comparable figures today? Could there be? That’s my point. I’m not making any value judgements about him one way or the other.
To some extent, I agree that other authorities have filled in whatever gaps appear. Power abhors a vacuum, after all. But I think that things have become more fragmented. The pope’s moral authority, in the mind of a lapsed Catholic, wasn’t replaced by Paul Krugman or Rachel Maddow; he was replaced by a bunch of different people in aggregate.
In other words, it’s not that Americans have become more independent-minded over the last forty years, it’s that the number of people trying to play Trusted Authority Figure has gone way up, things to the proliferation of cheap, mass communication devices, and the influence of each one has necessarily gone way down as a result.
For example, I’m not sure I’d view same sex marriage as really a top down kind of thought-coordination. Who, then, was the Martin Luther King Jr. of same sex marriage? Or any leader at all, really? I can think of Andrew Sullivan and Dan Savage as semi-influential voices, I guess, but who outside of internet nerds and blowhards like myself know who either of those guys are? Not that many people, I’ll wager. I think the rapid acceptance of same sex marriage was more a matter of spontaneous coordination, with at the very least, a non-trivial amount of bottom-up support from gay people and their family members.
I think you’re confused about where authority lies. In advanced societies such as have existed in most of the world for the last few millennia, authority generally lies in institutions, not particular individuals. Cronkite’s authority, to the extent it actually existed (and I think it is vastly overstated) came from his being the CBS news anchor, not because of his personal merits (although he looked and sounded authoritative, in a Ted Baxter-ish sort of way). That there is no single MLK figure in the same-sex marriage debate does not mean that support for same sex marriage is spontaneously flowing up from the grass roots. In any event, MLK did not single-handedly end Jim Crow in the United States. He emerged as the most prominent leader of a movement that would have existed, and succeeded, without him.
The base-closing commission might well be the model of success that Washington pols aspire to. For instance, I have some familiarity with Gunter AFB (in Montgomery) which was “closed” by a BRAC in the early 90’s. Strangely enough, it still appears to be there, although now it is called the Gunter Annex of Maxwell AFB. Apparently they closed the PX, which is all that it takes these days to “close” a base.
Bipartisan reforms would not be necessary if we made our important decisions locally. They would be local reforms. Democracy’s great advantage is that information and change flow more freely from the bottom up? I wonder if David Brooks has ever heard of the 10th Amendment?
Think Europe. The rule of the elites is what got Europe the Euro, expansion to the East and South and a whole host of rules and regulations without any hinderance from the “masses” through votes, even though all member are in theory democracies.
Was the Euro a good idea? Were the host of rules and regulation that come with the EU a good idea.
Would the great and good banned fracking to keep oil companies from poisoning the earth.
I am reasonably objective about immigration, but I am not sure I see a reasonable bipartisan solution.
David Brooks has spent too much time in the echo chamber of the NYT newsroom where they are all convinced how smart they are.
To your point, what has been the role of the Democratic process in the creation and the exercise of powers of the EU commission?