June 3, 2007

By Harry T. Cook

It was left to the senior senator from Illinois to administer the last rites to American democracy on May 24 as Congress was about to cave on the military appropriations bill, handing George W. Bush yet another blank check to wage his unwinnable war in Iraq.

Speaking democracy’s valediction at its deathbed was Richard J. Durbin, who said of the vote to fund the war absent a timetable for troop withdrawal: “We do not have it within our power to make the will of the people the law of the land.”

“The will of the people” of which Mr. Durbin spoke was supposedly expressed in last November’s election that delivered the leadership of Congress into the hands of the Democratic party — a party that, when it counted, could not quite summon the courage of enough of its members to say no to Bush, and never mind a veto..

The will of the people is to hold Bush and his cohort responsible for their catastrophic blunder in invading Iraq in the first place on the patently false WMD pretext and for staying on haplessly to aid the insurgency in turning the country into this decade’s version of the killing fields.

What the people expected Congress to do instead of negotiating with a president who declines to negotiate in good faith was to tell him to take his war and stick it, to leave it on Bush’s head to keep the troops in the field without resources or, finally, to declare victory and decamp.

But no. The fear of a Rovian retribution in 2008 stalks Democrats and Republicans alike who nevertheless clearly see that a growing majority among their constituents can read the casualty list (and the tea leaves)
and want the armed forces of their nation out of Iraq as much as they want Bush to go back to the Crawford ranch — permanently.

Yet, one apparently cannot be seen as not supporting the troops. However, leaving the dollar spigot wide open for another four months or 2 ½ years is only one way — and a perverse one at that — to support the troops. Another is to bring them home.

That Congress could not or would not enact that clear will of the people is a pronouncement of death upon democracy. The people do not, in fact, rule. Dick Cheney growled the other day that “we weren’t elected to be popular.”

Well, yes you were, Mr. Not-Soon-Enough-To-Be-Ex-Veep. Being popular means being in sync with the populous. Your populous wants you and your stringed Pinocchio to get us the hell out of Iraq. You were elected to lead us, not to stampede us off a cliff.

What the American electorate needs to learn from the past 6 ½ years is how to craft a strategy to hold its elected officials and legislators accountable. Bush and Cheney and the horses they rode in on have governed as if by divine right, as if Mars and Ares were speaking to them stereophonically, as if there were no other voices pleading to be heard.

And that’s just the point. The voices of American citizens should not have to be pitched to the tone of groveling supplication. The ballot, millions of them, speak with the sound of a thunder clap. But if those who need to hear it are deaf — or feign deafness — what then?

Street demonstrations? We’ve had ’em. Boycotts? We’ve had’ em. Elections? We’ve had ’em. Letters to editors? We’ve written them, and they’ve printed them. None of that has worked because, for all intents and purposes, democracy is dead in America.

How, this side of rolling out the guillotine, shall it be revivified?

1) Democracy in America cannot be reborn apart from righting the nation’s economic imbalance in which most of the trump cards are held by a privileged few, too few of whom attained their financial Olympus through meritocracy. Those who have much will have to be relieved of some of it so those with too little will have enough to call it an actual stake in the country’s present and future. The poor and near-poor have insufficient time, energy and motivation to be involved in the political process. One hates to think that was the idea.

2) Democracy in America cannot be reborn apart from true and lasting campaign reform so the next election doesn’t heat up the morning after the one before, so that big money can no longer call the shots through regencies of such infamy as the National Rifle Association and the various klavens of the Religious Right.

3) Democracy in America cannot be reborn unless the so-called media crawl out from the sewers of sensationalism, banality and half-ass reporting and return to being the purveyors of useful and pertinent information. Old St. John was right, Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will set your free.

Speaking of St. John, in anticipation of any of this I am not holding my breath. I am, in fact, holding my nose because democracy appears to be as dead as Lazarus who, as his sister Martha observed, stinketh. (See John 11:39 KJV)

 © Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.