Democracy Does Work – If We Take the Long View

A few weeks ago, I received an email from Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) showing how the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is impacting our state.  Funds already approved for highways, bridges and electric vehicle charging stations ($7.7 billion), airport improvements ($400 million) and transit system upgrades ($1.2 billion) are putting people to work and will improve our lives. 

Yet public opinion polls consistently report that Americans think we’re on the wrong track. They fault government failures on inflation, immigration, crime, racial relations, health care and gun violence, just to name a few sources of discontent.    

Democracy’s great gift is the power it gives to ordinary people to voice that discontent freely.  People then expect their voice to be heard and acted upon - quickly.  When that doesn’t happen, government is called unresponsive and ineffective.  Thus we hear the charge that “democracy doesn’t work”.

That charge reflects a serious misunderstanding.  Our form of government was, of course, born of discontent (with the British).  We didn’t stop complaining when the American Revolution was over.  It is in our culture’s DNA to complain. The Constitution was designed to allow – even encourage - the ability to complain.  Dissatisfaction with the way things are and demands for change pump energy into our system of government, which might otherwise turn a deaf ear to citizens.

At the same time, our government was designed to solve problems - but it was designed to do so slowly.  The Constitution’s framers didn’t want any part of government to take away our liberties, so it deliberately made it hard for government to do things. It creating contending sources of power, first within the national government and then between it and state governments.  The result is that the “peoples’ voice” is many voices which often disagree both about the problem and what to do about it. Working through those disagreements takes time – sometimes lots of time.  Consensus only comes with the sturm and drang of politics: arguments, tradeoffs, dealmaking.  If you want speedy government, go to Russia, China and Iran. Yet in those countries, government can easily ignore public complaints.  Citizens’ voices there are discouraged and often criminalized.  Americans rightly don’t consider those free societies.   

It took years to get the infrastructure law passed. Now that it has passed, the problem is seldom talked about anymore.  It has largely dropped off the public’s radar.  Neither print nor digital media talk about it.  Federal, state and local governments say little about what the law and its funding have accomplished.  Even as those roads and bridges are improved, for example, few in my state will know that it was the 2021 act that made that happen.  What took so much effort gets taken for granted.

So, with democracy we’re consistently dissatisfied and just as consistently forget what that dissatisfaction has achieved.  We get angry about what’s not happening now and miss what has happened.  Indeed, about the only time we take note of previous accomplishments is when what democracy has achieved might be taken away.  Think about how angry people get at threats of government shutdowns that might close national parks or delay Social Security payments.

Americans have a warped time perspective.  It is fostered by digital devices and social media which direct our attention to the present, not the past. We’re bombarded with “bombshell” reports, “breaking news” and images of protests and anger.   Stories about government achievements struggle to get on the front page or into news feeds, if anyone even writes such stories.  Indeed, congratulating government for doing something useful is not likely to be considered “news” or make one popular at parties.

In 2000, the Brookings Institution assembled a group of scholars to identify the top achievements of American government in the previous half century.  Just as examples, these included rebuilding Europe after World War II, containing communism, voting rights legislation, equal access to public accommodations for those with disabilities, legislation to reduce discrimination in employment and education, improving air and water quality and worker safety, reducing disease and increasing the life span, the interstate highway system. Medicare, Medicaid and expanding home ownership.  Imagine what life would be like without these gains of democracy.  In this new century, in addition to the infrastructure legislation we can certainly already add: expanding health insurance availability, developing COVID vaccines, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Respect for Marriage Act and, most recently, changes to make it much easier to save for retirement.

We don’t need to forgive government’s failures but neither should we forget its successes. Democracy is messy. Its achievements may get lost in the mists of history.  Yet if we expand our time perspective, we may become less likely to charge that it is failing.  

As we start a new calendar and legislative year, we would do well to reflect not just on what remains to be done but on how much already has been.

Photo Credit: Chris Linnett @ unsplash