Underneath the Right’s positive, focus-group-tested phrases (like ownership society) is an ugly message of distrust: You have to own your own, because you can’t trust anybody else’s. You need to own your own retirement benefits, because you can’t trust young people to fulfill the generational contract of Social Security. You need school vouchers, because you can’t trust your community to provide a decent public school. You need a gun, because you can’t trust the safety of your neighborhood. The legal system needs tort reform, because juries made up of people like you can’t be trusted. The Constitution needs a long list of amendments, because you can’t trust judges. The government can’t be trusted to spend your taxes wisely, so you need to take that money back and spend it yourself. It goes without saying that international organizations like the UN or the International Criminal Court are not to be trusted; that’s why we need to approach each international crisis de novo and establish a new coalition-of-the-willing.
The Right frequently raises trust as an issue, but they mean personal trust in the candidate. As in: “You can trust me, but you can’t trust him.” Put together, it is a bizarre and dangerous message: You can’t trust your fellow citizens, you can’t trust your public institutions, but you can trust your Leader. The Leader demands a lot of trust: Trust him to decide which nations we need to attack preemptively. Trust him to decide which American citizens are enemy combatants, so that they can be locked up without trials. Trust his administration with unprecedented powers of investigation and surveillance. Trust it to operate with unprecedented levels of secrecy.
How long can America survive as a democracy with this configuration of trust and distrust?
Democracy does not just mean elections and a constitution. Democracy is a structure of trusted public institutions through which the people shape their lives. The Right does not understand this. (That’s why they consistently underestimate the difficulty of bringing democracy to other countries. We can give Iraq a constitution. We can oversee an election that chooses a government. But we can’t make Sunni trust Shia.)
The Democrats need to be the party that promotes public trust – open government, accountability to the people, support for public institutions. Public trust needs to be coupled with public responsibility. We should not be defensive about the failures of public institutions, but should turn the discussion to remedies that make the institutions better, not ones that eliminate public institutions in favor of private ones. Every problem with a public institution should be an opportunity to impose more openness, more accountability, more democracy.
The Right wants to reduce the people to consumers whose simple buy/don’t-buy decisions are amalgamated by the Market to shape society. Consumers have no need to think about the common good or the long-term direction of the nation. They only have to decide what to buy next. The Left needs to inspire people to be citizens, not just consumers. We need to involve them in the processes of government, to have them look up from the purchasing decisions of today and consider the world they want to leave to future generations.
America needs citizens, not just consumers. Otherwise government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall perish from the Earth.
Return to 10 Ideas for 2008 by Doug Muder