Democracy and the Pandemic
in these last four months
of pandemic and shutdown and reopening
has there been a moment when you’ve
asked yourself is american democracy up
to this challenge
you’re not alone we are bombarded with
news comparing the u.s response to the
pandemic
to other countries and too often it
seems american democracy is faltering
back in march a co-worker of mine a
chinese citizen with a visa to work in
the united states
told me she was going home early because
she thought she’d be safer in china
she said she just thought the chinese
government would deal with this pandemic
better than the u.s
later she sent me a care package from
china with
500 medical grade face masks that i
couldn’t get here in chicago
ouch that is a care package with a
bucket full of national shame mixed in
and i found myself looking at those 500
mass and thinking
was she right these can seem like dark
times for democracy
but the story isn’t over i’m here to
talk about why we should have some faith
in our form of government
the crisis we face today democracy
versus the pandemic
is a unique one but it’s also the latest
chapter in a larger story
that story began on november 9th 1989.
i remember that day matter of fact it’s
my first memory of politics
i was a little boy there was a commotion
in the living room
i went to see what was going on and
found my parents laughing and dancing
around the television
because some wall in germany had fallen
down the berlin wall they called it
i remember thinking what in the world
could make adults this excited
but that day america’s political system
passed one of history’s great tests
ideas are tested by events
scientists test hypotheses with
experiments
political ideas are tested by whether
the countries that champion them
flourish
do they project strength abroad do they
enable good lives for their citizens at
home
do they win battles do they manage
crises
ideas and events move through history
together
the day the berlin wall fell american
ideas of democracy
and free markets triumphed over the
ideology of communism
that triumph helped propel forward a
wave of democratization throughout the
world
in the mid 70s fewer than a third of the
world’s countries were democracies
by the early 2000s most of them were it
was a time of utmost
optimism about the american system of
government
at its height it seemed as though the
very history
of political competition and change
itself had ended
american-style government liberal
democracy with free markets was the last
form of government there could ever be
and then the lights went out the wave of
democracy stalled
the world began a democracy recession
a key player here was china china became
a communist dictatorship in 1949
and for the next three decades it was
one of the capitals of human misery on
earth
but then china began an astonishing
rise i remember backpacking across china
with a buddy in 2004
everywhere we went the skyline was
filled with tower cranes
building skyscrapers it seemed like the
whole country was under construction
it was electrifying not to mention noisy
there was pride too we took a bus
into the mountains and on the bus was a
little boy who wanted to practice his
english
he asked me where i was from i said
america he said
america you are stronger than us
for now my jaw
dropped how often do you hear
nationalism from a tween
but incredible as it sounds that’s what
he said
with china’s rise has lifted hundreds of
millions of people out of poverty
as fellow human beings that’s something
we should all celebrate
but on the level of political ideas
china’s rise is troubling
because the government delivered
prosperity and rose to superpower status
while rejecting democracy and freedom
the obvious comparison is to india india
is a democracy
but india has stayed relatively poor
and here in the united states democracy
stronghold
many of us feel our government was
floundering for years before this
pandemic hit
so here i stand telling the story of
democracy
over the last 30 years about the same
age now as my parents when i saw him
dancing around the living room
but they got to witness american
democracy go from night to day
i’ve had to watch it my generation has
felt it go from day to night
this pandemic begins the next chapter of
democracy’s story
it started out as a medical crisis it
has become
a test of our form of government again
ideas are tested by events this pandemic
is a challenge confronting our countries
and of course our shared humanity is
more important than political ideologies
at a time like this
but precisely because it confronts our
countries it inevitably tests the
political ideas on which those countries
are based
it’s like a stress test of all the
governments of the world
above all this pandemic extends the
pre-existing
civilizational competition between china
and the united
states they are the world’s wealthiest
and mightiest countries
and along with india the most populous
they are the standard bearers for
democracy and authoritarianism
of course there’s more to democracy than
the united states germany australia
south korea they’re all democracies and
they’re all dealing with the pandemic
quite well
and there’s more to authoritarianism
than china autocracies like russia
and iran are dealing with the pandemic
quite poorly
but because china and the u.s are so
influential
their examples will inevitably affect
democracy’s future
i don’t want to dwell here on the
reasons for america’s struggles with the
pandemic you hear about those every day
i want to dive into the philosophical
foundations of american democracy
and pull out of those foundations three
reasons for hope
rational hope hope based on intellectual
substance
i want to look at the roots of america’s
political system and talk about why they
give us a chance to succeed
reason for hope number one the election
coming up
november’s election is the first chance
the american people have had to hire and
fire
representatives based on the pandemic
we’ve had elected representatives at the
helm from the outset
but what changes in november is that for
the first time
those representatives have to answer for
the decisions they’ve made
and they answer to us remember
democracy doesn’t just mean electing
people to rule over
us it means after they govern for a
little while
we get to decide if they keep their jobs
if we think our politicians blew it in
response to this pandemic
november is our chance to say so and if
we think they handle the pandemic
well or that they’re the right people to
lead us back to productive life
november’s election is our chance to say
that too
accountability at elections is the
hallmark of democracy
accountability means that when you think
about democracy and the pandemic
you can’t just look at the short term
and you’ve got to consider
risk citizens in authoritarian countries
have to
live with their rulers decisions even
when those decisions spell disaster
when the rulers make good calls things
can go pretty well
but when they don’t the citizens are
without recourse except revolution
that is a high risk approach to politics
citizens in democracies can change their
leaders and their futures based on
results
we have the capacity to change that
mitigates risk
it means we’re at our best in the long
run and it means that even
in the midst of this pandemic and
economic crisis
and racial crisis we as a democratic
people
remain in control of our destiny
reason for hope number two in true
democracies we don’t just elect the
people to do the deciding
we take up the policy issues of the day
ourselves we
self-govern true self-government is a
dance with three steps
we deliberate as a people about matters
of public concern
we form some majority convictions about
what’s right a majority will
and we have the power to project that
majority will into government such that
state action
reflects our convictions self-government
is the
of the people by the people part of
democracy
it is radical and it is wonderful
and i want to acknowledge that in the
united states in recent years it doesn’t
seem to be working
something about american public
discourse has gone wrong
become partisan polarized bitter
and something about the connection
between the american people and their
government has gone wrong too
so that even when most americans have
made up their minds about something
too often they can’t get the government
to act accordingly
there’s alienation within we the people
an alienation between the people
and their government but we have been
through such periods of alienation
before
and we’ve come through them because
there is a deep wisdom built into the
very structure of self-government
the policy issues ahead of us are
difficult because they don’t just
involve questions of technical
competence they involve questions of how
to balance competing values
some americans think we should do
whatever is necessary to minimize the
illness
others think we should take on more
medical risks to get the economy running
again
some think we should heed and abide by
the policy views of medical
professionals
others think we should be more skeptical
of experts
some think we should centralize policy
in the white house
others think we should allow more state
and local variation
these sorts of policy trade-offs are
where self-government shines
phase one of managing a pandemic might
require
massive quarantines and you know what
it’s not surprising authoritarian
governments are good at that
massive impositions of state power are
what they do best
but phase two of managing a pandemic is
about
balancing competing goods that’s what
democracies do best
why partly because when we talk to each
other instead of just using power over
each other
good arguments and good facts tend to
prevail
democratic deliberation is far from
perfect but it exerts a sort of pull
a tug toward the truth and what’s the
alternative
authoritarian governments routinely
control their people
with propaganda secrets coercion and
lies
another reason self-government works is
because when people truly self-govern
there is no ruling elite there’s dignity
in that
we’re not just passengers waiting to see
what the people in charge decide to do
but also ruling elites inevitably
exhibit
profound failures of judgment and good
will
but when we self-govern our values and
our interests
matter because we make them matter
because the people in charge are us
finally self-government works because at
the end of the day
the american people have deep reservoirs
of wisdom
and good sex now the process of
self-government is messy
take a deep breath brace yourselves you
are
guaranteed to hear views you strongly
dislike
maybe you’re hearing some of them right
now in this talk
but just remember those disagreements
are an essential part of a good thing
democracies get to wisdom but they get
there slowly
and they get there through contestation
reason for hope number three american
government is not a pure democracy
but a constitutional system with checks
and balances the rule of law
and individual rights what constitutions
do
is structure the power of the state the
basic idea of the u.s
constitution is to give the state enough
power to meet the needs of the moment
while preventing
surplus repression so what we want from
the constitution in times of crisis
is constrained strength in a pandemic
we want to be able to ramp up executive
power really high
and then ramp it back down while keeping
it always within
a law-governed constitutional structure
we want a government with enough power
to control contagion but that still has
to respect
individual rights and individual
variations of circumstance
and we want to preserve the
constitutional system itself for when
the crisis is over
we’re seeing all of that imposing a
quarantine at the scale we did
is a remarkable demonstration of
executive power but the quarantine
and bailout and other policies we’ve
adopted have never been pure command and
control
the white house congress governors state
legislatures and mayors all played a
role
the courts remain open and are hearing
claims of individual right
and a less formal part of the structure
of checks and balances is working too
the businesses churches and other
institutions that make up america’s
complex power structure
are exercising some independent
judgments
above all at the end of the day the
american people remain in control
because if the last 228 years of
unbroken
four-year election cycles or any clue
come november
the election will be held arguably we’re
a bit too decentralized for a pandemic
the system is optimized more to prevent
surplus repression than to enable
unified action
but the system isn’t broken and we will
emerge from this crisis
with a constitution that preserves
democratic freedom for tomorrow
so those are my three reasons for
rational hope accountability in
elections
true self-government and constrained
strength in the constitution
things may seem dark now but they need
not stay that way
we are the world’s oldest democracy but
democracy is evergreen
because democracies can change at the
center
of american democracy are the tools to
meet this crisis
and the larger crisis unvanquished
to go from doubt to confidence from
night
to day and from darkness back again to
light