Democracy And Her Magic Ponies

America has never had a direct democracy. It has never had a government where the majority of the people decide matters of policy. If you don’t believe me, recall what happened when states passed referenda about same-sex marriage. The courts overturned the results, as everyone knew they would.

America does not have a direct democracy because our founding fathers feared the tyranny of the majority. They cared about minority rights, especially about the rights of states that had smaller populations. They did not want the populous states to impose their will on everyone else. Thus, the electoral college and the United States Senate.

In the meantime radical Democrats, the media and the intelligentsia are running around trying to destroy Donald Trump… for his offenses against democracy. That’s right, they declare themselves to be proud and intrepid defenders of democracy while doing everything in their power to overturn a fair election. Fortunately, today’s Democrats have enough enablers in the media and the bureaucracy… so that no one will ever call them out on their mindless hypocrisy. And let’s not forget the Trump executive orders that have been stayed or overturned by federal judges. If you want to tar Trump as an autocrat or a dictator you would to explain why a single federal judge can so easily undo his executive actions.

As  a sidelight, and to gain a sense of the state of mind of media figures, we note that Mika Brzezinski yesterday spewed forth a gay slur against Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. YOu and I know that no one at NBC will call her out on it and that no one will punish her for it.

The more interesting part of the story is this: recall when her father Zbigniew Brzezinski was National Security Advisor for President Jimmy Carter. We are living with the fallout today. Recall that Carter oversaw the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and facilitated the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to turn the country into an Islamist hellhole. And let’s not forget the Iran hostage crisis, so incompetently conducted by Carter and Brzezinski. Let’s take a gander at Mika’s father’s record in foreign policy… and then we can talk about who is whose butt boy.

But I digress.

By now we are all aware of the fact that American liberal democracy and Chinese authoritarian capitalism are competing for world cultural dominance. It’s the latest chapter in the clash of civilizations. We do not know who will win out. We do not know the outcome. We would be monumentally naive to imagine that the course of world history will necessarily lead to a victory for liberal democracy. One might even suggest, with good reason, that liberal democracy peaked when Francis Fukuyama announced that history was over and that liberal democracy had won. Of course, Fukuyama pretended to have gotten the idea from a great philosopher by name of G. W. F. Hegel. And we know that great German philosophers are never wrong.

Unfortunately, Fukuyama misread Hegel. The great philosopher saw the end of history in the image of a conquering imperialist hero, Napoleon, riding through his Prussian city of Jena. Trust me, Napoleon did not invade Prussia to bring it anything resembling Anglo-Saxon liberal democracy. You do not even need to read Hegel’s impenetrable prose to understand that. Strangely enough, no one seemed to much care that Fukuyama had completely misread Hegel. It says something about the quality of thought indulged by our intelligentsia.

Anyway, if you were feeling optimistic about the future of liberal democracy you should recognize a point that I have occasionally made, on this very blog. If we want liberal democracy to prevail we have to make it work. If the world sees a functioning society in China and a house divided against itself in America it is not going to embrace liberal democracy. It is going to think that liberal democracy’s flaws are too egregious and too dangerous to court.

Consider the angle that Peggy Noonan raised in the Wall Street Journal today. Do liberal democracies invariably choose competent leaders or are the people more often seduced by what she calls magic ponies?

Noonan emphasizes American presidents, but we are well within our rights to examine some of the leaders of the West’s great liberal democracies. Once-Great Britain is being led by Prime Minister Theresa May… not, of course, as a result of a direct election. May has had exactly one job: to negotiate Brexit, Britain’s exit from the European Union. In that she has failed miserably, most likely because of her basic incompetence. Think that she is the best Once-Great Britain can do... and gnash your teeth.

Across the channel, France’s Wunderkind is having his own problems-- namely, a popular uprising against the French taxation regimen. Emmanuel Macron surely counts among the brightest politicians working today. And yet, he introduced a regressive diesel fuel tax and provoked an insurrection. Dare we mention it, yet again, but Macron married his mother and marrying your mother does not put you in the running to be an alpha male. It does not command respect.

One country to the east, Germany is being led by the retiring Angela Merkel. Her greatest contribution to her nation will be her absurd open arms policy, admitting far more Muslim migrants than the nation could assimilate, and thus launching a crime wave and a rape culture. Eventually, it will damage Germany, perhaps beyond recognition. Merkel keeps winning elections, but she is finished politically… for having shown weakness when strength was required.

As for America, we will leave it to Noonan. By her lights our current and past president have been magic ponies who won office by manipulating emotion, ginning up hope and underperforming. When you live in a therapy culture that values feeling over rational thought, you get magic ponies. American democracy is increasingly incapable of electing a presidential candidate who is qualified, accomplished and who manifests sufficient gravitas. Yes, I understand that Barack Obama once said that Hillary Clinton was the most qualified candidate ever to fun for the office of the presidency. If enabling sexual harassment counts as a qualification perhaps he is right. In truth, Obama was being ironic. Hillary Clinton was such a bad candidate, such an incompetent public official, such a manifest fraud, so thoroughly unlikeable… that she could not beat Donald Trump.

Considering that he just passed away, George H. W. Bush counts as the last president who had the requisite qualities of experience not to be a magic pony. Noonan explains her idea:

Politics is part theater, part showbiz, it’s always been emotional, but we’ve gotten too emotional, both parties. It’s too much about feelings and how moved you are. The balance is off. We have been electing magic ponies in our presidential contests, and we have done this while slighting qualities like experience, hard and concrete political accomplishment, even personal maturity. Barack Obama, whatever else he was, was a magic pony. Donald Trump too. Beto O’Rourke, who is so electrifying Democrats, also appears to be a magic pony.

In a serious country, Beto O’Rourke would be a joke. His primary qualification seems to be that he reminds people of John F. Kennedy, America’s most revered magic pony.

Noonan limits herself to Obama and Trump:

Messrs. Obama and Trump represented a mood. They didn’t ask for or elicit rigorous judgment, they excited voters. Mr. Trump’s election was driven by a feeling of indignation and pushback: You elites treat me like a nobody in my own country, I’m about to show you who’s boss. His supporters didn’t consider it disqualifying that he’d never held office. They saw it as proof he wasn’t in the club and could turn things around. His ignorance was taken as authenticity. In this he was like Sarah Palin, another magic pony.

Obama effectively sold hope. And yet, hope is not a political agenda. It is not a program for leadership. It is an unguent to salve your wounds.

After two wars and an economic crisis, Mr. Obama gleamed with hope and differentness. This shining 47-year-old intellectual—surely he’ll turn things around. He’d been an obscure and indifferent state legislator who was only two years in the U.S. Senate when the move to make him president began. It was all—a feeling. He was The One.

True enough, it was nothing more than a feeling.

The trouble is, we keep finding ourselves led by people who lack the basics of good leadership:

But sober judgment, serious accomplishment, deep knowledge and personal maturity are most important in our political leaders, because of the complexity of the problems we face. History will be confounded that at such a crucial time, trying to come up with a plan to address such issues as artificial intelligence and robotics and the future of work and a rising China and the stresses of the nuclear world, we kept choosing magic ponies and hoping for the best.

Point well made… in the civilizational clash with China, we are hoping for the best. Because, if we cannot make democracy function effectively, all we have is hope. Which is hopeless.