All of us are taught from early on that the more democracy the better; that the casting of ballots should decide as much as possible in life. This is sheer nonsense, and a misunderstanding of the principles upon which the American experiment was built.
As noted before, the actual purpose of the American founding was to protect the liberties of the people by limiting governmental power, even power wielded by elected representatives.
The structural features of the American system did this along both the horizontal and vertical axes; at the central governmental level in Washington through separation of powers and at the vertical level in relations between Washington and the states through federalism. The purpose was to preserve liberty by dispersing and thereby checking political authority.
Those on the left who are increasingly upset with the electoral college (because of its capacity to award the presidency to someone with fewer votes), the Senate (because of its less than democratic composition), and the lingering autonomy of the states under federalism (because of their resulting ability to block federal initiatives) are therefore protesting not so much those features per se, as the anti-majoritarian thinking that inspired them.
Their real beef is with James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, not Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell.
For the founders, there was as much danger from too much democracy ("mob rule") as from too little democracy (tyranny). For the left, everything must be democratized lest the "general will" be frustrated.
The founders of course never actually foresaw the creation of our two-party system, but an argument can be made that their concerns about excessive democracy can be most conspicuously confirmed by what has happened to our political parties in recent decades; more precisely, the manner in which they have lost control of their presidential nominating processes.
Over time, beginning with the Progressive era but accelerating in the 1960s, both Democrats and Republicans opened up their nomination processes, taking power away from party elites/leaders in those smoke-filled backrooms at party conventions and giving it to the people to wield in party primaries and caucuses.
Under the old system, candidates for president were drafted at the party conventions every four years after negotiations among party leaders intended to unite party factions and best position it for victory in November. With such considerations in mind, nominees were invariably prominent officeholders who had climbed the ranks and were thought to be sufficiently moderate as to have broad national and ideological appeal.
The primary system, which each party ended up adopting in full by the 1970s, changed all this, creating the arduous marathons that we are now witnessing, which begin in some respects the day after a presidential election has been held as a motley crew of aspirants suddenly find bogus excuses to start popping into Iowa and New Hampshire.
Party leaders and officeholders no longer have much choice in who their party's nominees happen to be, as Donald Trump's hostile takeover of the GOP in 2016 so amply demonstrated, and it is likely that many who might make reasonably good presidents (Norman Schwarzkopf, Condi Rice, and Colin Powell quickly come to mind) can't be blamed for thinking up better things to do with their time, leaving the field largely to the demagogues and the hucksters.
Anyone can now run for president because experience of any kind in public office or the military is no longer necessary (again, Trump), and even candidates who know they have little chance to win will nonetheless declare because there are few disincentives and the promise of cable TV shows, speaking fees and book deals down the road.
The "people" now decide who gets the presidential nominations of our major parties, with the result that they now go not to the most qualified to govern, or the contenders with the most impressive resumes and accomplishments, but to the best campaigners, often just those who can deliver the best one-line zingers on a bogus-debate stage, as if such skills have anything at all to do with being president.
The disjunction between the skills necessary to win a party's presidential nomination and those necessary to perform the actual duties of the presidency grows accordingly.
Yes, the process is now superficially more democratic and inclusive, but that only means that the ideologues on right and left get to pick those who we have to pick from for the presidency, usually to our great dismay.
So let's admit a mistake and turn the clock back for just this once -- let's go back to the wheeling and dealing in the smoke-filled backrooms, and let those who actually have some skin in the game, the governors and big-city mayors and members of Congress from each party, decide who their party's presidential nominees should be.
In short, rather than get rid of the much-reviled superdelegates, let's get rid of the primaries so that there are only the superdelegates. Then let them do their business so that come November the rest of us can do ours without having to hold our noses.
The hunch is that American voters would much rather have good choices in November than the pretense of more input in March.
Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial on 05/27/2019