October 9, 2017 The Nation.^33
collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”
Nor is democracy about rationality versus
irrationality; only technocrats think that
way about politics. Rather, it is a system
that allows leaders to gain power on the
basis of their claims to represent different
ideas, interests, and identities. Obviously,
the latter are ultimately individual, but
they end up being combined into larger
political forces. These are not objectively
given; they are formed in a dynamic, open-
ended process of struggle over who and
what gets to be represented, how, and by
whom. Democratic representation is there-
fore neither about finding the one right
policy answer nor about the mechanical
reproduction of already existing interests
and identities. New blocs of interests and
forms of identification are themselves an
outcome of politics.
To treat democracy only in terms of the
individual voter and his or her competence
is like having microeconomics without any
macro. Such an approach fails to see that
the quality of democracy depends crucially
on the space between individual voters
and the policy decisions that bind them
together. Different institutions—from the
courts to the media to the rules of election
campaigns—make an enormous difference
here. As the American political scientist
E.E. Schattschneider put it, “the problem
is not how 180 million Aristotles can run a
democracy, but how can we organize a com-
munity of 180 million ordinary people so
that it remains sensitive to our needs. This
is a problem of leadership, organization,
alternatives, and systems of responsibility
and confidence.”
T
he terms “leadership” and “respon-
sibility”—as horribly elitist as they
may sound to some—should remind
us that ignorance and misinforma-
tion are not just facts of life; they
are often also the result of fully conscious
decisions by political elites who would
like to protect and extend their interests.
Americans are polarized and often treat
their fellow citizens as “civic enemies”
not because democracy has an inherently
“gladiatorial” nature and brings out the
worst in us; nor is it because the country is
naturally divided into red states and blue
states. Polarization is a project that con-
fers great political and economic benefits;
unreasonableness can be big business. Ger-
rymandering, doing away with the Fairness
Doctrine in the media, and inviting Alex
Jones on prime-time TV are not choices
dictated by democracy as such.
Instead of blaming the people for their
irrationality, we might ask instead about
the “leadership” of a figure like David Cam-
eron, who called a referendum on Britain’s
membership in the European Union purely
to pacify critics in his own party. Rather
than citing endless statistics about how
shockingly little Americans know about
politics, we might also wonder
about the “responsibility” of a
figure like Senate majority
leader Mitch McConnell,
who can reshape the en-
tire political game by
deciding that his own
and his party’s interests
would be best served
by maintaining a state
of perpetual conflict,
and never cooperation,
with the Democrats.
True, what pundits have
described as a recent, suppos-
edly unstoppable “wave” of populism
might confirm the kinds of worries about
democracy that Brennan and plenty of
journalists articulate. But it’s important to
remember that a figure like Nigel Farage,
the former leader of the populist UK Inde-
pendence Party, did not bring about Brexit
all by himself; he needed the backing of
very established figures from the Conserva-
tive Party like Michael Gove. It was Gove,
after all, who, in the face of warnings about
Brexit by many experts, announced that
“the people of this country have had enough
of experts.” The irony was that Gove him-
self clearly spoke with the authority of an
expert: He has always been seen as one of
the Tories’ most prominent “intellectu-
als.” It took nothing less than an expert to
convince people that claims of expertise are
overrated.
Trump’s victory, in turn, is not best un-
derstood as a “revolt of the masses” driven
primarily by an undereducated, racist white
working class. Rather, it was a triumph
of hyperpartisanship: Trump needed the
blessing of not-exactly-grassroots populist
figures like New Jersey Governor Chris
Christie, former New York City mayor
Rudy Giuliani, and former House speaker
Newt Gingrich. When the latter told a
CNN anchor last summer that he didn’t
trust statistics on crime but believed instead
in what people felt, he did the same trick
that Gove had performed in the UK: What-
ever else one thinks about Gingrich, he is
considered an intellectual of sorts among
American conservatives. So, as in Britain,
it took an established expert to devalue theimportance of expertise.
Once Trump had the blessing of Re-
publican heavyweights, he became, above
all else, the candidate of a very established
party—and 90 percent of self-identified
Republicans gave him their vote. More-
over, many of them explicitly registered
their doubts about the candidate’s com-
petence—but in a Mitch McCon-
nell–esque world in which one
side refuses to recognize
the other side’s legiti-
macy, it was inconceiv-
able for these voters to
cast a ballot for Hillary
Clinton. The issue is
not so much that, as
Brennan puts it, hat-
ing is fun, and more
that once the deed of
demonization has been
done, it is difficult to undo
in citizens’ minds.
Democratic politics can be an un-
sightly spectacle. Even idealists will some-
times be tempted to agree that the best
argument against it is a five-minute conver-
sation with the average voter. But it isn’t an
accident that democracy is also the system
that provides the most room for freedom,
however imperfectly, and does the best job
of protecting basic rights. As the economist
Amartya Sen famously demonstrated, de-
mocracy is the regime that avoids famines;
and as the political philosopher Thomas
Christiano has emphasized, democratic in-
stitutions still offer the best means for the
most vulnerable members of the population
to secure and advance their interests.
Above all, when things really go wrong,
democracy is the system that allows people
to throw the bastards out—and contrary to
Brennan’s suggestion, “knowing whether
the bastards are doing a bad job” doesn’t
require “a tremendous amount of social
scientific knowledge.” As the political sci-
entist Martin Gilens has observed, many
voters have a good enough sense of how
specific politicians have performed and, in
fact, are able to pay attention to the cues
that elected officials—as well as pundits and
rival candidates—offer them. Of course,
this doesn’t mean that the problems identi-
fied by Brennan are entirely fictitious; but
many of them have more to do with the
conduct of particular elites than they do
with an ignorant or uneducated demos.
Giving already powerful people even more
power by restricting the influence of the
most vulnerable seems an odd way of ad-
dressing them. Q