{"id":6786,"date":"2009-08-23T13:43:31","date_gmt":"2009-08-23T18:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=6786"},"modified":"2009-08-24T10:53:59","modified_gmt":"2009-08-24T15:53:59","slug":"town-hall-meetings-and-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/08\/town-hall-meetings-and-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Town Hall Meetings and Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lippmann\"It is difficult to watch the video of the various \u201ctown hall meetings\u201d and constituent listening sessions that have taken place during the current congressional recess.\u00a0 The overwhelming feeling engendered by these scenes of screaming faces is a feeling of despair for the future of democracy itself.\u00a0 After all, town hall meetings hold an important place in our nation\u2019s history as a symbol of the general public\u2019s continuing participation in their own democratic government.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0We are very far removed from the time when the residents of a small New England town could gather together on an occasional basis and make communal decisions that governed their daily lives.\u00a0 Today, members of congress are expected to use these forums to report back to their constituents, to answer questions and solicit concerns, and then to return to Washington, D.C. with a greater sense of the priorities of the voters.\u00a0 This is not exactly direct democracy in action, along the classic New England model, but it is the closest that most of us can claim to actually participating in the machinery of our own government.<\/p>\n

\u00a0At many of these town hall meetings, ostensibly intended to address the topic of health care reform, the proceedings have been anything but an exemplar of participatory democracy.\u00a0 I am not referring to the \u201cexaggerations and extrapolations\u201d of the pending health care reform legislation that some attendees and some Republican opponents of the bill have espoused.\u00a0 Trying to prove that something is a lie is like chasing your tail.\u00a0 The task of separating truth from fiction is simply a never ending part of the human condition.\u00a0 Nor am I particularly concerned over the shouting and the ill manners of many attendees.\u00a0 I cannot think of any period in our nation\u2019s history when politeness was the norm in political debate.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Instead, my concern is with the future of democracy itself.\u00a0 In 1922, in his book Public Opinion<\/em>, Walter Lippmann presented a pessimistic view of the public\u2019s ability to govern itself through our nation\u2019s democratic process.\u00a0 Three years later, he followed up his critique in the book The Phantom Public<\/em>.\u00a0 If anything, the sequel held out even less hope for the meaningful participation of the general public in the shaping of the government policies that have such a dramatic impact on their lives.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Ideologically, Walter Lippmann was a difficult person to pigeonhole.\u00a0 He began his journalistic career as an avowed liberal, and over his long life he supported and advised presidents of both political parties.\u00a0 After his death, his books were reprinted by the \u201cLibrary of Conservative Thought.\u201d\u00a0 He was Jewish, but he embraced the concept of natural law and wrote admiringly of the moral authority of Catholicism.\u00a0 Ronald Steel, in his magisterial biography Walter Lippmann and the American Century<\/em>, points out the \u201cdeep vein of conservatism running through [Lippmann\u2019s] brand of liberalism.\u201d (Steel, p. 233).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Here is how Steel summarizes Lippmann\u2019s central critique of the modern political process:<\/p>\n

\u00a0Political science [had previously] focused on how decisions were made \u2013 by political parties, voting, the branches of government.\u00a0 In Public Opinion, Lippmann went behind such mechanics to scrutinize the centerpiece of democratic theory: the \u2018omnicompetent citizen.\u2019\u00a0 That theory assumed that the average citizen, being rational, could make intelligent judgments on public issues if presented with the facts. . . .<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0Now, however, [Lippmann] had to abandon that faith. . . .\u00a0 People see what they are looking for and what their education and experience have trained them to see. \u2018We do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see,\u2019 Lippmann wrote.\u00a0 Since no man can see everything, each creates for himself a reality that fits his experience, in effect a \u2018pseudo environment\u2019 that helps impose order on an otherwise chaotic world.\u00a0 . . .\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0Steel goes on to explain the connection that Lippmann made between his insights about human nature and the mechanical operation of the political process:<\/p>\n

\u00a0. . . For most people, the world had become literally \u2018out of reach, out of sight, out of mind.\u2019\u00a0 This posed no serious problem in a small community where the decisions each citizen had to make rarely went beyond what he could directly experience.\u00a0 This was the world that the eighteenth-century fathers of democratic theory had written about.\u00a0 But modern man did not live in that world.\u00a0 He was being asked to make judgments about issues he could not possibly experience firsthand: the tariff, the military budget, questions of war and peace.\u00a0 What was reasonable in a Greek city-state was impossible in a modern technological society.\u00a0 The outside world had grown too big for the \u2018self-centered man\u2019 to grasp.\u00a0 This posed a political dilemma, for classic democracy \u2018never seriously faced the problem which arises because the pictures inside people\u2019s heads do not automatically correspond with the world outside.\u2019\u00a0 They did not correspond for a number of reasons\u2014stereotyping, prejudice, propaganda.\u00a0 The result was to erode the whole foundation of popular government. . . .<\/p>\n

\u00a0. . .\u00a0 The Enlightenment conception of democracy\u2014based on the assumption that every man had direct experience and understanding of the world around him\u2014was totally inadequate to a mass society where men had contact with only a tiny part of the world on which they were being asked to make decisions.\u00a0 What was possible in an eighteenth-century rural community was unworkable in great cities.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Steel, pp. 180-182.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Lippmann concluded, therefore, that the general public was incapable of directing the course of events on any rational basis and that it was folly to attempt this.\u00a0 At best, the public had the ability to identify those persons or groups who were capable of making important decisions by either voting them in or out of power.\u00a0 It is not so much that the members of the general public lack competence, it is that the general public lacks sufficient information with which to exercise any sort of rational thought process.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Lippmann\u2019s theories gave rise to the entire industry of public relations, they revolutionized the concept of advertising, and they greatly influenced every interest group who has since sought to influence the public\u2019s desires and beliefs by \u201cputting pictures in our heads.\u201d\u00a0 All of these forces in our society eschew rational argument in favor of molding opinion through the use of the symbols and the stereotypes that they believe the general public uses to understand reality.<\/p>\n

By and large, the Republican Party has embraced Lippmann\u2019s theories of political science more than the Democrats.\u00a0 When Gary Wills wrote that Ronald Reagan asked the public to \u201creject historical record for historical fantasy\u201d (Innocents at Home<\/em> p. 387), or Henry Fairlie charged that Reagan offered voters an \u201cescape from the present to the idyllic past\u201d (Bite the Hand That Feeds You<\/em>, p. 190), they were both marveling at Reagan\u2019s ability to glide above the facts and connect with voters on a symbolic level.\u00a0 One can interpret the political rise of Sarah Palin as a similar achievement.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Administration of George W. Bush unabashedly employed Lippmann\u2019s theories of politics.\u00a0 When reporter Ron Suskind quoted<\/a>\u00a0a senior advisor to President Bush speaking dismissively of the \u201creality-based community,” which embraced the illusion that solutions to problems arise from a study of discernible reality, the advisor was channeling Lippmann.\u00a0 ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” the advisor told Suskind. \u201c[W]hen we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”\u00a0 The main political sin of George W. Bush was not his attempt to manipulate reality, but his failure to successfully hide what he was doing. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0While Lippmann\u2019s genius has been universally recognized, there has always been a large contingent of liberals and progressives who have rejected his pessimistic conclusions.\u00a0 For decades, they chose to focus instead on the expansion of the coalition of democratic interest groups– through the addition of women, minorities and the gay and lesbian community– as the key to enacting liberal legislative reforms.\u00a0 More recently, liberal elements within the Democratic Party have seized upon technology, and the internet, as the key to building broader support for their agenda.\u00a0 The \u201cGreat Health Care Debate\u201d may finally convince these doubters that Lippmann was right all along.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The town hall meeting experience demonstrates that many liberals continue to cling to the idea of an objective reality.\u00a0 The Obama Administration approached the issue of health care reform as a process of rational decision-making, where a variety of interest groups would reach an accommodation based upon mutual self-interest.\u00a0 While President Obama did not initially plan on using town hall meetings in order to promote health care reform, no one in his Administration seemed overly concerned over the prospect of the general public weighing in during the congressional recess.\u00a0 Lo and behold, when the views of many of the attendees at the town hall meetings were solicited, these views revolved around death panels and the fact that any form of government sponsored health care is inherently evil (unless it is offered by Medicare or the Veterans Administration, both of which are sacrosanct).<\/p>\n

Health care reform is too complicated an issue for any lay person to understand.\u00a0 As a result, the general public falls back on the pictures in our heads to make sense of it all.\u00a0 This facet of human nature makes us all vulnerable to powerful groups who gain and hold on to their power precisely because they are exceedingly good at creating those pictures.\u00a0 Lippmann also recognized that when government policy gets too complicated for the average person to understand, it risks letting loose \u201call the submerged antagonisms within the state.\u201d (Steel, p. 227).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Corporate America, in contrast to the general public, participates in the legislative process quite successfully via the lobbying process.\u00a0 It can afford to hire specialists with the knowledge and experience to direct legislative priorities and to influence the votes of legislators.\u00a0 Without any real competition from a general public seeking to advance its own interests, it is clear that the legislative process has been captured by corporate interests.\u00a0 Reform measures intended to address this imbalance, either by decreasing corporate influence through limits on campaign contributions or by increasing lawmaker independence through redistricting efforts, are too complicated themselves for the general public to understand.\u00a0 If the general public cannot think rationally on the question of health care reform, what hope is there that it can rationally address a\u00a0reform of the political process itself?<\/p>\n

The fundamental question is whether we still have the capability to govern ourselves or whether we the people are destined to have our fates determined by elite interest groups.\u00a0 Lippmann thought that the modern world was too complex for the former alternative.\u00a0 He placed his hope in the education and morality of the elite, confident that they would act for the common good and not selfishly.\u00a0 If that is where our nation\u2019s best hope lies, then I am truly depressed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is difficult to watch the video of the various \u201ctown hall meetings\u201d and constituent listening sessions that have taken place during the current congressional recess.\u00a0 The overwhelming feeling engendered by these scenes of screaming faces is a feeling of despair for the future of democracy itself.\u00a0 After all, town hall meetings hold an important 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