You’ve heard it before: American democracy is dying. Our 237-year-old Constitution is out of date. The U.S. Senate and the Electoral College are bulwarks of white supremacy. The legislative filibuster thwarts reform. The two-party system is stifling. Our political institutions are broken beyond repair. There’s no saving this corrupt polity. Only radical change will do the trick.
What country are the experts talking about? Last year’s election proceeded without incident. The winner was determined not long after polls closed. The presidential transition has been smooth. Republicans elected their party leaders and assumed control of the House and Senate. On January 6, in a change from the recent past, not a single member of Congress objected to the certification of Donald Trump as president and JD Vance as vice president. Trump returns to the Oval Office amid a presidential honeymoon. Americans are optimistic about the future. Freedom’s guardrails are strong.
Look abroad, though, and you see a different picture. Canada’s liberal cover boy Justin Trudeau has been forced into retirement by his own party. South Korea’s impeached president relies on barricades to protect him from arrest. Germany is headed to elections after the collapse of its center-left government. France’s president was humiliated when the National Assembly fell apart over basic math. Japan’s ruling coalition is teetering. Britain’s Labour prime minister is deeply unpopular.
In an irony that ought to scramble the brains of MSNBC anchors, America remains the world’s most stable democracy as Donald Trump takes office and the country prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
The point of this contrast is neither to gloat nor to suggest that America’s affairs are hunky-dory. It would be silly to pretend that inflation, illegal immigration, public safety, addiction, homelessness, anti-Semitism, and mental illness will vanish with the change in pre-sidencies. Threats to the Constitution and rule of law come from all sides and from both parties. The moment doesn’t call for complacency. On the contrary: It calls for gratitude.
Yes, we can be grateful we are not French. More important, however, is appreciation of America’s tradition of liberty and her remarkable powers of resilience, adaptation, and growth. “In many respects,” writes my American Enterprise Institute colleague Hal Brands, “America remains a rising power—which should be a source of confidence in addressing the dangers abroad.” Brands points to U.S. GDP, productivity, technology, demographics, alliances, and democracy as sources of strength. All true.
Let’s be more specific: It is not just democracy in the abstract that maintains America’s edge. It is our distinctive form of constitutional government. After all, our allies are democracies, too. The difference is they, by and large, subscribe to a European-style form of parliamentary democracy that, while perhaps more efficient in execution, is less effective in harnessing individual and social agency to promote innovation and resist encroachments on freedom.
Parliamentary sovereignty, proportional representation, coalition government, and technocratic administration more easily promote bureaucratic centralization, cultural conformity, and economic planning and redistribution. That is why such institutions are beloved by left-wing intellectuals. Yet the very features of the U.S. Constitution the left so detests have kept America from sliding into the stagnation and disorder that afflict the developed world.
Begin with America’s fixed elections. Frequent elections are a reliable check on the party in power and provide a constant flow of new entrants into the system. While it is fashionable to complain that America’s campaign season doesn’t end, the “permanent campaign” has an upside. Elected officials never feel entirely secure in their jobs. That is a boon for accountability.
Though the Founders did not anticipate or welcome the advent of political parties, the Electoral College inadvertently encouraged their rise. It incen-tivized presidential candidates to have broad geographic appeal. Later, after ratification of the 12th Amendment, the Electoral College forced presidential and vice-presidential candidates to run as a ticket. The Electoral College also established America’s two-party system: Niche parties that cannot win a majority in more than 10 states have no viability at the presidential level and therefore no national future.
America’s two-party, winner-take-all elections eliminate the messy bargaining that takes place in parliamentary systems as parties jostle for privilege and form coalitions. More important, America’s elections force the two major parties to incorporate into their coalitions a broad range of material interests and ideological tendencies.
Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, leader of the socialist Squad, has said that if America were Europe, she and Joe Biden would not be in the same party. It’s one of the few true statements she’s ever made. Yet Ocasio-Cortez laments what she ought to celebrate. The Constitution set up an electoral and party system that is much more open and accommodating to populist grievances and insurgencies than parliamentary democracies.
Consider the rise of British national populism. The demand for Brexit, its agonized implementation, and subsequent second thoughts helped end the careers of not one, not two, but five Tory prime ministers. The British right continues to be divided between the Tories and Reform. Meanwhile, the rise of Donald Trump and MAGA occurred within the GOP. While many pre-Trump Republicans are no longer in office or even belong to the Republican Party, it is no doubt the case that Republican leadership is more in sync with its voters than Tory leadership is with theirs.
The Constitution’s diffusion of authority creates multiple veto points that gum up legislative and top-down initiatives. Beginning with Woodrow Wilson, progressive critics of constitutional government have demanded more efficient means of administration. They beg the question by assuming that the administrator is always right. In fact, America’s separation of powers, federalism, and adversarial system of justice ensure not only that the opposition is heard, but that it also has a role in adopting or combating controversial measures.
The Senate is an inherently conservative body, intended to distill popular sentiment in constructive ways. Equal state representation in the Senate prevents the most populous states from steamrolling dissent. Its deliberative function has long made the Senate a target for liberals, who blame it for taking too long to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other landmark legislation. Yet no account of the Senate is complete without a tally of the terrible laws it has diluted or stopped from wreaking havoc on the American economy and society.
For example, environmental hysteria and green radicalism led Canada and Europe to impose net-zero carbon-reduction goals that have squelched energy production and thus hampered economic activity. Their parliamentary systems make it much easier for center-left and left-wing governments to increase taxes, regulations, industrial policies, and green-energy mandates. The result has been the declining standard of living and widespread dissatisfaction that drive political turbulence.
A successful democracy enjoys institutional stability as well as popular sovereignty. The American Constitution delivers both public goods because it reflects, absorbs, and channels popular sentiment through divergent and conflictual institutions. The alternative isn’t parliamentary plebiscites endorsing an enlightened and egalitarian technocracy. It is institutional chaos and resentful electorates, overseen by jaded elites whose cynicism masquerades as sophistication.
Why, then, should America adopt policies that would make us more like dysfunctional democracies overseas? Rather than repudiate our heritage, declare war on the constitutional structure, and enact net zero, industrial subsidies, protectionism, and unionism, we should double down on the political institutions that have performed so well for so long. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution have made America exceptional for the past quarter millennium. And they will make America exceptional for the next 250 years, too.
Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
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