Letter to my Son
Sunday, 27 October
James Madison 1788 Salesman of the Year |
Good Morning Justin…
It is interesting to note that when George Washington became
the first President of the United States there were only eleven states under
the new union. North Carolina ratified the Constitution the
next year and Rhode Island came aboard in 1790.
Despite the reputations of luminaries like Washington and Benjamin
Franklin backing the new government, there were many who believed the delegates
to the Philadelphia convention of 1787 had overreached their authority in
proposing a new Constitution, instead of modifying the existing Articles of
Confederation. What they were confronted
with in 1788 was the framework for a single nation to replace the loose
confederation of states, and a compact between the people and their new government
that laid down rules for which ordinary citizens could govern themselves. This fledgling foundation for democracy,
untried since the ancient Greeks, was the first step in a difficult and, often
painful, experiment in representative government – an evolving process that
continues even today.
Getting three hundred million people, of widely varied
perspective and passionately held beliefs, to come to an agreement on a single
course of action will always be a challenge, requiring persistence and patience
from legislators of extraordinary talent.
Democracy, within the rule of law, is not governance through good will
and comforting voices of reassurance. It
is an on-going family argument, a confrontation involving both individuals and
groups, upholding with strong convictions their diametrically opposed
views. The strength that underlies good
government is the recognition that nothing constructive is accomplished without
compromise. This means that people on
both sides of the bargaining table, having finally struck an agreement, come
away with the feeling that they somehow gave away too much for the cause of stability
and the pragmatic goal of achieving what is ultimately possible. We can only feel frustration when we believe
with all our heart we should be celebrating a clean-cut, unmistakable victory. Clearly, democracy is a dreadful means of
managing this enormous, overly complex enterprise we call the United States of
America. I am open for alternative
suggestions.
They must, of course, retain all the guarantees of personal
freedom and restraints on abusive power that I have long ago come to take for
granted. That means Democrats and
Republicans forever eye one another and sound the alarm over any attempted shenanigans,
Congress puts a lid on the White House while the White House threatens vetoes
of acts by Congress, and the Supreme Court reigns in the excessive passions of all
our elected officials while those same representatives of the people decide who
it is that is going to reign them in.
You can thank, among our founding fathers, the likes of
James Madison for this Gordian knot approach to governance. Any Federal action of consequence requires a
near avalanche of certainty by legislators.
Either they are convinced they are working the will of the people or
they feel justified in defying the will of their constituents and vote their
conscience, knowing full well they may be swept from office at the next
election.
We don’t often idealize our representatives in
Washington. After all, they generally
share the same traits common to many of us, for better or worse. The one thing that does set them apart,
though, is that they are willing to stand before us and go on public record in
declaring what it is they believe… usually.
It sometimes pays to be a bit slippery on the details if you plan to
make a career in politics. Showing up
every election Tuesday with a majority of voters behind you requires a talent
most people don’t have. Being a
politician means you need to bring diverse groups together into what is often
an unlikely alliance. It is up to you to
find a binding common interest powerful enough to override the many conflicting
goals these groups have amongst themselves.
It can mean something comparable to locking a constituent into buying a
Kia when their heart was set on a Beemer.
It’s about persuasion and it’s sleight of hand. Believe it or not the founding fathers knew
all this. They also were
politicians. They were asked to fix the
old Articles of Confederation and, instead, they got the voters to drive off
the lot in a brand new, gleaming U.S. Constitution. Now that’s talent.
Love,
Dad