The founders set themselves apart forever from the naive theorists of democracy. They saw, in Burke's phrase, that the constitution of a state is not a "problem of arithmetic." So they refused to identify the will of the people with the transient plurality of the voters in one constituency. They did not say, for example, that if the whole mass of persons votes once, and if one party has 34 per cent of the votes and the other two have 33 per cent each, the winner in the contest is the true representative of the people. They thought of "the people" as having many dimensions in space, in time, in weight, in quality. They thought, as Burke did, that a society is "a partnership in all science a partnership in all arts a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection," and "as the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations," a civil society is "a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born." The American founders sought to represent this many-sided people and they thought of the people's will as an equilibrium of its many elements. And so in their practical arrangement they sought to make the government as nearly representative as possible of the many facets of the popular will, of the people acting as citizens of local communities, acting as citizens of regions, of states, of the nation, acting with remembrance of the past, acting as they felt at the moment, acting as they would feel after fuller consideration. For they gave no credence to the idea that one periodic count of heads could elicit the real will of a large population. The founders sought to approximate a true representation of the people by providing many different ways of counting heads. For the national government, itself a federation of states with complex forms of representation, they provided a House elected for two years from fairly small constituencies of equal size; a Senate in which one third only was elected every two years from the states that is, from constituencies of varying size; a President, chosen, as they conceived it, by electors from the separate states, and for a term of four years, which did not correspond with that of any one group of the legislators; a judiciary appointed for life after confirmation by the Senate. Thus no two branches of the government were chosen by the same constituency or for the same term of office. They provided that for ordinary laws a majority of both Houses and the President must concur, that a two-thirds majority may prevail over the President, that for treaties two thirds of the Senate must concur with the President. They then provided that all the powers exercised by the legislative and the executive branch were subject to the supreme law of the land, and that their specific acts would be invalid if contrary to the Constitution. They provided that the supreme law of the Constitution could be amended only by a complex vote which would ensure as nearly as possible that the decision had been fully considered, that all men had had a chance to hear the issues debated, and that many more than a mere majority had been convinced. Walter Lippmann (1938) The Good Society, 253-5
Last week, I attended a lecture by the eminent political theorist, Elizabeth Cohen, on her book The Political Value of Time. It made me alert to the passage from Lippmann whom (recall) I was reflecting on. (So today's Digression is a hommage to her work.) We ordinarily think, I think, of checks and balances in terms of separation of powers with the aim to prevent one power from dominating the others. Lippmann is not unaware of that argument and I'll presuppose familiarity with that strain of thinking here. But it's notable that this is not Lippmann's focus in the passage quoted.
Rather, he introduces the topic, while mentioning Madison, in terms of what he calls "the refinement of the popular will" on which "a progressive society must depend." (260; see also 250). This is an allusion to Madison's claim in Federalist 10, in which Madison explains the difference between a republic and a democracy.* The way Lippmann (re-)interprets Madison the refinement of the popular will is not, primarily, an epistemic discovery procedure (a la Condorcet), but rather a means toward developing a proper (democratic) character. (If you are a Marxist feel free to add that he is defending the interests of the landed, propertied classes.) So that the intentions of the masses/mob are turned into a proper popular will of citizens. To be sure, there is also an epistemic element ("true representation"), but that's not the main emphasis.**
Lippmann's key insight is that this requires not just the slowing down of the process -- to make time for deliberation, and second thoughts, but also, and more important, a means to allow the many dimensions of our lives and interests to be voiced differently (in different districts and in different kinds of representation) and at different times.
I don't think this is Lippmann's most important insight in the book, or that the US constitution is especially good at (generating an "equilibrium" out of) this decomposition designed to generate as many facets of citizens's personality as possible. (Lippmann, too, emphasizes the constitution's imperfections.) But even so, i think there is something important in the idea that a true democracy is one in which the complex, even in some sense paradoxical features of social reality are manifested.
The previous paragraph may sound highfalutin, but I mean to note that Lippmann helps us convey the nature of true democracy in which the very same citizen can vote for, say, Obama, Trump, and Klobuchar (etc.). And that in so doing, democratic life cannot be reduced to the expression of counting heads at a particular moment, but becomes something extended indefinitely in the future. To be part of democratic process is not to arrive at a final decision, but to make future perspectives on decisions possible.+
I did not put the last point in especially charming matter, and also I came close to turning it into a philosophical exercise. But rather, the underlying (somewhat Protestant) sensibility allows that sometimes the partnership is criminal; but the partnership is meant to exhibit delayed gratification, the welcoming of divergent views and reversals of opinion, and of manifesting (to echo the Platonists on democracy) the wonderful and often chaotic appearing tapestry of peoples and experiences that are characteristic of democracy at its best.
*Madison's argument is directed against the danger of faction in what we would call a direct democracy. The notion of 'refinement' at play is simultaneously chemical-medical and cultivated as I learned from Tamas Demeter and Charles Wolfe.
**I am open to the idea that the characterological features are meant to generates true judges.
+Lippmann's treatment of these matters is rather gendered, but it does not seem required for his argument.
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