Am I right in calling post World War II USA, a glorious democracy?

Last updated on 12th Oct. 2016

In my post, Trump's threat to jail Hillary Clinton is utterly unworthy of major party nominee for president of USA, a glorious democracy, http://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.in/2016/10/trumps-threat-to-jail-hillary-clinton.html, dated 10th Oct. 2016, I referred to USA as a glorious democracy.

I thought some readers may have felt that I have gone overboard by referring to USA as a glorious democracy. To be honest, I felt that glorious is the right word to describe post World War II USA democracy but I had not thought through whether it is a valid description. A recent CNN article, http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/10/politics/trump-clinton-family-feud/, dated Oct. 10th 2016, states in the context of Trump's threat to appoint a special prosecutor against some actions of Hillary Clinton, "... it seemed American politics resembled a classic banana Republic more than the most enduring and powerful democracy the world has ever seen."

I think calling USA an enduring and powerful democracy is very fair. Note that I am not getting into whether it is "the most enduring and powerful democracy the world has ever seen", part of the quote above. But is it a glorious democracy (one of the glorious democracies of the world)?

I would like to refer to a couple of Facebook posts by veteran USA mediaperson, Dan Rather. An extract from https://www.facebook.com/theDanRather/posts/10157537557070716, dated October 10th 2016, "Rome was once a proud republic that devolved into a place of barbaric spectacle epitomized by the savagery at the Colosseum. As I saw the pit of the debate stage tonight as 9pm Eastern approached, I had a sense we could, if we are not vigilant, fall into a similar downward spiral. Part of what might prevent that from happening is a determined, independent, and free press. And on that count I believe the moderators tonight - Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz - played that role to great effect. When presented with generalities, they followed up demanding specifics. Not surprisingly Trump was critical of that type of questioning - as he has been of the press in general. It’s one of the things that his base loves most about him."

Dan Rather's Facebook post, https://www.facebook.com/theDanRather/posts/10157539390635716, dated Oct. 10th 2016, quotes former USA president, Teddy Roosevelt, as saying, "No man is above the law and no man is below it, nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it." An additional extract from the post:
It was John Adams who penned the phrase, "a government of laws, and not of men." This is how our Founding Fathers saw our national destiny. This is the spirit that our citizens, over the ages, have demanded of (that) our political leaders follow. I suspect it is something most Americans still believe.
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Ravi: John Adams was one of the founding fathers of the USA and its second president.

I think the USA, at least post World War II USA, is a glorious democracy because of the way the citizens of the USA have been able to question the candidates aspiring for political office as well as its elected political leaders, through the media, through elected politicians who are willing to take up questions against other USA elected politicians in the USA Congress, and through courts of law, and because USA citizens can vote for their preferred candidates in a largely free and fair manner.

[Update on 12th Oct. 2016: Without having mentioned it, I make a distinction between USA society and USA democracy. I would not call USA society a glorious one. It surely has some aspects of greatness and glory but has some serious flaws too. And I think its democracy, which essentially is the will of the majority, reflects these serious flaws in post World War II USA society.]

[One weakness of USA democracy, in years immediately after post World War II, was that African-Americans continued to be denied voting rights and were discriminated against. I believe that voting rights for African-Americans was properly instituted sometime in the 1960s. But I am not so well read on this topic and so I may be slightly incorrect. Surely, from the 1980s (my first stay in the USA was in 1986 or 1987 for around a year), African-Americans had the same right to vote that other Americans had.]

After World War II, USA emerged as the most powerful country in the world, a superpower with immense military power at its disposal. Abuse of such power, to some extent at least, would have been very difficult to prevent, even within the USA. This is what has been seen in the history of powerful empires and nations before and even after World War II.[I am not getting into USA's foreign policies as I think that would not be appropriate in assessing the quality of its democracy. I mean, elected political leaders of a country have to work for the benefit of their country and the wishes of its people, and do not really have to be bothered much about other countries except where those countries are of benefit to them (or are threats to them).]

That some presidents, post World War II, engaged in some misuse of power within the USA itself cannot be viewed as a glaring failure of USA democracy as I think such cases happen in big countries all over the world. I think such abuse or misuse of power by heads of state is a human weakness that democratic political systems have to have functioning mechanisms to guard against (and many democratic political systems do have such functioning mechanisms). A small country or city-state democracy may be able to prevent abuse or misuse of power by its top elected political leaders far more easily than a large and powerful country.

In my humble opinion, one factor/reason for me to view USA democracy as glorious in the post World War II era (perhaps it was glorious earlier too but I don't know enough about it to be able to meaningfully comment) is that the mechanisms that democracy has to expose and then correct misuse and abuse of power like the opposition members (elected politicians) in the USA Congress, the media and the judiciary, were able to come into play in cases of misuse and abuse of power by top USA govt. elected political leaders, and halt it. Sometimes they were able to even punish these political leaders, with the most famous case perhaps being the Watergate scandal which resulted in a USA president being forced to step down (resign) from office in 1974, and some govt officials even having to serve a jail term. The opposing superpower then, the communist ruled Soviet Union, would have been shocked to know that the president and commander-in-chief of the USA, could really (not just theoretically) be forced to resign by exposure of abuse of power by the media which was then followed up with actions by USA Congress and rulings by the USA Supreme Court.

What an extraordinary display of accountability of top USA govt. elected political leaders and other top govt. officials, to the citizens of the USA, the Watergate investigations and follow-up actions were!!!

The power of the USA Congress was on display during the hearings about the 2007-08 Financial Crisis. Big and powerful people had to answer tough questions posed to them by lawmakers in hearings which were televised to the country, I believe (I watched some youtube videos of these in past year or two). This year there were public hearings where Congressmen and Congresswomen questioned a former secretary of state (and candidate for president of USA), a sitting Attorney General of USA and a sitting Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation!!!

In my country, India, I have not seen any such public hearings conducted by Indian parliament involving big and powerful people outside of parliament. Yes, there are cases which go on at the Indian supreme court level or state high court level involving such powerful people. But that would involve complex legal issues and are not telecast anyway. In contrast, the USA citizens have an opportunity to see big and powerful people being questioned on important matters by its elected politicians.

Then we have the astonishing scrutiny that a person aspiring to be president of the USA and who is a serious candidate, goes through. It is almost a two year scrutiny process! By the time the presidential election date arrives, policy positions, character strengths and weaknesses, financial information, personal history etc. of the major candidates are easily available on the media and the Internet for whichever citizen wants it.

Now USA democracy would surely have some flaws as well. Perhaps one major flaw is that it has been a two-party dominated system for long (after World War II, for sure). So new approaches to problems being implemented by a fresh set of people forming a new political party and coming into government becomes rather improbable as compared to better probability of that happening in many party (more than two major parties) democracies that one sees in many democratic countries of the world, including India.

Some may cite the example of Mr. Donald Trump becoming the Republican party nominee as a weakness of USA democracy. I disagree. Firstly, the selection of nominee of the Republican (or the Democratic) party for USA President, is technically, from my point of view, an inner-party democracy issue and not, technically again, a USA democracy issue. But even within the constraint of Republican party rules and inner-party democracy context, I do not agree that Mr. Trump being nominee of Republican party shows a weakness of USA democracy. Mr. Trump was able to mobilize great support from some sections of the USA citizenry and was able to win the Republican party nomination due to popular support from the Republican party members. Whether his style of campaigning was fair and ethical is another matter. But the key point in a democracy, in my view, is that the power belongs to the people. If Mr. Trump was able to convince the majority of Republican party members to vote for him as the Republican party nominee, then it is fair and right for him to be the Republican party nominee! If others viewed him as a flawed candidate, they were not able to convince Republican party primary voters of that, and so could not prevent Trump from being Republican party nominee.

The case of Senator Bernie Sanders losing out in the primary contest in the Democratic party to former Secretary Hillary Clinton is another example some may point as a weakness of USA democracy. In my view, it is an inner-party democracy issue. And there too, like in the case of Trump, I disagree that it is a weakness of USA democracy. Perhaps there was bias within the Democratic party apparatus towards Clinton and against Sanders who was an Independent and had registered as a Democrat to contest the nomination for USA president. But that's life within a political party, I guess. There will be some loyalty to long-time members of the party as against new members. Ultimately, Clinton got more primary votes than Sanders, as Sanders himself acknowledged at the Democratic party convention. To me it seems that it is unfair to call the Democratic party nomination process for this 2016 presidential election as rigged. It may have had its flaws and so may not have been completely unbiased, but rigged is too strong a word to describe it.

Are the USA primary and general presidential election processes completely free and fair without significant money power influence? Of course not. Money power does play a big role in USA democracy. But that is the case in most other large country democracies as well! USA is surely NOT a perfect democracy. But then most large country democracies are not perfect. Some less mature democratic countries even have horrific levels of rigging in the elections where votes are bought for cash, voting is falsified and so on.

When viewed in the context of history of kingdoms and governments over centuries and millennia, true democracies (all adult citizens having an equal vote; ancient Greece and Rome city-states did not allow women and slaves to vote) are a very new and fledgling form of government. Perhaps the seventeenth century was when the journey towards true democracies in significant size kingdoms/countries (as against city-states) started in Western Europe, even if the voting was limited to adult males. So it is not surprising, in my humble view, that even the best significant size country democracies (as against city-states) today in this early 21st century, have many imperfections, including the influence of money power.

But, when viewed against authoritarian rule, which one sees even today in some parts of the world, and was holding sway over many parts of the world as late as the first half of the twentieth century, functioning democracies with all their flaws, have typically led to more freedom and happiness for their people.

What about falsehoods being spread in presidential campaigns (and other down-ballot election campaigns) to gain votes? Well, this is a weakness of societies everywhere, I think. Further, it seems to me that most authoritarian governments/societies tend to spread more falsehood (and suppress truth) than democratic governments/societies. A democracy allows the media and opposing political parties to fact-check such falsehoods and expose them to the people. But if the people do not want to go by such fact-checks and consider the fact-check resources/sites themselves to be false propaganda instruments, then it is their right to do so, in a democracy. Essentially, in a democracy, the majority will get the political leaders they want and perhaps deserve. The USA people may make a disastrous choice and elect a bad president. Fortunately, the USA democracy forces such a president to come up for re-election after four years, by which time the people would have seen the damage that he/she has done, and vote him/her out of office. In non-democracies, or dictatorial kind of governments calling themselves as democracies by putting up a shallow display of democracy, the people may not have such an opportunity to reject a sitting head of state at all!!!

Further, even if an elected USA president does something weird, the USA Congress can impeach him/her. The 1974 resignation of a USA president was reported to have been forced on that president by an impending impeachment of him by USA Congress had he not resigned!

The grid-lock in USA Congress resulting in slow movement by USA government on contentious issues, is a feature of fractured mandate in a democracy. I am quite sure that many large country democracies would have faced similar problems too.

In conclusion, my view is that the power that the USA citizens have via their media, elected political representatives and judiciary, to question and hold accountable candidates for political office and elected political representatives/leaders, which has been demonstrated time and again in the USA in post World War II era even though the USA was and continues to be the most powerful country in the world, and is a large country with quite a diverse ethnic and cultural background mix of people, is one major reason why I view post World War II USA democracy as a glorious democracy, even though it surely is not a perfect democracy. Another important reason for this view of mine, is that USA elections are mostly free and fair (though not perfectly free and fair).
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An Indian correspondent wrote over email (and was OK with public sharing):

Black Americans suffered a great deal until the 1960s, when public protests and marches took them out of the ghettos in which they had been thrust. They had to fight hard, risking limb and life to get their due. It could be argued that they are still underprivileged: 90% of the young who are arrested are black while plenty of whites go unpunished. Look at the resentment still felt by some in the Republican party and some even further to the right about Obama as president.

Americans also had to fight hard to get blue collar workers organised for collective bargaining. Attempts to unionise were treated as communism, especially during Joe McCarthy's time when even Hollywood had to fall in line or risk losing all work.

What you have said about American democracy is true but there is another side that needs to be represented.
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I (Ravi) responded (slightly edited):

Yes, I agree about (severe) suffering that Black Americans had to undergo until the 1960s. I tried to address that part in my post in a small way.
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I think these are criticisms of USA society. Without mentioning it, I made a distinction between USA society and USA democracy. I would not call USA society a glorious one as it has some wonderful aspects and some severe flaws. And I think its democracy, which essentially is the will of the majority, reflects these serious flaws in post World War II USA society.
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A USA based correspondent wrote (and was OK with public sharing; slightly edited):
The US is a great country, which also has great flaws. There are two things I tell European friends to help them understand the US:

(1) everything you have heard about the US is true somewhere in the US, and so is it's opposite.

(2) Don't think of the US as a country; think of it as a continent

I suspect Indians are less likely to make the second mistake
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I (Ravi) responded (slightly edited):
Without mentioning it, I made a distinction between USA society and USA democracy. I would not call USA society a glorious one. It surely has some aspects of greatness and glory but has some serious flaws too. And I think its democracy, which essentially is the will of the majority, reflects these serious flaws in post World War II USA society.

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(About points 1 & 2) Very interesting points of view!
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Well, once Indians become aware of the significant differences in society in various parts of the USA, they would be able to (at least, I could) easily understand (come to terms with) those differences given the significant differences in society in various parts of India.
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Please note that I have a PUBLICLY NEUTRAL informal-student-observer role in these posts that I put up about the USA presidential elections. Of course, as I am an Indian citizen living in India, there is no question of me voting in these elections.

[I thank Mr. Dan Rather and have presumed that he will not have any objections to me sharing the above short extracts from his Facebook posts on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]