Noting that our current political angst has a long pedigree, David Runciman argues that lamenting “the failings of democracy is a permanent feature of democratic life, one that persists through governmental crises and successes alike.” Unsurprisingly, Tocqueville got there first:
The history of modern democracy is a tale of steady success accompanied by the constant drumbeat of anticipated failure. The intellectual commentator who first spotted this distinctive feature of democratic life (and who did most to explain it) was Alexis de Tocqueville. When he traveled to America, in 1831, Tocqueville was immediately struck by the frenetic and mindless quality of democratic politics. Citizens were always complaining, and their politicians were endlessly throwing mud at one another. The grumbling discontent was frequently interrupted by bursts of outright panic as resentments spilled over. Yet Tocqueville noticed something else about American democracy: that underneath the chaotic surface, it was quite stable. Citizens’ discontent coincided with an underlying faith that democratic politics would see them right in the end.
Runciman goes on to note that intellectuals are particularly prone to hand-wringing. The reasons why:
First, and most obviously, democratic politics entails free speech, which must include the freedom to say that democracy doesn’t work. Second, democracy is, as Tocqueville put it, an “untimely” form of government. Its strengths are revealed only in the long run, once its restless energy produces the adaptability that allows it to correct its own mistakes. At any given moment, democracy tends to look a mess: shallow, petty, and vituperative. Democracies are bad at rising to the occasion. What they are good at is chopping and changing course so that no occasion is too much for them. Finally, rationalist modern intellectuals are inherently suspicious of blind political faith. It is unnerving to encounter a political system that works only because ordinary people believe that it works. Ordinary citizens get frustrated with the workings of democracy but rarely, if ever, give up on it. The people who tend to lose faith are intellectuals who can’t reconcile themselves to the mismatch between the glorious promise of democratic life and its grubby reality.
The Dish 