(S)electing the President
Selecting political leaders by popular election is an unquestioned hallmark of representative democraciesthe institutional manifestation of Lincolns promise of a government of the people and by the people. But in 2016, Lincolns promise seems to have given way to Hamiltons nightmarewith his worries that popular elections would produce demagogues who paid an obsequious court to the people, appealing to their passions and prejudices rather than to their reason. This book examines the commitment to the widest level of participation among the largest number of citizens in the selection of the president. It looks at two salient characteristics of our current presidential election environment that bring the wisdom of this commitment into question: the declining influence of political parties and the communication revolution in the forms of the internet, social media, and cable television. Ultimately, Mezey asks whether our now fully democratized presidential selection process has in fact diminished the quality of our presidential candidates and the campaigns they run, whether the turn to demagoguery that the Founders feared has materialized, what the consequences of our presidential selection process have been for American government, and whether or not it would be valuable to rethink our wholehearted commitment to popular election of the president. His answers do not topple our commitment to popular elections but rather point the way toward improving the quality of both participation and democracy.
Michael L. Mezey is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at DePaul University. He earned his B.A. from the The City College of New York, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Syracuse University. He served on the faculties of the University of Virginia and the University of Hawaii before joining DePaul University in 1977 as chair of the Political Science Department. From 1993 through 2005, Dr. Mezey served as Dean of DePauls College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He is the author of four books: Comparative Legislatures (Duke University Press, 1979), Congress, the President, and Public Policy (Westview Press, 1989), Representative Democracy: Legislators and their Constituents (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), and Presidentialism: Power in Comparative Perspective (Lynne Rienner, 2013).
First published 2018
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I developed the proposal for this book in January 2016, a few weeks before the Iowa caucuses. Like most political observers, I was fascinated and often appalled by Donald Trumps candidacy for the Republican Partys presidential nomination and convinced that his campaign would at some point collapse. And on the off chance that he was nominated, I thought that it was impossible for him to win the general election. As I write these words, however, the country is in week three of Donald Trumps presidency, so make of that what you will.
Even though I did not think that Trump would win, his candidacy, as well as Bernie Sanders insurgent challenge to Hillary Clinton, interested me for what it said about the process by which we in democratic republics select our political leaders. Although popular election of our political leaders is now a given in the United States, it was not always so. The Founders worried about the techniques that candidates would need to adopt in order to get elected and about the quality of the candidates who would be selected. In response, they designed a political system that they hoped would minimize the role of the voters in deciding who would govern them. They especially wished to remove the selection of the president from the people.
But things have changed. Now, not only do the people elect the president, but they also determine who the nominees of the major political parties will be through a chaotic process of caucuses, primaries, and debates stretching over a nearly two-year period. This democratized process coexists with a democratized media environment, featuring multiple sources of news and information, some more reliable than others, and all competing for viewers and, in the case of the internet, clicks. Through social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, candidates are able to make direct contact with the voters, bypassing mediating institutions such as newspapers, broadcast news sources, or political parties.
Other political scientists are certain to provide excellent blow-by-blow data-filled accounts of the 2016 presidential election, as will many journalists. That is not my goal. Rather, the message of this book is that a democratized selection process and a democratized media environment has opened the door to exactly the type of presidential candidates about whom the Founders worried the most. Donald Trumps ascension to the presidency is the major case in point, but his victory was foreshadowed by earlier presidents and presidential candidates. In this sense, Trumps victory may not be, as many observers have suggested, a one-off occurrence arising from a unique political environment and a unique candidate, but a new normal for presidential elections and the types of candidates who participate in them.
I first considered the question of presidential selection and how it affected presidencies in my 2013 book Presidentialism. In that volume, I looked at popularly elected presidencies around the world, and, among other topics, how they tended to justify their expansive view of their own power by referring to their democratic legitimacy. I am grateful to my publisher, Lynne Rienner, for permission to include some of the materials from that book in this discussion.
I have some other people to thank for their support as this project has gone forward. Although I am retired from DePaul University and no longer reside in Chicago, Valerie Johnson, the chair of the Political Science Department, and Wilma Kwit, the departments administrative assistant, printed and mailed hard copies of various drafts of the manu-script. Jennifer Schwartz in DePauls library arranged for me to have borrowing privileges at American University, here in Washington, DC, and the staff at that library were helpful to me as well. Jennifer Knerr at Routledge arranged for my book proposal, as well as the final draft, to be assessed by outside reviewers, read and commented on a draft, and in her typically expeditious manner, handled all the administrative work necessary to bring this book out. I am also grateful to Sarah Binder, Alan Gitelson, Sandy Maisel, Thomas Mann, and James Thurber for their helpful comments on the book proposal and the manuscript itself. As always, all errors of omission, commission, and interpretation are mine.
