Chapter 11: Government and the People-- A Look at Public Opinion

PART 4: Thinking about Contexts

"And while professors thus disagree, the ideas that there is a necessary conflict between capital and labor, that machinery is an evil, that competition must be restrained and interest abolished, that wealth may be created by the issue of money, that it is the duty of government to furnish capital or to furnish work, are rapidly making way among the great body of the people, who keenly feel a hurt and are sharply conscious of a wrong. Such ideas, which bring great masses of men, the repositories of ultimate political power, under the leadership of charlatans and demagogues, are fraught with danger; but they cannot be successfully combated until political economy shall give some answer to the great question which shall be consistent with all her teachings, and which shall commend itself to the perceptions of the great masses of men."

Henry George, Progress and Poverty

Chapter 11: Government and the People--
A Look at Public Opinion

Chapter Objectives

When you have read this chapter you should be able to explain:

1. Why democracy defined as "government by the people" is impossible.

2. How we can define democracy so that it is both meaningful and compatible with the "iron law of oligarchy" that applies to all organizations.

3. The key difference between the American oligarchy and the oligarchy governing the U.S.S.R.

4. Why public opinion would be a dubious guide for some kinds of government decisions even if it could be reliably measured, and why it is not easy for leaders to find out what the people want.

5. Why it may make great sense for individuals to concentrate on their private affairs and pay little attention to politics.

6. Factors that help to explain why the quality of public opinion in the U.S. is not high.

7. The problems with efforts to "eliminate the middleman" by establishing government by referendum.

8. Why leaders in a democracy may sometimes do things against their better judgment.

9. Why problems presented by weakness or low quality of public opinion cannot be solved by replacing democracy with rule by an enlightened minority.

10. The reasons why top leaders have a duty to try to educate the public, and why these leaders must not be allowed to monopolize this function.

Key Terms

democracy
S ---> X + Y
iron law of oligarchy
sampling theory
referendum
"vanity press"

A corollary proposition could be called the "rule of misanticipated reactions. " We refer to a situation in which one person grudgingly conforms to what he thinks another wants, but finds after the fact either that he misread the other's preferences or that the latter never intended to invoke sanctions for behavior contrary to his preferences.*

CONTEXTS IN POLITICS

All actions take place in a specific context. We use various words to refer to such contexts-"circumstances," "situations," "environment." The capital C, symbolizing circumstances or context, is an integral part of our analysis of an action, A ---> X + Y, even when not explicitly expressed.

Circumstances are important for two major reasons. First, they limit the actor's options. Without any change of heart toward Richard Nixon, one could vote against him in 1968 when he was opposed by Hubert Humphrey, and for him in 1972 when he ran against George McGovern. In 1968 Nixon seemed to be the greater evil; in 1972, the lesser: same candidate, same voter, same evaluations, different circumstances.

Second, circumstances are important because they shape the consequences produced by particular actions. One of the important circumstances of the Watergate discussions in the Nixon White House was the tape recording system that preserved everything for posterity-and for investigators. Another was the strong Democratic majority in Congress. If there had been no tape recordings, or if President Nixon's own political allies had controlled Congress, he could probably have acted as he did with impunity. The circumstances made a difference.

Government is an important part of the circumstances of every American. Other individuals, in and out of government, are an important part of the context in which every government official exists and acts. We now turn our attention specifically to some of the important contexts within which government acts: public opinion, political middlemen (Chapter 12), foreign countries (Chapter 13), and a complex society (Chapter 14).

DEMOCRACY-WHAT IS IT?

"Democracy" is one of the most abused words in the political vocabulary. In ancient Greece, it was something of a boo-word, implying mob-rule with all of its associated unpleasantness. Today, it has become a coo-word referring to everything that is good and desired and admirable in government. It is used both as a descriptive term pointing to the institutions actually existing in a given country, and as a normative term prescribing what ought to be.

Robert Dahl's astute suggestion that "democracy" be reserved for normative purposes and that existing American institutions be called "polyarchy" has not caught on. [Footnote 1] Yet it is useful to remind ourselves that our society--like all existing societies--is imperfect. For present purposes, therefore, we will reverse Dahl's proposed solution and treat "democracy" as a purely descriptive term with no inherent normative connotations. We will assume that democracy is one thing, and good government is another thing, and try to figure out what the relationship between these two things is, rather than begging this question by treating the two expressions as synonymous.

The Myths of Democracy

Treating "democracy" as a purely descriptive term, and assuming that the United States is democratic, we can reach some definite conclusions about what democracy is not. Interestingly, many of the things that democracy is not can be found in the catch-phrases that we associate with American government: government by the people, the consent of the governed, the pursuit of happiness. Footnote 2

Government by the People. To describe American government as "government by the people" is to strain words beyond the breaking point. Government, as we have seen, is an organization. Power to make day-to-day decisions on behalf of an organization has a strong tendency to gravitate into the hands of a few individuals. This tendency is called the "iron law of oligarchy." [Footnote 3] American government is no more exempt from this "law" than from the law of gravity. To deny existence of the iron law of oligarchy because we do not like it makes no more sense than denouncing gravity because we dislike some of its consequences. The United States is not governed by the people. It is governed by several thousand individuals occupying key executive, legislative, judicial, and bureaucratic offices.

Consent of the Governed. Nor is it fair to characterize American government as manifesting "the consent of the governed." As we have seen, government is not a voluntary association. It would be paradoxical to say that an involuntary association, which government essentially is, rests on the consent of the governed. Some of the governed--perhaps a large majority--may consent to the taxes extracted from you, but your consent or lack thereof is irrelevant to the Internal Revenue Service. We should not confuse the consent of the governed with the consent of some.

Pursuit of Happiness. "Happiness," or satisfaction, is a very odd phenomenon. It does exist and may be enjoyed, but it cannot be pursued. This conclusion is implicit in our earlier formulation of the elements of satisfaction,

                       S  =  Ap / D

Satisfaction or happiness is not a thing in itself but a relationship or ratio between two other things: perceived attainments and desires. To desire or pursue happiness is therefore perverse and bound to produce frustration or, at best, self-deception. We have all witnessed or experienced the profound unhappiness of the miserable hedonist whose chief pursuit is happiness. Since happiness cannot be pursued, "the pursuit of happiness" is not an adequate description of American government or of democracy.

Before we proceed further, a word of caution and qualification: None of the statements thus far in this chapter are intended to apply only to, or especially to, American government. When all government is oligarchical, to say that a particular government is that way tells us nothing distinctive to that government. "Democracy" is not to be regarded as the absence of oligarchy, but as something that distinguishes some oligarchies from others.

AMERICAN OLIGARCHY: THE WORKABLE FORM OF "DEMOCRACY"

American government, then, is oligarchical. Power to make day- to-day decisions on behalf of the government is concentrated in a relatively small number of individuals. Likewise, the government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is oligarchical. Yet these two governments are clearly not the same in all respects. The key difference is that the American government is a competitive oligarchy, while the U.S.S.R. is governed by a monopolistic oligarchy.

In both political systems, of course, the individuals who govern have a monopoly of governing power at any one moment. As we have seen earlier, two governments at once are intolerable unless they have a clear pecking order so that subjects are not faced with conflicting laws. Neither the U.S. nor the U.S.S.R. is an intolerable place to live. Both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are thus monopolistic oligarchies in one sense of the term. But in another sense, the U.S. is a competitive oligarchy: different groups of would-be top oligarchs are free to compete for the right to exercise the monopoly of governing power for a limited period of time. Their competition is for the favor of the electorate. The electorate cannot govern, by virtue of the iron law of oligarchy. But it can choose between several sets of would-be oligarchs who put themselves forward for electoral favor.

How the Competitive Oligarchy Works

In a competitive oligarchy like the United States, leaders can be peacefully removed from office and replaced by others. It need not happen often; but the change in oligarchs can happen and the possibility is an important part of the circumstances within which those currently governing must operate. Individual oligarchs make day-to-day decisions, as they must in any system, but they do so with one eye cocked at the electorate and its expected reactions. The values and desires of the general population are thus reflected to some extent in the decisions of the small number of individuals who govern the country. Therefore, we can define democracy in the sense that it exists in the United States as follows: democracy is government by leaders limited by the citizenry through periodic competitive elections and the rule of anticipated reactions.

Prerequisites

In order for a democracy in this sense to exist, certain conditions must prevail. There must be extensive freedom of speech so citizens' views can be made known to ruling oligarchs, to potential oligarchs, and to other citizens. There must be great freedom of political association, so citizens are free to join with each other to try to forge an alliance that can bring down the incumbents in the next elections. And there must be a general disposition to abide by the rules of the democratic game. Nothing symbolizes this disposition better than the concession statement traditionally made by the losing candidate for the American presidency. The loser thanks his supporters, but tells them to cooperate with the winner until the next election. Opposition, thus, is loyal to the system even as it tries to remove particular leaders or groups of leaders from power. We find the opposite situation in many Latin American countries: the losers feel--often justifiably--that elections were rigged and urge their followers to revolt.

How the Oligarchy Works as "Democracy"

Thus the social context of a political system can make democracy possible or impossible. And the organization of the political system has important consequences for the actions of government leaders working within that system. Even though all government is oligarchical, the situation in which the oligarchy exists and acts makes a big difference.

Even so, democracy is not all that overwhelming. It does help to assure that government leaders will not govern in ways that are too repugnant to the great bulk of the citizens. Leaders who go too far soon find themselves cast off by voters. "Outs" who want to become "ins" capitalize on every government mistake to gain voter support. A safety valve preventing government from getting too far out of touch with public sentiments is built into the system. But it is hard to get excited about democracy. It is clearly no panacea for human problems. It is hard to wax enthusiastic about lesser evils. Nor is enthusiasm for it necessarily desirable. Winston Churchill may have expressed exactly the right blend of admiration and caution when he observed that "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time."

PUBLIC OPINION

If democracy is a lesser evil, we can expect to find it has some serious weaknesses, unpleasantnesses, and deficiencies. Perhaps one reason for the outlandish thinking and behavior of many Vietnam era student radicals was that they were weaned too abruptly from the prescriptive pieties and platitudes of public school civics. Plunged into thinking about the nastiest aspects of descriptive politics (the war, the draft) without any adequate preparation, they were unable to put the nastiness into perspective.

Edward Higbee once observed that the most important space in any country is that between the ears of its citizens. [Footnote 4] Higbee's Law is truest in democracies. Public opinion--the "space between the ears of its citizens"--is the ultimate arbiter of government action in a democracy. Individual rulers may do things their own way, letting the electoral chips fly where they may. Individual citizens may do what they wish, or think right, even in the face of public opinion and law. But citizens who get too far out of line from public opinion will be suppressed, and government officials who do so will be retired. Public opinion will, more or less (with a lot of slack at the couplings) prevail. But what if public opinion itself is perverse or unenlightened?

Does the American "Public" Know Enough about Politics?

A poll taken in 1945 found that only 55% of adult Americans knew how many senators there were in Washington, D.C., from their state. Only 47% knew how long a term of office in the House of Representatives is. Forty percent knew how many justices normally sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. [Footnote 5] The answers to such questions, of course, are arguably not matters of cosmic significance. Fred Greenstein, after reciting this evidence of American ignorance, quite properly goes on to qualify his point:

It is conceivable . . . that knowledge of the structure of government is not vital to effective citizenship. One might argue that the foregoing questions all deal with "civics book matters"---that one need not be able to answer them in order to participate effectively. Footnote 6

But, continues Greenstein,

It would be difficult to maintain that citizens can control their leaders without knowing who their leaders are.

And he then produces a 1945 Gallup Poll showing that 5% of Americans could not identify Harry Truman, then President of the U.S. More people were able to identify Joe Louis (94%), Jack Dempsey (92%) and Bob Hope (88%) than could identify Thomas Dewey, who had been defeated in the previous year's presidential elections (86%). The new Secretary of State was identified by fewer people (51%) than could identify Charlie McCarthy (the puppet), Frank Sinatra, and Dick Tracy! Footnote 7

Weaknesses of Polling. Not only does the public seem weak in knowledge about institutions and individual leaders, but it sometimes also seems very fickle. The stock of individual leaders can rise and fall with great ease, and presidential actions that might have been generally condemned the day before he took them evoke strong support the day afterward. Perhaps some of these apparent oscillations in public sentiment are due to inadequate methods of measuring it. Public opinion polling is not an exact science, and there is a small probability that the results of any given investigation will be distorted. If a subsequent poll produces more accurate results, a shift in public opinion that never took place is "detected."

The accuracy of polls is much greater, though, since the notorious Literary Digest poll in 1936 predicted a crushing defeat of incumbent Franklin Roosevelt by his Republican challenger, Alf Landon. No pollster can interview everyone. According to mathematical sampling theory, quite accurate results can be gotten by questioning only a few thousand people. But in order to reflect the thinking of the whole population accurately, those questioned must be a random sample of the people. Here, the Literary Digest poll foundered. Its sample was drawn from telephone books. At the peak of the Depression people who could afford a telephone overrepresented Republicans.

Different "Publics". Sampling problems, however, cannot explain the rapid shifting in public opinion in the days immediately prior to elections. Often, sentiments change so quickly that even the results of last minute polls are published with the warning that their meaningfulness is dated. Perhaps a lot of confusion is produced by speaking of public opinion in the singular, as if there were a single "public." This is probably not realistic. More accurately, we could say that there are as many "publics" as there are issues, and that the membership in each public is a somewhat different one. Some people, for example, may be a part of public opinion regarding economic regulatory policy, federal subsidy of the arts, and bicycle paths; those same people however, may have no opinion regarding local TV broadcasting of professional athletic contests, neither knowing nor caring about this issue one way or the other. Each person is probably a member of several different "publics," and a nonmember of many others.

Kinds of Opinions. Additional confusion in thinking about public opinion may be due to failure to distinguish between two rather different kinds of opinion: opinion about goals, and opinion about the best ways of achieving those goals. The "man in the street" is more likely to have something to say about government goals than about methods of reaching them. For example, the Kennedy Administration in the early 1960s had to decide how to go to the moon. The main options were a single rocket that would land on the moon, then take off and return directly to earth, or a "lunar orbit rendevous" system. This latter approach required two rockets, one of which remained in lunar orbit while the other descended to the surface and then rose to rejoin it. Each option had both advantages and disadvantages. As usual in engineering as well as politics, a choice had to be made on the basis of conflicting considerations. The average citizen was in no position to do this, and any public opinion that may have existed on this issue at the time was almost certainly worthless as a guide to proper action.

The issue of how to send a man to the moon and back arose, however, only after a decision whether to go to the moon had been made. Here, expertise was of little significance. Experts are people with special abilities to produce some kind of results, but they have no special insight into whether those particular results should be produced. To suggest looking to public opinion in deciding whether to try for the moon is therefore very appropriate, especially since it is the general public that pays for the trips.

For practical purposes in a democracy, a person's opinion is relevant only if he expresses it in the periodic elections. Pollsters take some care to estimate the chances that the people in their sample will actually vote, for learning how a nonvoter would cast his ballot if he did vote tells us nothing about how an election will turn out. It is known, however, that some kinds of people--e.g., those with less education, lower household income, Democrats, the very young or very old--are less likely to vote than others-the more educated, the more prosperous, Republicans, the middleaged. Allowances for these probabilities are made by pollsters when they publish their predictions, and by politicians when they figure out what they can get away with doing.

The Ideal Public: Disinterested and Enlightened

It is easy self-righteously to denounce public apathy and ignorance about politics. But there are plenty of good reasons for not being too well informed about politics, and if one is not well informed this in itself may be an excellent reason for not being very active.

Disinterest may be a good reason for being inactive in politics and government, and for being relatively uninformed. Why should someone know a great deal about things he is not interested in? And why should a person be interested in politics? Most people are primarily interested in the welfare of themselves and their intimate associates, those with whom they are in a gemeinschaft relationship. Government, on the other hand, like all large-scale human associations is inherently a gesellschaft. It is not regarded as worthwhile in its own right, as an end in itself, but only as a means to other and more fundamental ends. In this sense, we will deal later with the "unimportance of politics."

Note carefully what we are and are not arguing here: We are arguing, not that politics has no relevance for the interests and welfare of the average person, but that its connection is indirect. It is quite possible to live a good life in a badly governed country, and it is even more possible to live a perfectly wretched life in the best of all possible political systems. For the individual, with limited time, attention, and money, the basic question is which way he can pursue his interests most effectively: By participating as one among many in democratic political processes in which he can be outvoted or ignored? Or by concentrating most fully on his private affairs and decisions? In the latter case the results are immediate and direct, and one's leverage in choosing between alternatives is greater.

For example, consider the issue of good health. Good health can be pursued collectively through the political system-- public sanitation measures, public clinics, hospitals, national health care insurance. One way to promote one's own health and that of our close associates is therefore to try to influence government to adopt policies that we think will improve our health by advancing health in general. But at the individual level, good health can also be pursued by developing good habits--diet, exercise, avoiding harmful drugs--and by getting the best medical assistance we can when we do get sick. Which of these approaches is likely to be a more efficient way for us to invest our time and other resources? Collective action might not be the best approach for some people.

Too Much Interest. Another explanation for the low quality of much public opinion is that people's interests can stand squarely in the way of clear thinking. Many political issues do not touch most people, but when some issue does affect us we tend to get pretty excited. The issue of where exactly to locate a new freeway may interest us only mildly if at all, but if the government proposes to run it through our own backyard we will probably become very interested and well-informed in a hurry. But we will also probably be very upset, and being emotionally distraught is not usually the best posture from which to think calmly and well about an issue.

Leaders and Public Opinion

Still another reason for low quality of public opinion is the fact that ambitious and unscrupulous leaders are willing to say anything to curry an immediately favorable voter response. Voters, not unnaturally, like to be told that they are fine people, that their opinions are sound, and that there are no inherent reasons why they cannot have what they want. But probably they are not all that fine, their opinions have little basis in fact, and they cannot have what they want because they want conflicting things. Pleasant talk from politicians may prevent them from facing reality and cleaning up their own act. Instead of acting as honest educators of public opinion, therefore, the politicians, who are in the best position to understand national problems, have a personal interest in perpetuating and reinforcing existing ignorance. It is hard to complain of the politicians for acting this way: all they are doing is applying the usual rules of rational action to speech:

                            S---> X + Y

Mass Media and the Public

Much of what passes for public opinion in a democracy is a reflection of or reaction to ideas singled out for amplification by the various mass media. In the modern United States these include newspapers, TV, radio, movies, and magazines.

Mass media are inherently selective in the facts and ideas they propagate. Only a fraction of what is going on in our busy, complex world can be mentioned, for example, in a daily TV network newscast. There are only 30 minutes in the newscast, and there are over 200,000,000 Americans--to say nothing of the world beyond our borders where important things also may be happening. In 1800 seconds how much can one say about the activities of even 200,000,000 people? If there are no commercials, and if it takes 15 seconds to say anything significant about one person, then 120 people can be "covered" in a daily newscast. Those who control the contents of the newscast--inherently a small number of individuals, if the "iron law" holds true--thus are forced to be selective whether they like it or not. The question is not whether they will transmit news selectively, but how.

In the United States most of the mass media are privately owned and are operated by people seeking to make money. As we have noted already, this means that TV programming, for example, will be calculated to attract as many viewers as possible, increasing in turn the charges advertisers will be willing to pay. There is nothing wrong with this, especially when we consider the alternatives--some form of government or government- supported monopoly. But the resulting programs may not be particularly edifying, and they are unlikely to challenge the fashionable sacred cows of their day.

Capturing the Attention of the Public. Of course in the U.S., with no censorship and with freedom of press, there are many ways to communicate in addition to the mass electronic media. Anybody with a few thousand dollars can publish a book via the so-called "vanity press," without risking the political harassment to which publishers of samizdat material in the U.S.S.R. are subjected. But it is not easy to get public attention by this method, because non-mass-media outputs tend to be drowned out by the din of the larger organizations. There is also a certain public tendency to assume that non-mass-media reports are somehow less true, or less worthy of attention, than those picked up by the media. And even advertising a non-mass- media publication on TV can be prohibitively expensive. Peak network advertising rates during professional athletic telecasts climbed to several hundred thousand dollars per minute by 1978, and the average cost of a minute of "prime time" in 19761977 was $90,000. Footnote 8

So difficult is it to capture public attention under modern conditions that individuals who manage to do so for almost any reason become a scarce resource with a "rental" value. So serious has this become that a law was suggested in New York state to seize any royalties accruing to mass murderers from books about their lives, placing them in a fund from which dependents of their victims could be compensated. Accused and convicted "Watergators" made a lot of money from books and lecture tours made possible by the notoriety they had received from mass media coverage of the Nixon scandals.

HOW DEMOCRACY IS WEAKENED BY THE PUBLIC

Democracy can suffer, then, from two different kinds of weakness in public opinion:

1. weakness in the quality of the direction that public opinion gives to government

2. weakness in the impact of public opinion on the actions of government.
It is more fashionable for political activists to bemoan the second type of problem. And, indeed, there can be no denying that the impact of public opinion on government action in our democracy is indirect, imperfect, and limited. Even assuming that those who govern were strongly interested in following public opinion, there are some serious difficulties in ascertaining this opinion. We have already noted some of the problems of polling (sample error), and some revealed by polling (fickleness).

Another way that rulers can try to find out what people think and want is to read their mail. Most key public figures, however, receive too many letters. The task of reading them is assigned to staff. Staffers may produce a summary of the mail, but there is no guarantee that they will not tilt their summary to reinforce their own opinions of what should be done. Nor is even a completely accurate summary of expressed constituent feelings necessarily a reliable guide to public opinion. Those who write are probably not a representative sample of constituents.

In a democracy the ultimate expression of public opinion comes in elections, but even here it is hard to know what people are really saying. So many factors influence voters that it is almost impossible to single out what they feel about any one issue.

If ever an election could deliver a clear statement of public opinion, it would be where there is a referendum or initiative. Here, proposed legislation is placed on the ballot by a legislature (in the case of a referendum) or by petition of a certain number of voters. People can then vote for or against the proposal without any of the confusion that results when voting for candidates who have taken stands on many different issues. For example, residents of a Michigan county were asked some years ago whether a community college should be established to serve local residents. The vote on this proposal was a resounding yes. An unequivocal indication of the public opinion in that country? Well, on the same ballot another question was put to the same voters: Shall the property tax in this county be increased several mils so as to pay for a community college? Here, the vote was an emphatic no! What was "public opinion" in that county about building a community college?

There are plenty of opportunities for misperception of public opinion even by leaders who strongly desire to find out what it is. But how many leaders really want to find out? Most are probably more interested in getting reelected, and the general contours of public opinion are only one of several factors bearing on winning the next election. The desires of a few individuals with a big stake in a government decision are more likely to be reflected at the ballot box than are those of the many individuals with a small (but cumulatively equally big) stake in the opposite decision. This fact, which we have referred to already as "differential mobilization," is one that politicians must accommodate themselves to if they wish to survive. Also, we should not underestimate the extent to which elected officials are free to do whatever they please on some issues. Social and political complexity make individual leadership actions hard for voters to perceive and harder for them to evaluate. And what people cannot perceive and evaluate cannot be a basis on which they vote.

Trade-offs between The Quality and Impact

There are undoubtedly ways to increase the impact of public opinion on officials' actions. Some will be discussed in the chapter on Complexity and Constitutionalism. Before we rush off to reform the republic, however, we should remind ourselves of another problem: in an imperfect world, changing some elements of the situation towards the ideal may worsen the total situation. In the present case, making government more sensitive to public opinion will increase the practical importance of any weaknesses in the quality of public opinion. "More democracy" is not necessarily the cure for problems created by democracy. As George Bernard Shaw observed in 1896:

The difficulty in England is not to secure more political power for the people, but to persuade them to make any sensible use of the power they already have. Footnote 9

LEADERS: THEIR BELIEFS, THEIR ACTIONS

In a democracy key day-to-day decisions are made by a few individuals. But the famous sign on President Harry Truman's desk was very misleading: the buck does not stop with top leaders, but with the electorate at whose pleasure they serve.

High officials have considerable latitude in making choices one way or the other, within limits set by Constitution, laws, and bodres. Within these limits, they are free to do what they think the public interest requires. But we cannot presume that public spirit will inspire all top officials-as Madison noted in Federalist No. 10, "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." Democracy presumes that most officials will want to retain their jobs. What can we expect when an official has to choose between an action that is wise but unpopular and one that is unwise but popular?

The Problem of the Desirable but Unpopular Decision

Edmund Burke, the British philosopher-politician, discussed the propriety of defying one's constituents in his famous address to the electors of Bristol. Burke argued that the representative probably understands the issues much more profoundly than do most people back home. It is, therefore, not only his right, it is his duty, to do what he thinks best for the country and hope that he can persuade his constituents that he did the right thing before the next election.

We need not quarrel with Burke's view that such action is right in order to raise the question whether it is prudent. It is true that simply gaining and holding office is not everything in politics. What use is there--aside from the "perquisites" of office--in winning an office that is totally controlled by someone else's views? On the other hand, losing may not be anything. There is something to be said for doing what you think is wrong--or less than optimal, anyhow--some of the time, in order to hang on to a position from which one can give things a push in the right direction the rest of the time.

The American political system thus exerts immense pressures on its elected leaders to compromise both with other leaders whose cooperation is needed and with the public whose support is necessary in order to remain in office. If the public is unenlightened, cooperating with it is good for democracy but bad for good government.

Let us return to President Richard Nixon and his wage-price freeze. Nixon had spent his whole career denouncing direct efforts to control prices. His arguments were economically sound: price controls harm the economy by preventing imbalances between supply and demand from correcting themselves. Controlled prices produce shortages or surpluses; they result in misallocated resources; they cause unemployment. Nixon presumably believed what he had been saying for 20 years. But in 1971 serious inflation gripped the United States. Public outcry demanded that he "do something" about it, but the government measures that could have stopped inflation--a balanced budget and a slowdown in the expansion of the money supply--were not acceptable to that same public. Nixon was caught in a trap. If he did the right thing about inflation-- assuming he had legal authority to do anything at all--he would make himself very unpopular. Presidential elections were impending. If he did the economically next best thing--nothing at all--this would also provoke the voters, who were all agreed that inflation is bad.

Unable or unwilling for political reasons to do the best or next best things economically, Nixon logically enough decided to do something that would be bad economically but beneficial to himself politically. He announced a general "freeze" on wages and prices in mid-August 1971, acting under authority given to him by Congress. The freeze produced exactly the economic consequences that we might have expected: shortages of necessary items--gasoline, paper products--and no decrease in the rate of inflation. However the freeze also produced the political consequences Nixon desired. When it appeared that he was "doing something" about inflation, his popularity climbed in the public opinion polls, and he was handily reelected in 1972.

Ironically, Nixon might have been better off if, instead of succumbing to public opinion that he regarded as perverse, he had publicly explained the actual function of prices, causes of inflation, and side effects of misguided efforts to stop inflation via price controls. Perhaps he should have stubbornly refused to budge on the controls issue, and stressed the huge deficits being run up by the Democratic Congress. Such statesmanship might or might not have succeeded in convincing the public. At best, he would have introduced effective measures to control inflation, received public appreciation for this, and benefited by reelection. At worst, he would have lost the election. And surely an honorable departure over a matter of economic principle would have been a far more glorious end to Nixon's political career than was the Watergate Affair and his abdication.

How to Improve the Quality of Government Decisions

The case of Richard Nixon and the wage-price freeze of 1971 demonstrates the abysmal superficiality of two frequently proposed approaches to improving the quality of government decisions:

1. personnel reform: the desire to elect more intelligent or more well-meaning leaders

2. institutional reform; in the extreme version, giving more power directly to the electorate.

Changing Leaders? It is rather appealing to assume that when our national leaders act dumb, they are dumb. In daily life, actions are often a pretty good basis from which to infer that a person is a knave, or a fool. And if we are governed by knaves or fools, it seems plausible that replacing them with decent and intelligent leaders will produce an immediate and dramatic improvement in what our leaders do. Under the circumstances of a democracy, however, these conclusions do not in fact follow.

In a democracy it is practically inevitable that, on average, leaders will be smarter than they act. The unintelligent are unlikely to get anywhere politically under the complex conditions of democracy, where candidates are surrounded by pitfalls and traps set up for them by their rivals. One visible mistake, even an off the cuff remark, can be fatal when one's competition seizes on it and exploits it effectively. George Romney's "brainwashing" remark and Edmund Muskie's emotional outbreak over newspaper stories about his wife may have cost these intelligent gentlemen their chances for election. The stupid would never have gotten far enough toward that goal to blow it as spectacularly as did Romney and Muskie. So we can assume that top leaders must have something on the ball. They must be well above average merely in order to attain their high offices.

Once there, however, they cannot always afford to do what they regard as intrinsically wise. The need to get the cooperation of other top leaders is a powerful force for compromise, and when their original position is well-thought out compromises must usually be towards a policy that--in the leader's opinion-- is less than optimal. Added to this pressure is the need to secure the support of the electorate in order to win the next election. The electorate, by definition, is only of average intellectual capacity. Its members, as a body, are not political or economic specialists, and do not and cannot spend all their time thinking about issues. The quality of thinking among members of this electorate, on average, is therefore bound to be lower than that among top leaders. To the extent that those top leaders must defer to grass roots sentiment to stay in office, their actions will therefore appear to be those of people who are less intelligent than these leaders actually are.

Giving Power Directly to the Governed? Nor can we solve the problem by placing more power directly into the hands of the electorate and bypassing top leaders. This is not to say that the popular initiative and referendum are bad ideas. No doubt they can play a constructive and worthwhile place in a democracy. We do not have these institutions at the national level in the U.S., but we do find them widely used at the state and local level. The results have been neither dramatically beneficial nor catastrophic. It is unlikely that results would be very different at the national level.

Let us imagine an extreme case of government by referendum. It is now technically feasible to equip every TV receiver in the country with push buttons connected to a central computing center in Washington, D.C. Pushing the green button would register a "yes" vote, while the red button would indicate a "no." Why not abolish Congress, abolish the presidency, and take a national vote on all top governmental decisions every evening after the TV newscasts are over? We could thus "eliminate the middleman" and "bring government directly to the people." Congress could no longer "frustrate the will of the people." A neat solution!

But who will decide which decisions are important enough to lay before the people? Who will formulate the exact wording of the alternatives presented? Who will decide who can address the country in support of, or opposition to, a given proposal? How many people in the general population will bother to inform themselves before pushing their red or green buttons? How easily can the deck be stacked by the people behind the scenes? How can we be sure that the computer has not been fixed to register the desires of some "grey eminence," some power "behind" the people's throne, rather than those of the general public? How can we be sure that such a rigging would not produce better results than an honest tabulation of actual votes?

Fundamentally, we must ask ourselves whether the iron law of oligarchy can be circumvented by such a simple means as daily electronic voting by the whole population. Even more fundamentally, we must note that by-passing leadership, even if it could be done, does not speak to the problems posed by an unwise electorate. Rather, any such operation would aggravate these problems.

LEADERSHIP AND PUBLIC OPINION

The democratic chickens come home to roost with public opinion. If public opinion is unelightened, high quality leaders will have to cater to and compromise with it in order to remain in power. If public opinion is relatively enlightened, on the other hand, even lower quality leaders must govern well. Public opinion is the key, if not to all things, at least to many.

There is a great temptation for those who recognize the low quality of public opinion to repudiate democracy. If the people do not recognize their own best interests, an enlightened minority could seize power, destroy democracy, and govern without compromising with unwise opinions. [Footnote 10] But which enlightened minority is to rule? There are large numbers of people who feel very strongly that they have the unique answers needed to bring peace and prosperity to their fellow men. More importantly, who is to decide which "enlightened" minority shall rule? It cannot be the minority itself, for each would be biased in its own favor and no person is a good judge in his own case. Deciding which minority can decide is equivalent to deciding which minority will rule. But if the majority is allowed to decide which minority rules, we are back to democracy.

For a minority to rule without fearing loss of majority support, it must prevent rivals from appealing to the people. Freedom of speech and press must be stifled. This allows social tensions and resentments to accumulate until violent explosions result. Opportunities for progress will also go unnoticed. As John Stuart Mill noted,

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. Footnote 11

Even conceding that there is such a thing as an enlightened minority, then, there is no orderly and dependable way of identifying it and placing it in power. Minorities may indeed be able to seize power in defiance of the majority, but there is little chance that they will be enlightened.

Changing Public Opinion

Perhaps the only remedy for perverse public opinion that is compatible with democracy is to try to convince people to change their ideas. Many different kinds of people can try to do this, and there are several ways of approaching the task.

Direct Instruction. The most obvious way to change public opinion is to appeal directly to people via the power of the pen. Arguments for and against given actions can be analyzed. The probable side effects of pursuing a goal by certain proposed means can be pointed out. General principles of proper behavior can be put forward for consideration and possible approval, and particular proposed actions held up against the principles to show where they are lacking.

Inducements. Public opinion may also be influenced by the power of the purse. People can be offered inducements for learning about subjects that the people wielding them feel are important. The inducements (fellowships) need not be given to everybody. Perhaps it will suffice to deal directly with key individuals in a position to lead public opinion--teachers, newspaper editors, preachers.

Sanctions. Even sanctions may have their place in educating public opinion. Sanctions can be imposed--or so we have argued- -only for violating general rules of action. But laws can have an indirect educational effect as well as a direct deterrent effect. If a law is defensible, its purpose can be explained to people and its importance dramatized by occasional trials and convictions of people charged with violating it. A person who obeys a law merely to avoid its sanctions is no wiser than he would be otherwise. But his actions may become habits and his orientation may shift for the better as a result of his experience.

The Leader as Educator

Whatever the techniques of persuasion employed, political leaders may have special responsibilities to try to educate the public. Getting the public's attention is not easy in the din created by general freedom of speech, and top leaders enjoy conspicuous offices.

Efforts to convince and persuade the public are likely to reduce a leader's ability to get what he wants in the short run. Rather than telling people they are right in their thinking, the educator must tell them where he thinks they are wrong, and this is not usually the best way to win popularity.

As we saw in Chapter 3, investments are a postponement of current consumption in order to produce more in the future. In politics, investments are actions today in pursuit, not of immediate results, but of improved circumstances within which we can act more effectively tomorrow. But willingness to invest may be hard to come by if it promises to wipe us completely out of tomorrow's action. Improved circumstances may have little appeal when we are not going to be there to capitalize upon them. It is great to think about the long run, but as Lord Keynes said, "In the long run we are all dead." A leader who subordinates his personal position and political survival to achievement of long range gains is admirable. A candidate who levels with the public may contribute more to good government in defeat than ten victorious opportunists. But for most candidates desire to win the office will be strong.

We have spoken earlier of the president's role as chief teacher to the country. If the president performs his teaching function successfully, it allows him and his successors to do the right things (from his perspective) more of the time. Efforts by government leaders and agencies to affect public opinion are therefore quite legitimate.

Dangers to Leaders When They Become Educators. There are, of course, many dangers and pitfalls when top leaders set out to change public opinion. It is not just that their purposes may be far from public-spirited, that the crook may have his own reasons for trying to "improve" the climate of ideas within which he must operate. It is much worse than this: leaders' ideas may be fundamentally perverse, even though sincerely held. If the public accepts these views, its opinions may be set back below mediocrity rather than elevated above it.

It would be unfortunate then, if public opinion ever became completely subject to government manipulation. Top leaders may teach the wrong things. If public opinion were completely controlled by those who govern, it would make a farce of democracy. Democracy is government by a few leaders limited by the citizenry through periodic competitive elections. Democracy is government limited and somewhat shaped by public opinion. But if that public opinion is itself completely the product of government policy, it can no longer function as a limit on the actions of top leaders. Rather, they would teach the public to want only what they intended to do anyway.

HOW OUR GOVERNMENT CAN ENLIGHTEN THE PUBLIC

Importance of the First Amendment

Government must be free to wield the pen as well as to employ all other legitimate means of influencing public thinking. The education function is an inherent and important part of leadership. But the pen is far too important to be a government monopoly, or a monopoly of anybody else. The First Amendment recognizes this danger and constitutes a strong effort to protect against it:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Individuals and associations must have exactly the same legal rights to propagate their views and to seek "converts" as does government and its top leaders. Private individuals cannot have all the same advantages as top leaders in getting public attention. Theodore Roosevelt's "bully pulpit" cannot be occupied by everybody; but at least government can refrain from imposing sanctions on people who try to teach things that the governors do not agree with or find expedient.

Legitimate use of the sword must be a government monopoly in any decent society. Competition here means war, revolution, blood feuds, dueling, and other nasty ramifications. No government can tolerate unauthorized imposition of sanctions on its people by private organizations. As we have seen, it is a principal function of government to try to wipe out or hold down all private-involuntary associations. If the pen is seen as just another weapon, no different from the sword, government claims to a monopoly of the pen follow quite logically and naturally. The government of the Soviet Union is a graphic example of failure to distinguish pen and sword. A cartoon printed in Pravda--the official Communist Party newspaper--at the paper's fiftieth anniversary actually shows Pravda (truth) stabbing a snake (symbolizing evil) with a giant pen. The pen here is literally a sword! Nor was this cartoon merely a coincidence or a "slip of the pen." Everything that we know about the U.S.S.R. reinforces the hypothesis that its government attempts to monopolize the pen.

Freedom of speech and press are based on the premise that there is a qualitative difference between sword and pen. Only by making this distinction can we simultaneously argue that the sword must be a government monopoly and that the pen must not be. Ultimately, the distinction is based on our concepts of human nature, a subject to which we will return in Chapter 17. For political purposes, however, it suffices to note the dangers of concentrating too much power in the same hands. The government must have the power of the sword. If it also monopolizes the pen, there will be no way to prevent rulers from pursuing their own individual interests at the expense of the public. Since the two types of power need not go together, they therefore should not go together.

The iron law of oligarchy applies to particular mass media organizations just as much as it does to government. We cannot depend on individuals in key positions at newspapers or TV networks to transmit material reflecting unfavorably on themselves or their ideas. Nor is there any conceivable way to "reorganize" such an organization to guarantee it will transmit what the public needs to know in order to supervise government wisely. Accordingly, it is very important that there be pluralism in the mass media--a number of organizations competing with each other. What one source plays down or ignores, another may emphasize. The information system as a whole can therefore rise above each of its elements individually and better serve the public. It is therefore unfortunate that the mass media in the United States have been subject to considerable mergers in recent decades, and that if anything such tendencies have been encouraged by government tax and inheritance laws.

SUMMARY

All government is by some people. In a democracy these leaders are limited by the need to win competitive elections and by the right of the "outs" to try to persuade voters to put them "in." Although democracy is not terribly inspiring, it is more so than the alternatives and deserves our considered support. It does not, however, call for our enthusiasm. The actions of elected leaders are only roughly guided by public opinion, and the quality of that guidance is not high. Making elected officials more responsive to community sentiments without increasing public sophistication about issues could produce worse government, not better.

Although it is not rational to ignore public affairs totally, neither is it good strategy for the average person to devote a lot of time to thinking about politics. To a certain point, better results can be gotten by becoming more knowledgeable about our private dealings, for individual leverage is maximized in associations requiring mutual consent of all the parties- voluntary associations. Still, public opinion bears the ultimate responsibilities in a democracy, and the surest way to improve government decisions is to improve the sophistication of the voters. We could use more leaders who try to educate the electorate rather than just buttering it up. The power of the pen, however, is too important to be a government monopoly. Thus, the right to appeal to public opinion must be open to all even though most private citizens cannot get public attention as easily as top leaders do.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Is the argument of this chapter in favor of democracy or against it?

2. How is it possible to argue that U.S. government is an oligarchy without:
a. implying that it is not democratic?
b. implying that it is bad?
c. implying that it compares unfavorably with other governments?

3. It is generally believed that 12 Americans have walked on the moon. But how sure can we be that this is true? Consider the following review of the film "Capricorn One":

The film playfully suggests that the American space program is a gigantic confidence game. . . . Peter Hyams, who wrote and directed the movie . . . told a New York Times reporter. . . "I was thinking how easy it would be to manipulate an event in a television age. All right, you couldn't invent the Olympics, because there would be too many people watching. But there was one event of really enormous importance that had almost no witnesses. And the only verification we have that anyone reached the surface of the moon came from one camera!" (John Huddy, Detroit Free Press, June 13, 1978.)

4. Compare the problems facing a person trying to change public opinion on some issue in the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Does it make any difference if the person is a private individual or a top public official?

5. Explain why increased leverage of public opinion over government may decrease the quality of government.

6. What is meant by the statement: "Our leaders are smarter than they act"?

7. What would be the advantages and disadvantages of making the right to vote depend on ability to pass a simple test of literacy and basic political knowledge?

8. Would it be a good idea to have provision for occasional referendums or initiatives at the federal level? Why or why not?

9. If "the pen is mightier than the sword," why should government not claim a monopoly of the pen as well as of the sword?

***************

Footnotes

* Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, Power and Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 25.

1. Robert A. Dahl, Democracy in the United States: Promise and Performance (2nd ed.), Chicago: Rand McNally, 1972, p. 36.

2. These are also titles of books: J. M. Burns and J. W. Peltason, Government by the People (3rd ed.), Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1957; J. C. Livingston and R. G. Thompson, The Consent of the Governed (3rd. ed.), New York: Macmillan, 1971; and John A. Moore, Jr. and Myron Roberts, The Pursuit of Happiness.- Government and Politics in America, New York: Macmillan, 1978.

3. Robert Michels, Political Parties, New York: Free Press, 1949.

4. See Edward Higbee, The Squeeze: Cities without Space, New York: Morrow, 1960, p. 279.

5. Fred Greenstein, The American Party System and the American People, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1963, p. 12.

6. Ibid., p. 13.

5. Fred Greenstein, The American Party System and the American People, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1963, p. 12.

6. Ibid., p. 13.

7. Ibid., p. 13.

8. Business Week, September 6, 1976, p. 22.

9. Anne Freemantle, This Little Band of Prophets: The British Fabians, New York: Mentor, 1959, p. 90.

10. See R. P. Wolff, Barrington Moore, Jr., and Herbert Marcuse, A Critique of Pure Tolerance, Boston: Beacon Press, 1969, p. 106.

11. John Stuart Mill, Essential Works, New York: Bantam Books, 1961, p. 269.