Plebiscitary Democracy

As long as we’re talking about Napoleon, it’s worth emphasizing how odd it is that the right (and much of the center) has decided to adopt a strangely plebiscitary view of American democracy whereby if a narrow plurality of the public claims to believe that the bill is a bad idea it should be shot down. It’s true that this is grossly hypocritical but beyond that it’s really bizarre.

After all, suppose the federal government did operate along plebiscitary lines. Does anyone seriously doubt that Obama could have huddled with his advisors, drafted and released a plan last March, and won the plebiscite in April? Support for Obama’s plan wound up cratering specifically during the drawn-out legislative haggling. If we had a system that wasn’t all about haggling, this would have been a done deal long ago. The idea that the decision is supposed to be made by the hagglers is inherent to our haggling-intense legislative process.