Why Are Presidential Elections So Heated?
I’ve long claimed that, in a republican system of government, if presidential elections become the system’s central feature then that system is already in deep trouble. I recall back in 2016, at a dinner party, getting into an unfortunate discussion about the upcoming election. When asked (inappropriately) whom I was voting for, I replied that when faced with two objectionable options the best was to choose neither. My dinner guest replied that this was unacceptable, that I had an obligation to vote for one of the two party candidates. I objected that, this being America, I had the freedom to choose none of the above, nor did I regard this as a wasting of my vote, nor did I think this precluded me from complaining about the results of the election, and I was happy to explain why.
Doubling down on her insistence, my dinner guest opined that if I did not vote for Candidate X, not only was I threatening the well-being of America now, but the future of her grandchildren. To which I replied: “If your grandchildren’s well-being is completely dependent on how I cast my vote in this presidential election, or if the future of this country hinges entirely on the result of this election, then we are already screwed.” This response did not amuse her.
We are now in the middle of our 14th straight “most important election ever.” It is the policy of this page not to choose sides or to advocate for particular candidates, but it seems fair to share with the reader our understanding of how we got ourselves into a situation where presidential elections have become quadrennial crises of our democratic system.
Presidential elections didn’t always excite such fervor. Given how they understood the Electoral College would operate, the framers of the Constitution assumed that the process of choosing electors put enough distance between the public and the outcome of the election to cool public passion sufficiently. They also assumed that the structure of the Electoral College would mean that most presidential elections would be decided in the House of Representatives. They further assumed, more controversially from our point of view, that state restrictions on the franchise would allow for cooler heads to prevail. Given their assumptions about George Washington becoming president, they didn’t fully appreciate how presidential elections might get heated.
And, for a long time, they weren’t. It was, ironically, the process of democratization, including the expansion of the franchise, that turned up the heat on elections. Political primaries may be more democratic, but they haven’t made the process more deliberate or yielded better results. They’ve simply increased the volume on an already cacophonous process. By the time of the presidency of Andrew Jackson and its unleashing of populist democracy, the work of selecting a president was becoming both more partisan and more heated and set the stage for the incredibly messy process we have in place today.
This was the world Alexis de Tocqueville witnessed during his tour of America. His chapter “On the Election of the President” holds up well as a diagnosis as to why selecting the person in charge of the federal bureaucracy creates such intense division.
Tocqueville foresaw the congealing of power in the centralized state, and within that state into the executive branch. The more power in the office, the more tumultuous the process of putting people in that office. The more power in the office, the more ambition in the people who seek it. The more power in the office, the more it inflames the interests of the people who hope to benefit from that power. The more power in the office, the more likely it becomes that the holder of the office will use that power to reward friends and punish enemies, thus raising the stakes.
Presidential elections increasingly become a kind of brinkmanship, making each loss feel like an unequivocal disaster. Tocqueville suggested that we respond by narrowing presidential power’s sphere of action, “gradually diminish its prerogatives, and habituate the people little by little to living without its aid.” The importance of that last point can hardly be overstated, for a government that doles out favors, especially on a selective basis, will not only create a class of clients, but will create dependency in the citizenry. A dependent citizenry is a subjugated one, and they will bit by bit trade off their freedom for material gain.
One of the things that concerned Tocqueville was the ways in which running for office would compromise the ability of the president to exercise the powers of the office, particularly in a fair and even-handed manner that would serve the common good rather than the interests of his voting base. The president “becomes absorbed by the care of defending himself” and “no longer governs in the interest of the state, but in that of his reelection.” Furthermore, “he prostrates himself before the majority and often, instead of resisting its passions … he runs to meet its caprices.” The desire for reelection is “a corrupting influence” that serves even more to concentrate “all the executive power of the nation in a single hand” that makes the president “a docile instrument in the hands of the majority."
All this is part of the problem associated with the executive exercising such immense powers.
“The vaster the place that executive power occupies in the direction of affairs, the greater and more necessary its habitual action is, and the more dangerous such a state of things is. Among a people that has contracted the habit of being governed by the executive power and, even more so, of being administered by it, election could not fail to produce a profound disturbance.”The problem intensifies with the emergence of highly organized political parties. It is easier for the parties to get their message to the people via a single organ than through a fractured Congress. Then, too, the symbolic value of the presidency reinforces the party’s message and program, an especial problem when presidents act more and more as partisans themselves. Our Constitutional system requires that presidents remain above the party fray; when they are in it, the system of checks and balances breaks down. The president is supposed to protect the integrity of the office more than advance a party’s agenda.
Like the framers of the Constitution, Tocqueville worried about how democratic features would destabilize a government. But he also worried about how centralizing administration over human affairs would become the stabilizing element that would threaten human freedom, properly understood. Lessening that power seemed to him a monumental task, but one that could only be taken on by a people who were well schooled “in the art of being free” and had gone through the arduous apprenticeship of freedom.
“Despotism often presents itself as the mender of all ills suffered; it is the support of good law, the sustainer of the oppressed, and the founder of order. Peoples fall asleep in the bosom of the temporary prosperity to which it gives birth; and when they awaken, they are miserable. Freedom, in contrast, is ordinarily born in the midst of storms, it is established painfully among civil discords, and only when it is old can one know its benefits.”Discussion Questions:
What strategies might we use to make presidential elections seems less consequential than what they are?
Has the presidency become too powerful, and if so, how can its power be scaled back?
What do you think Tocqueville meant when he opined that being schooled in the art of being free was difficult and painful?
Director of the Ford Leadership Forum, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation
Related Essays
