Gary Hart: "Democracy Is the Worst Form of Government"

[babylonsister]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/democracy-is-the-worst-fo_b_825983.html

"Democracy Is the Worst Form of Government"
Gary Hart


So said Winston Churchill who then added the punchline: "... except for all the others." An accompanying American colloquialism is: "If you like laws or sausages, never watch either one being made." Any doubts about either of these observations should be erased by current developments in both the Middle East and in Madison, Wisconsin.

snip//

Meanwhile, in Washington and Madison, and soon in many other state capitals around the country, we are seeing democracy in action with street demonstrations that don't look all that much different from Cairo and other cities. Democracy is easy when the economic pie is growing. It begins to creak and crack, however, when the pie is shrinking.

The struggle here is whether we will return to a pre-New Deal America with many fewer ladders of opportunity, safety nets for the poor and elderly, and regulatory protections for consumers, workers, and the environment. That is really what this endless political struggle in American regarding the size and role of government is about. There is some evidence to support the theory that the unstated purpose behind so-called "supply side" tax cuts was to create such huge deficits that the domestic role of government would have to return to the age of Herbert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge. Two endless wars have not helped in this regard.

Hold on to your seats. For we are entering a period when we will find out how strong American democracy really is... and what our values really are. When the Tea Party gets the kind of government it claims to want, few Americans are going to like it. But then, of course, we will have to start our struggle for justice and fairness all over again.

[BzaDem]

1. "When the Tea Party gets the government it claims to want, few Americans are going to like it"

and then Americans can vote to change the government. Welcome to democracy.

[DavidDvorkin]

2. The line about laws and sausages is from Bismarck

It's not an American colloquialism.

I'm surprised Gary Hart doesn't know that.

[Mass]

4. In fact, though it is often attributed to Bismark, it is not from him

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/magazine/27wwwl-guestsafire-t.html?_r=1

The Yale Book of Quotations disproves many other accepted origins. The next time you hear a commentator credit “All politics is local” to Tip O’Neill, impress your friends by mentioning that the line appeared in The Frederick (Md.) News, July 1, 1932, when the future speaker of the House was only a teenage proto-pol. When a candidate refers to Otto von Bismarck’s famous maxim about “laws and sausages,” grin knowingly, point out that the Iron Chancellor was not associated with that quip until the 1930s and cite The Daily Cleveland Herald, Mar. 29, 1869, quoting the lawyer-poet John Godfrey Saxe that “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.

[DavidDvorkin]

5. Huh.

Well, it still not "an American colloquialism" as Hart said.

[cooolandrew]

3. The way it should work is they all get elected as one coalition then they are opposed by retired....

lawyers 33% left 33% moderate 33% right. The only time they would compete would be election time and it would be illegal for the retirees to see lobbyists, they would also be in charge of ethics. Plus perform a question time every week.

[JCMach1]

6. Sigh... should have been President

and was in some happier alternate universe.