2088) The sheer volume of money raised and spent is not the only defect in contemporary American politics. The national political "debate" is now directed by advertising executives and political consultants and conducted mainly through thirty-second, "soundbite" television and radio commercials that are negative, witless, and condescending; these ads [...] drive political moderates into not voting, leaving the field to partisans and zealots. Television newscasts, from which most Americans now learn most of what they know about candidates and issues, are more and more shaped by rating wars, in which network and local news bureaus are pressed to provide entertainment rather than information or analysis, and by feature reporters, whose definition of success is to become celebrities themselves, with huge salaries and lecture fees, and public recognition that often dwarfs that of the politicians they supposedly cover.

But money is the biggest threat to the democratic process. [...] Money is not only the biggest problem, but in good part the root of other problems as well. If politicians had much less to spend on aggressive, simple-minded television spots, for example, political campaigns would have to rely more on reporters and on events directed by non-partisan groups, like televised debates, and political argument might become less negative and more constructive. Money is, moreover, also the easiest problem to solve, at least in theory. A free society cannot dictate the tone its politicians adopt of the kind of arguments they offer the public, or what political news or scandal reporters do or do not print, or how carefully television commentators analyze what the candidates have offered or opposed. But a free society can - or so it would seem - limit the amount of money that candidates or anyone else may spend on political campaigns.

Ronald Dworkin
"The Curse of American Politics" in
New York Review of Books (10/17/1996)

2089) Citizens play two roles in a democracy. As voters they are, collectively, the final referees or judges of political contests. But they also participate, as individuals, in the contests they collectively judge: they are candidates, supporters, and political activists; they lobby and demonstrate for and against government measures, and they consult and argue about them with their fellow citizens. [...] [W]hen wealth in unfairly distributed and money dominates politics, then, though individual citizens may be equal in their vote and their freedom to hear the candidates they wish to hear, they are not equal in their own ability to command the attention of others for their own candidates, interests, and convictions. [...] [T]he most fundamental characterization of democracy - that it provides self-government by the people as a whole - supposes that citizens are equal not only as judges but as participants as well. [...] [E]ach citizen must have a fair and reasonably equal opportunity not only to hear the views of others as they are published or broadcast, but to command attention for his own views, either as a candidate for office or as a member of a politically active group committed to some program or conviction. No citizen is entitled to demand that others find his opinions persuasive or even worthy of attention. But each citizen is entitled to compete for that attention, and to have a chance that is now denied almost everyone without great wealth or access to it.

Ronald Dworkin
"The Curse of American Politics" in
New York Review of Books (10/17/1996)

2090) [T]he tone of public discourse must be appropriate to the deliberation of a partnership or joint venture rather than the selfish negotiations of commercial rivals or military enemies. This means that when citizens disagree they must present their arguments to one another with civility, attempting rationally to support policies they take to be in the common interest, not in manipulative, slanted, or mendacious pitches designed to win as much of the spoils of politics as possible by any means.

Ronald Dworkin
"The Curse of American Politics" in
New York Review of Books (10/17/1996)

2091) [D]emocracy - self-government by the people as a whole - is always a matter of degree. It will never be perfectly fulfilled, because it seems incredible that the politics of a pluralistic contemporary society could ever become as egalitarian in access and as deliberative in tone as the standards [...] demand. We would then understand democracy not as a pedigree a nation earns just by adopting some constitutional structure of free elections, but as an ideal toward which any would-be democratic society must continually strive.

Ronald Dworkin
"The Curse of American Politics" in
New York Review of Books (10/17/1996)

2092) The defining election of the twenty-first century may not come for a decade or more. The questions that animate an age only become clear when, under pressure of events, people find ways of explaining the new circumstances in which they live. The election that "built the bridge" to the twentieth century did not occur until 1912. It was then that Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat, and Theodore Roosevelt, running on the Bull Moose ticket, articulated the big ideas that gave shape to the twentieth century.

Their predicament was similar to ours. Then, as now, their was an uneasy fit between the scale of economic life and the terms of political community. Railroad, telephones, telegraphs wires and daily newspapers spilled across local boundaries, bringing people into contact with events in distant places. National markets and a complex industrial system made workers and consumers interdependent. But Americans, accustomed to finding their bearings in small communities, felt powerless in the face of forces beyond their control. A decentralized political system, invented for a nation of farmers and shopkeepers, was dwarfed by the power of giant corporations.

How could a locally based democracy govern an economy national in scope? That question divided Wilson and Roosevelt. Wilson argues for breaking up the trusts and decentralizing economic power so it could be held accountable by local political units. [...] Roosevelt considered big business an inevitable product of industrial development and saw little point in trying to restore the decentralized economy of the nineteenth century. The only way to content with national economic power, he argued, was to enlarge the capacity of national democratic institutions. The solution to big business was big government. Roosevelt sought to meet national economic power with national political power. But he insisted that a national democracy required more than the centralization of government; it also required the nationalization of politics. The political community had to be recast on a national scale. [...]

Wilson won the election, but Roosevelt's "New Nationalism" won the future. [...] But today we face a new predicament similar to the one America confronted early in this century. Now, as then, new forms of commerce and communication spill across national boundaries, creating networks of interdependence while disrupting familiar forms of community. What railroad, telegraph wires and national markets were to their time, cyberspace, CNN and global markets are to ours - instruments that link people in distant places without making them neighbors, or fellow citizens, or participants in a common venture. Once again, the scale of economic life has outgrown the reach of existing democratic institutions. This explains the sense of disempowerment that hovers over our politics, the gnawing doubt that either party can do much to allay the anxieties of our age.

That we are not debating questions analogous to those that preoccupied Wilson and Roosevelt reveals the poverty of our politics.

Michael J. Sandel
"The Hard Questions: Big Ideas" in
The New Republic (10/14/1996)