| Chapter 1: | Democracy without Politics? Hidden Costs of Corruption and Reform in America |
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responsibilities vis-à-vis politics and leadership. We are more likely to call for institutional fixes rather than commit our own energies to reform.
Somewhat less frequently noted, but implied in the responses to corruption noted just above, is the fact that we are optimists. To put it another, less flattering, way, we do not suffer imperfection gladly; indeed, at times we take it as a personal affront. We believe problems have solutions, that deprivations can be remedied, and that good intentions and rational thought are usually enough to win the battle. For more than a century we have thought of reform as a quest for optimally balanced institutional arrangements: we believe we can find the right institutional framework, the appropriate checks and balances, and neutral, “nonpolitical” processes of administration, vote counting, and political funding sufficient to check the excesses of the political world.
Equality as a political ideal came belatedly to the mix. The main body of the Constitution and early amendments to it are overwhelmingly focused upon liberty—or, as is the tendency of reform, upon fixing imperfections in the institutional fabric. Egalitarianism has always been one current in our political culture—consider, for example, Tocqueville's enthusiasm over the ways Americans seemed to join together to attack common problems. But it was not until the Civil War and Reconstruction that we began to confront what equality might require of us in terms of formal policies and institutions. Here too we are ambivalent: equality is a widely, if selectively, endorsed moral principle, and each of us takes it as a given that we are, and of right ought to be, “just as good as anyone else.” Indeed, one of the most frequent complaints lodged against the prominent (and frequently wealthy) individuals who aspire to high office is that they are “elitist” and “out of touch,” as if the top leaders of a nation of 310 million people can and should be plucked at random out of a supermarket checkout queue. We are deeply divided over policies aiming at equality of condition: just try suggesting to a class of university freshmen the notion that salaries and incomes ought to be more nearly equal! But most of us embrace procedural conceptions of equality: opening up opportunities within a limited sphere of public processes—in