| Chapter 1: | Democracy without Politics? Hidden Costs of Corruption and Reform in America |
|
|
Moralists on the Make
Generalizations about political cultures and their implications are always risky. At the very least they involve long causal chains and all too often become circular: people do X because of their culture, and we understand their culture by observing what they do. But some basic values and orientations stand out. First, Americans are moralists: more than many other peoples we feel entitled to judge others—even the prominent—in both public life and private affairs. Most of us believe that governments should not only be effective, but should also be just and good (though we disagree over what a “good society” looks like and what government's role in it should be). We are perpetually skeptical of those who govern, and expect them to honor and embody our values (even when we do not always uphold them ourselves). We do not readily accept raison d'etat as a justification for policy. Scandals and moral outcry have been a staple of American life throughout our history,19 yet we remain relatively free from political cynicism: while we have lost our collective innocence countless times we still believe we can govern ourselves according to abstract, morally grounded principles. During the Clinton scandals many observers, noting a lack of outrage over the president's personal misbehavior, claimed Americans had become cynical. That charge would surprise many familiar with other democracies; often, we react to trivial corruption almost as vehemently as we do to major systemic scandals. Indeed, we may not be cynical enough: scandals over official behavior that would draw little notice elsewhere create cycles of political Puritanism here.
At the same time we are individualists—20jealous of our personal liberties (just let others try to pass judgment on us!) and property, skeptical of leaders, preferring an open process to grand overarching goals, defining rights in individual rather than group terms, and, for the most part, preferring private initiative over extensive engagement with the public domain. Many of us see allegedly self-regulating market processes as both efficient and just, preferring them to extensive rules and restraints; often we think of politics, too, as another sort of market. Polls and election results year after year show that most of us would prefer to have