The oldest problem in political philosophy is this: How should society be protected from its Deplorables — the ignorant, the superstitious, the malice-eaten, the disaffected, the disengaged, the desperate, all of those grasping, naive, short-sighted and self-absorved fools who are susceptible to the blandishments of demagogues?
Socrates and the boys decided — this was about 400 B.C. — that the solution lay in the appointment of a philosopher-King, a wise, forbearing, benevolent, forward-looking authoritarian. You can read all about it in Plato’s Republic. Before you decide that might be worth a try, know this: Plato’s ideas were given a try and, when they failed, he was sold into slavery. Though a friend later purchased Plato and set him free, the details of the rest of his life are uncertain.
America’s Founding Fathers decided the solution was the Electoral College, an assembly of men of affairs whose self-interest would backstop a popular vote in favor of a predatory and cynical demagogue — like Donald Trump, for instance. We all know how that worked out.
The Constitution provides no guidance for the selection of Electors. In most states, each party nominates a slate of Electors, and the slate of the party which secures the most votes on Election Day become that state’s delegates to the Electoral College. Most states require, further, that the Electors vote for their party’s candidate and prescribe penalties for not doing so — for ‘faithlessness.’ Whether or not such laws are constitutional is untested, but I frankly doubt it. What, after all, could possibly be the point of the Electoral College meeting to vote if the Electors’ votes are foreordained when the polls close on Election Day?
Here is how the selection of the individual party’s Electors works in practice, from James Michener’s Presidential Lottery:
In late August my phone rang and a voice I knew well and favorably asked, “Michener, you want to be a Presidential Elector?”
It was Milt Berkes, Democratic chairman for my home county …
Our friendship had gone beyond politics, for I liked this former Philadelphia schoolteacher who had moved out to the suburbs to make a good life for his family.
“Well, how about it?” he asked.
Michener accepted, and his account of being an Elector in the year George Wallace aimed to get enough Electoral votes to throw the decision into the House of Representatives, where he would barter his Electoral votes for perpetuation of segregation, is a worthwhile, necessary, read in this year when America is under sustained attack from within by a homegrown demagogue who scorns the niceties of the rule of law.
The philosopher John Dewey had a different solution, set out in Democracy and Education. The population will always, he knew, distribute into a bell curve according to native intelligence, public engagement and interest in public affairs, naivete, command of basic knowledge, and so forth. The solution then, he reasoned, was a well-educated population such that the entire bell curve is shifted to the right.
I was lucky enough to enter school when Dewey’s ideas were still influential and — BONUS! — Sputnik had Americans mad about a Russian capsule transiting overhead and beeping insolently. It may be hard to believe today, but Detroit once offered a good, rock-solid education to its children.
As pleased as I am by the emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) nowadays, and the results, the events of the last two years have convinced me that no less importance must be attached to the basics of citizenship: a solid grounding in American history, the mechanics of our experiment in self-governance, how to read a newspaper and distinguish facts from opinion. The successful citizen needs more than that — the ability to locate themselves on civilization’s timeline, an understanding of their own location in the endless parade of rising and falling empires, evolving technologies and ideas, and social turmoil.
If public resources demand that a choice be made between citizenship and STEM, we must choose a solid education in citizenship. I am confidant that Donald Trump’s depredations against our country will be turned back, albeit at the cost of grievous civic pain, but not at all certain that the next demagogue will be turned back. It is not too late to prepare our defense against the Buffoon-in-Chief’s inevitable successors, but we must begin today.