As the story goes, Benjamin Franklin, leaving Philadelphia’s constitutional convention in 1787, was approached by a woman who wanted to know what type of government the delegates created.
Answered Franklin: “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
Mark those words: “If you can keep it.”
They ring like history’s warning bell, and the ominous clanging is especially loud these days. For even as we celebrate American independence, our government and culture drift further away from the spirit of the Founders.
To keep the republic they created is the urgent challenge of our times.
In 236 years, we have gone, in the words of author Monica Crowley, from a government that announces the Declaration of Independence to one that practices a Declaration of Dependence. That is not a compliment.
The original declaration confirmed the separation from a king who had become a tyrant. By the time military victory was achieved in 1783, the struggle for a new form of government was entering a critical phase.
The arguments, ideas and debates covered many things, but at heart, the Founders believed threats to the new nation would come not only from external forces, but also from within. Franklin, in particular, was worried about the corruption of human nature and the tendency toward monarchy. The fewer barriers to direct democracy, the better, he argued, because he feared that otherwise, self-government would fall victim to the ambition and avarice of a ruling class.
As author Walter Isaacson recounts in his 2003 biography, that fear led Franklin to shepherd the compromises that made possible the birth of a nation. The only person to sign the four founding papers — the declaration, the treaties with France and Britain, and the Constitution — Franklin trusted compromise because he believed in human fallibility. “Joint wisdom” was superior to all others, he insisted, including his own.
“I confess that I do not entirely approve this Constitution at present,” he said in his closing address to the convention. “I am not sure I shall never approve it,” a double negative that historians believe reflected his willingness to change.
In fact, he said, he often changed his mind after “better information or fuller consideration,” and therefore, “the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment and pay more respect to the judgment of others.”
As Isaacson puts it, “Franklin realized they had succeeded not because they were self-assured, but because they were willing to concede they might be fallible.” He quotes a Franklin letter saying, “We are making experiments in politics” and that mistakes were inevitable.
Franklin was often ridiculed for these “lowbrow” attitudes, but it is precisely his faith in the wisdom of ordinary mortals, and his lack of faith in unchecked centralized power, that shaped our system of government and the creed of American individualism.
How to revive that spirit is the subject of Monica Crowley’s dynamic new book, in which she compellingly argues that President Obama has broken with the tradition of faith in individuals. To be sure, he is not the first president to tax and spend too much, nor the first to expand government’s reach too far.
But our democracy always has been self-correcting because enough Americans rose up to refresh the Founding spirit. Crowley worries that this time is different.
“Obama has fundamentally shifted the balance away from the individual and toward government, and has altered the national psyche from self-reliance to ever-growing reliance on government,” she writes in “What The (Bleep) Just Happened?”
Noting the struggles of Franklin, Jefferson, Adams and others to craft the Declaration of Independence, she adds, “It took Obama even less time to draft and implement his own Declaration of Dependence.”
Her book is full of fighting words, and it reminds that Franklin hesitated before advocating a break with England. He had hoped the king would see the error of his ways.
Of course, as he concluded, monarchies are not self-correcting. In five months, we will learn whether American democracy still is.
Elex board down for the count
When it comes to democracy, the ballot box is the whole ballgame. But the performance of the city’s Board of Elections in last week’s primary throws a mountain of doubt on its competence, and the integrity of the results.
More than a week after the vote, the board is a sputtering font of excuses about why it isn’t close to determining a final result in the race to unseat Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel. It swats away reports of skulduggery from the chief challenger, State Sen. Adriano Espaillat, but offers no convincing evidence that it’s on top of the situation.
Rangel was declared the winner last Tuesday with a lead of 6 percentage points, but that was apparently a mistake, and the lead is now about 2 points. Espaillat, saying the system is “broken,” has withdrawn his concession and is prepared to challenge the results in court, when they become official.
In fairness to the board, absentee and affidavit ballots always get counted last, and the voting machines seem to require a laborious process for tabulating votes.
But some of that is the board’s stubborn doing, and the lack of urgency and any clear explanation for shifting totals undermine its credibility. Ditto for the fact that a number of heavily populated precincts initially reported zero votes. How does that happen?
In a statement, the board hid behind a see-no-evil defense that set a new low for responsibility, saying it “has acted in accordance with the law and its duly adopted procedures.”
Whatever that means, it certainly doesn’t mean all is well in the counting house. And that is a problem for all of us.
Comptroller’s water-liu
Say this for Comptroller John Liu — he doesn’t know when to fold ’em. Even when he should.
He is still trying to evade $527,000 in fines for illegally plastering election placards around the city in 2009. The Environmental Control Board ruled all of his technical evasions invalid, and ordered him to pay $75 for each of more than 7,000 improperly placed signs.
With Liu not ready to write a check, the case is becoming a metaphor for his collapsing career. He appears to be the target of a federal corruption investigation of his campaign funding. And now, much of the money he has left would have to go to pay off his fines.
Here’s a modest suggestion: Liu should pay what he owes, return the rest to donors and find another line of work. This one is beyond him.
Shotty logic
Be careful what you wish for. The whiners and wackos attacking the NYPD for being too eager to stop and frisk must, in theory, be delighted.
Shootings were up 46 percent last week over the same period last year.
What, no celebrating?
Define ‘activist’
Poor CNN. In reporting on the funeral of Rodney King, an anchor called him a “civil-rights activist.”
Perhaps they confused him with Martin Luther King Jr.?