Democracy: good at getting into wars and then mucking up the peace
Understanding the present by listening to the past
One way to get beneath the surface of what’s going on is to read people who were writing about issues, as they emerged rather than in more modern times when they’ve become the norm and infiltrated our commonsense.
I was browsing in one of the few remaining second-hand bookshops around, (as is my wont) when I came upon Walter Lippmann’s 1955 book, The public philosophy. Walter Lippmann was one of the great journalists and thinkers of the 20th century. And wrote a series of books which were landmarks in their day, despite uniformly bland titles. Public opinion. The good life. And this one — The public philosophy.
Reading part 1. I was shocked to discover a critique of democracy that I had not really crystallised for myself. It comprehends two tendencies both of which are at their most disastrous in the avoidance of war on the one hand and the fighting of wars on the other.
In the first place there’s what I’ll call temporal mismatch. It can take an electorate years to catch up with emerging developments and so public opinion can be a disastrous guide to the exigencies of a particular situation. A further aspect of public opinion is its capacity for wild swings in sentiment which I’ll call temperamental amplification.
Lipman explains how democracies wildly overshoot. They’re not good at avoiding war by preparing properly for it. It is easy to understand why that is. Wars are very expensive. So preparing for them is expensive too. That means that politicians get the choice between warning the electorate and preparing for war and winning elections. If they call for more military spending their democratic opponent will say that it can be handled without serious financial pain — either because the threat is overblown or because it can be managed via borrowing or some other evasively defined expedient.
Then as war looms larger, far greater sacrifice than would otherwise have been necessary is called for, alongside industrial scale demonisation of the enemy. We’re somewhat familiar with this narrative from WWII, but Lippmann extends it back to the insouciance towards war before WWI, the imposition of the Carthaginian Peace of 1919 which, in humiliating Germany made Round Two of the Great War all the more likely. (Lippmann became fast friends with Keynes when they were both in Versailles. Coming to terms with the cataclysm of that war and its peace burned itself deeply into both men’s thought.)
Of course, this is directly relevant to today’s circumstances where the economic hangover from both COVID and Europe’s first major war in eighty years is intensifying the scarcity of energy and food. In so doing undermining living standards. A further demand is to get Ukraine the arms it needs to fight off the Russians — but that’s expensive too.
But how much are our political leaders levelling with their populations? They’re not of course. Because to do so they’d have to say something like “Here’s the plan. We need to reduce living standards compared to what they would otherwise be by 2-3%. Then their opponents will denouce this as the council of despair and incompetence come out and say they can do all they need to do without such hardship.
I’ve included a lengthy passage from Lippmann’s book at the end of this newsletter. You can also read it at Troppo.
In this brief discussion colleague Gene Tunny and I discuss a means by which we could improve the impact of innovation programs as well as fight recessions and booms.
And the cost? Nothing!
If you’d prefer to just listen, the audio is here.
Bush Tucker
It might sound odd to claim that a TV host losing his program is seismic news for American politics, but with Tucker Carlson’s exit from Fox News, that claim is justified.
Like the rest of his Fox colleagues, Carlson’s main job was winning eyeballs to the network — and he was very successful at that.
But he was also engaged in a different and more ambitious project from, say, Sean Hannity. Rather than just cheerleading for Trump or the Republican Party or the Fox News company line, Carlson was articulating an ideology. …
Carlson was trying to depose the Republican Party’s old elites — at least those who wouldn’t get with the program — and anoint new ones. He wanted to create new litmus tests for what it meant to be a conservative — as seen in his efforts to make Ron DeSantis disavow support for Ukraine, or his raking Ted Cruz over the coals for calling January 6 a “violent terrorist attack.” Like-minded thinkers on the right loved it, as seen in their tributes after news of Carlson’s departure from Fox broke.
Moir has surely been our best political cartoonist for decades now
Hugh White on Penny Wong
This week’s speech was not the first time Wong has … proposed a multipolar regional order. … But … since winning office Wong has been more circumspect about her views on Asia’s future and America’s role in it. …The big question, though, is whether Washington agrees with her. Is this the way US policymakers see America’s future in Asia? This is important because Australia so strongly declares itself – most recently through AUKUS – to be fully committed to supporting US policy in Asia. It therefore matters a great deal whether America’s objectives in Asia align with the ones Wong has spelled out on behalf of the government.
All the evidence is that Americans do not. On the contrary, it is quite clear that the United States has no interest in joining China as a co-equal partner in a regional multipolar order. It seeks instead to perpetuate the role of Asia’s primary strategic power that it has enjoyed for so long.
How then can Wong’s advocacy of a multipolar regional order be reconciled with her government’s unconditional support for US policy in Asia? The plain answer is that it cannot. Wong’s speech confirmed that there is a deep contradiction at the heart of the Albanese government’s foreign policy, between its vision for a multipolar Asian future and its complete alignment with US policies that are quite incompatible with that vision.
Michael Keating on our subs
Citing Hugh White above and Gareth Evans, Michael Keating thinks AUKUS is a bit — well awks.
Given these risks of war involving Australia, right now the acid test of Australia’s future sovereign autonomy would be how the US expects Australia to respond if it demanded that Australia join America in a war over Taiwan.
Australia’s response to this admittedly hypothetical question needs to be mindful that for the last fifty years Australia (and the US) have recognised that there is only one China, and that Taiwan is part of it. Although Australia has maintained a policy of strategic ambiguity as to how it would respond to a forceful Chinese attempt to take over Taiwan, many Australians, including me, have argued that Australia should not join any war over Taiwan in future. Taiwan is not a strategic interest for Australia.
Furthermore, as Garry Woodward, a former Australian ambassador to China has argued: ‘The long-term implications for Australia of fighting alongside the US in a war between the US and China over Taiwan would be horrendous and impossible to overstate.’’ ‘‘If, as is likely, the US had to resort to nuclear weapons to avoid defeat, Australia, which would not have been consulted, would be condemned as a white country participating in the second nuclear conflict, both against Asian countries.”
HT: Brad Delong
Richard Hanania on an enlightened centrism
A good piece on the folks Hanania thought were worth reading wherever they might be on the political spectrum based on their ability to be reality based during COVID. I had my own go at the value of centrism early on in my blogging career introducing myself to the audience as a conservative, liberal social democrat.
I noticed that there was a group of writers who came to the correct position throughout the pandemic, and they crossed the right-left divide. In February of last year, [left leaning] Ezra Klein interviewed [libertarian] Alex Tabarrok on the failures of the FDA, and they basically agreed on everything. I noticed that many of the liberals skeptical of NPIs after vaccines became available were the same ones I found to be reasonable on other issues, like the influence of teachers unions. And the conservatives or more right-leaning intellectuals tended to also be the most sensible thinkers on their own side.
Yet I’ve seen strikingly little analysis of what these individuals do have in common, if it wasn’t a conventional political ideology or orientation.
I would propose that we call them “Enlightened Centrists” (EC). In politics, we usually think of a centrist as someone who is a moderate on most issues, like say Joe Manchin. That’s not the way I use the term here. In this context, a centrist is simply someone who has a constellation of views that don’t completely line up with either the right or the left. This centrism is “enlightened” based on certain traits, listed below, that such individuals share that I think make for sound political and social analysis.
If you’re going to understand important issues, it is Enlightened Centrists you should seek out. Throughout the process of explaining what the term means, I’m going to criticize non-EC ways of thought. I’ll refrain from criticizing specific individuals whose writings are offensive to the EC sensibility, since I’m not a young hip-hopper out to start beefs, but if you read widely you’ll recognize the traits and tendencies that I take issue with. In addition to being distracting, I think that attacking individuals would be unhelpful in trying to get them to change their ways. Enlightenment is a gift I would like to share with others. At the end of this essay, however, I will put together a list of individuals who I think are in fact Enlightened Centrists, or close enough, and therefore worth reading.
Noah Smith on Depression
Noah Smith is reprising a 2013 post of his on his own experience of depression. I don’t suffer from depression thank God so if you do, you’re probably in a much better position to judge, but I thought it was a good, and potentially useful piece. It might also not be a good fit for you — as Noah warns.
4. Depressed people do need human company. For some reason, human company helps. In fact, it is the single thing that helps the most. But not the kind of company a sad person needs. What a depressed person needs is simply to talk to people, not about their problems or their negative thoughts or their depression, but about anything else - music, animals, science. The most helpful topic of conversation, I've found, is absurdity - just talking about utterly ridiculous things, gross things, vulgar offensive things, bizarre things. Shared activities, like going on a hike or playing sports, are OK, but talking is much, much more important. I really have never figured out why this works, but it does.
7. Depressed people always need to be vigilant against a relapse. Depression is like cancer - once you have it, it remits, possibly forever, but you are never "cured". Relapses are not certain, but the danger will always be there. Therefore, after recovering from a depressive episode, a depressed person must change his or her life completely and permanently. The things that you did to get out of depression, you must never stop doing for the rest of your life. You must permanently place a greater emphasis on human contact and on meaningful, positive, healthy relationships of all kinds. You must constantly think about what makes you happy and how to get it, and you must constantly take steps toward a positive future that you envision for yourself. If you allow yourself to coast, or get stuck in a rut, you will fall back into the pit and have to start all over again. And if therapy helped you, keep going to therapy forever. What's more, if you get out of depression, do lots of things to remind you about what got you out of it. Turn it into a story of personal triumph, and repeat that story to yourself. And never forget to solidify, cement, embellish, and elaborate a positive narrative of your life.
Felix Martin on emerging market debt
Sounds deadly dull I know. But I knew Felix Martin (still do). Felix Martin is a friend of mine. A very good guy and, in his spare time, a marketing genius. He remains the only person to have beefed up sales of a book on the history and theory of money by pasting a chicken on the front cover of the book’s second edition.
In any event, Felix knows a great deal about bond markets and particularly emerging market bond markets. Felix’s and my peeps had a lengthy discussions about how to market his latest column on his favourite subject and in the end his Chief Messaging Officer just said “Go with the chicken. It will be fine”. My Chief Client Wellbeing Strategist was concerned, but Felix’s peeps got it right.
But seriously folks, I found the column of considerable interest and recommend it to right-thinking folks everywhere who think even a little about the global economy.
Historically, monetary tightening in the United States has been kryptonite for emerging-market investors. Yet this time was different. The median major currency has weakened only around 2% against the U.S. dollar; the Mexican peso is up 10% against the greenback. Bonds have done even better. The average yield on local-currency government bonds issued by major developing economies has increased by only half as much [as US 10-year Treasurys’ yield of 160 basis points]. …
The deeper structural changes … are even more remarkable. … Last year, average emerging-market government debt was 65% of GDP, half the average of the Group of Seven leading economies, and most of it funded at home. Emerging markets ran a collective current account surplus of nearly 1.5% of GDP, compared to a 2% deficit for the G7. Back in 1996, the IMF and World Bank launched the Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative, under which advanced economy creditors forgave 37 needy sovereigns more than $100 billion of debt. Perhaps the 2020s will bring a Highly Indebted Rich Countries initiative in which emerging-market countries return the favour.
Of course, aggregates and averages never tell the whole story. The IMF is quite right to raise the alarm over the plight of a subset of countries which have continued to borrow heavily in foreign currencies from official creditors over the past decade. Most of these troubled borrowers are in sub-Saharan Africa, and almost all have attracted only limited funds from foreign portfolio investors. Even their predicament shows how radically the centre of global economic gravity has shifted. The biggest creditor for most of these countries is typically China – itself the largest constituent of the benchmark emerging-market government bond indices.
And now … as promised
Walter Lippmann: The Malady of Democratic States: Chapter 2 of The Public Philosophy
1. Public Opinion in War and Peace
WRITING in 1913, just before the outbreak of the war, and having in mind Queen Victoria and King Edward the VII, Sir Harry Johnston thus described how foreign affairs were conducted in the Nineteenth Century:
In those days, a country’s relations with its neighbors or with distant lands were dealt with almost exclusively by the head of the State — Emperor, King, or President — acting with the more-or-less dependent Minister-of-State, who was no representative of the masses, but the employe of the Monarch. Events were prepared and sprung on a submissive, a confident, or a stupid people. The public Press criticized, more often applauded, but had at most to deal with a fait accompli and make the best of it. Occasionally, in our own land, a statesman, out of office and discontented, went round the great provincial towns agitating against the trend of British foreign policy—perhaps wisely, perhaps unfairly, we do not yet know — and scored a slight success. But once in office, his Cabinet fell in by degrees with the views of the Sovereign and the permanent officials (after the fifties of the last century these public servants were a factor of ever-growing importance); and, as before, the foreign policy of the Empire was shaped by a small camarilla consisting of the Sovereign, two Cabinet Ministers, the permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and perhaps one representative of la plus haute finance.1
Without taking it too literally, this is a fair description of how foreign affairs were conducted before the First World War. There were exceptions. The Aberdeen government, for example, was overthrown in 1855 because of its inefficient conduct of the Crimean War. But generally speaking, the elected parliaments were little consulted in the deliberations which led up to war, or on the high strategy of the war, on the terms of the armistice, on the conditions of peace. Even their right to be informed was severely limited, and the principle of the system was, one might say, that war and peace were the business of the executive department. The power of decision was not in, was not even shared with, the House of Commons, the Chamber of Deputies, the Reichstag.
The United States was, of course, a special case. The Congress has always had constitutional rights to advise and to be consulted in the declaration of war and in the ratification of treaties. But at the time I am talking about, that is to say before the First World War broke out, it was American policy to abstain from the role of a great power, and to limit its sphere of vital interests to the Western Hemisphere and the North Pacific Ocean. Only in 1917 did the American constitutional system for dealing with foreign affairs become involved with the conduct of world affairs.
For the reasons which I outlined in the first chapter this system of executive responsibility broke down during the war, and from 1917 on the conduct of the war and then the conditions of the armistice and the peace were subjected to the dominating impact of mass opinions.
Saying this does not mean that the great mass of the people have had strong opinions about the whole range of complex issues which were before the military staffs and the foreign offices. The action of mass opinion has not been, and in the nature of things could not be, continuous through the successive phases in which affairs develop. Action has been discontinuous. Usually it has been a massive negative imposed at critical junctures when a new general course of policy needed to be set. There have, of course, been periods of apathy and of indifference. But democratic politicians have preferred to shun foresight about troublesome changes to come, knowing that the massive veto was latent, and that it would be expensive to them and to their party if they provoked it.
In the winter of 1918–1919, for example, Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Wilson and Orlando were at a critical juncture of modern history. The Germans were defeated, their government was overthrown, their troops disarmed and disbanded. The Allies were called upon to decide whether they would dictate a punitive peace or would negotiate a peace of reconciliation.
In the Thirties the British and the French governments had to decide whether to rearm and to take concerted measures to contain Hitler and Mussolini or whether to remain unarmed and to appease them. The United States had to decide whether to arm in order to contain the Japanese or to negotiate with them at the expense of China.
During the Second World War the British and the American governments had again to make the choice between total victory with unconditional surrender and negotiated settlements whose end was reconciliation.
These were momentous issues, like choosing at the fork of the road a way from which there is no turning back: whether to arm or not to arm — whether, as a conflict blows up, to intervene or to withdraw — whether in war to fight for the unconditional surrender of the adversary or for his reconciliation. The issues are so momentous that public feeling quickly becomes incandescent to them. But they can be answered with the only words that a great mass qua mass can speak — with a Yes or a No.
Experience since 1917 indicates that in matters of war and peace the popular answer in the democracies is likely to be No. For everything connected with war has become dangerous, painful, disagreeable and exhausting to very nearly everyone. The rule to which there are few exceptions — the acceptance of the Marshall Plan is one of them — is that at the critical junctures, when the stakes are high, the prevailing mass opinion will impose what amounts to a veto upon changing the course on which the government is at the time proceeding. Prepare for war in time of peace? No. It is bad to raise taxes, to unbalance the budget, to take men away from their schools or their jobs, to provoke the enemy. Intervene in a developing conflict? No. Avoid the risk of war. Withdraw from the area of the conflict? No. The adversary must not be appeased. Reduce your claims on the area? No. Righteousness cannot be compromised. Negotiate a compromise peace as soon as the opportunity presents itself? No. The aggressor must be punished. Remain armed to enforce the dictated settlement? No. The war is over.
The unhappy truth is that the prevailing public opinion has been destructively wrong at the critical junctures. The people have imposed a veto upon the judgments of informed and responsible officials. They have compelled the governments, which usually knew what would have been wiser, or was necessary, or was more expedient, to be too late with too little, or too long with too much, too pacifist in peace and too bellicose in war, too neutralist or appeasing in negotiation or too intransigent. Mass opinion has acquired mounting power in this century. It has shown itself to be a dangerous master of decisions when the stakes are life and death.
2. The Compulsion to Make Mistakes
THE ERRORS of public opinion in these matters have a common characteristic. The movement of opinion is slower than the movement of events. Because of that, the cycle of subjective sentiments on war and peace is usually out of gear with the cycle of objective developments. Just because they are mass opinions there is an inertia in them. It takes much longer to change many minds than to change a few. It takes time to inform and to persuade and to arouse large scattered varied multitudes of persons. So before the multitude have caught up with the old events there are likely to be new ones coming up over the horizon with which the government should be preparing to deal. But the majority will be more aware of what they have just caught up with near at hand than with what is still distant and in the future. For these reasons the propensity to say No to a change of course sets up a compulsion to make mistakes. The opinion deals with a situation which no longer exists.
When the world wars came, the people of the liberal democracies could not be aroused to the exertions and the sacrifices of the struggle until they had been frightened by the opening disasters, had been incited to passionate hatred, and had become intoxicated with unlimited hope. To overcome this inertia the enemy had to be portrayed as evil incarnate, as absolute and congenital wickedness. The people wanted to be told that when this particular enemy had been forced to unconditional surrender, they would re-enter the golden age. This unique war would end all wars. This last war would make the world safe for democracy. This crusade would make the whole world a democracy.
As a result of this impassioned nonsense public opinion became so envenomed that the people would not countenance a workable peace; they were against any public man who showed “any tenderness for the Hun,” or was inclined to listen to the “Hun food snivel.”2
3. The Pattern of the Mistakes
IN ORDER to see in its true perspective what happened, we must remember that at the end of the First World War the only victorious powers were the liberal democracies of the West. Lenin, who had been a refugee in Switzerland until 1917, was still at the very beginning of his struggle to become the master of the empire of the Romanoffs. Mussolini was an obscure journalist, and nobody had dreamed of Hitler. The men who took part in the Peace Conference were men of the same standards and tradition. They were the heads of duly elected governments in countries where respect for civil liberty was the rule. Europe from the Atlantic to the Pripet Marshes lay within the military orbit of their forces. All the undemocratic empires, enemy and ally, had been destroyed by defeat and revolution. In 1918 — unlike 1945 — there had been no Yalta, there was no alien foreign minister at the peace conference who held a veto on the settlement.
Yet as soon as the terms of the settlement were known, it was evident that peace had not been made with Germany. It was not for want of power but for want of statesmanship that the liberal democracies failed. They failed to restore order in that great part of the world which — outside of revolutionary Russia — was still within the orbit of their influence, still amenable to their leadership, still subject to their decisions, still working within the same economy, still living in the same international community, still thinking in the same universe of discourse. In this failure to make peace there was generated the cycle of wars in which the West has suffered so sudden and so spectacular a decline.
Public opinion, having vetoed reconciliation, had made the settlement unworkable. And so when a new generation of Germans grew up, they rebelled. But by that time the Western democracies, so recently too warlike to make peace with the unarmed German Republic, had become too pacifist to take the risks which could have prevented the war Hitler was announcing he would wage against Europe. Having refused the risk of trying to prevent war, they would not now prepare for the war. The European democracies chose to rely on the double negative of unarmed appeasement, and the American democracy chose to rely on unarmed isolation.
When the unprevented war came, the fatal cycle was repeated. Western Europe was defeated and occupied before the British people began seriously to wage the war. And after the catastrophe in Western Europe eighteen agonizing months of indecision elapsed before the surprise and shock of Pearl Harbor did for the American people what no amount of argument and evidence and reason had been able to do.
Once again it seemed impossible to wage the war energetically except by inciting the people to paroxysms of hatred and to utopian dreams. So they were told that the Four Freedoms would be established everywhere, once the incurably bad Germans and the incurably bad Japanese had been forced to surrender unconditionally. The war could be popular only if the enemy was altogether evil and the Allies very nearly perfect. This mixture of envenomed hatred and furious righteousness made a public opinion which would not tolerate the calculated compromises that durable settlements demand. Once again the people were drugged by the propaganda which had aroused them to fight the war and to endure its miseries. Once again they would not think, once again they would not allow their leaders to think, about an eventual peace with their enemies, or about the differences that must arise among the Allies in this coalition, as in all earlier ones. How well this popular diplomacy worked is attested by the fact that less than five years after the democracies had disarmed their enemies, they were imploring their former enemies, Germany and Japan, to rearm.
The record shows that the people of the democracies, having become sovereign in this century, have made it increasingly difficult for their governments to prepare properly for war or to make peace. Their responsible officials have been like the ministers of an opinionated and willful despot. Between the critical junctures, when public opinion has been inattentive or not vehemently aroused, responsible officials have often been able to circumvent extremist popular opinions and to wheedle their way towards moderation and good sense. In the crises, however, democratic officials — over and above their own human propensity to err — have been compelled to make the big mistakes that public opinion has insisted upon. Even the greatest men have not been able to turn back the massive tides of opinion and of sentiment.
There is no mystery about why there is such a tendency for popular opinion to be wrong in judging war and peace. Strategic and diplomatic decisions call for a kind of knowledge — not to speak of an experience and a seasoned judgment — which cannot be had by glancing at newspapers, listening to snatches of radio comment, watching politicians perform on television, hearing occasional lectures, and reading a few books. It would not be enough to make a man competent to decide whether to amputate a leg, and it is not enough to qualify him to choose war or peace, to arm or not to arm, to intervene or to withdraw, to fight on or to negotiate.
Usually, moreover, when the decision is critical and urgent, the public will not be told the whole truth. What can be told to the great public it will not hear in the complicated and qualified concreteness that is needed for a practical decision. When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute. Even when there is no deliberate distortion by censorship and propaganda, which is unlikely in time of war, the public opinion of masses cannot be counted upon to apprehend regularly and promptly the reality of things. There is an inherent tendency in opinion to feed upon rumors excited by our own wishes and fears.
4. Democratic Politicians
AT THE critical moments in this sad history, there have been men, worth listening to, who warned the people against their mistakes. Always, too, there have been men inside the governments who judged correctly, because they were permitted to know in time, the uncensored and unvarnished truth. But the climate of modern democracy does not usually inspire them to speak out. For what Churchill did in the Thirties before Munich was exceptional: the general rule is that a democratic politician had better not be right too soon. Very often the penalty is political death. It is much safer to keep in step with the parade of opinion than to try to keep up with the swifter movement of events.
In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents. They are deprived of their independence. Democratic politicians rarely feel they can afford the luxury of telling the whole truth to the people.3 And since not telling it, though prudent, is uncomfortable, they find it easier if they themselves do not have to hear too often too much of the sour truth. The men under them who report and collect the news come to realize in their turn that it is safer to be wrong before it has become fashionable to be right.
With exceptions so rare that they are regarded as miracles and freaks of nature, successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular — not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.
This devitalization of the governing power is the malady of democratic states. As the malady grows the executives become highly susceptible to encroachment and usurpation by elected assemblies; they are pressed and harassed by the higgling of parties, by the agents of organized interests, and by the spokesmen of sectarians and ideologues. The malady can be fatal. It can be deadly to the very survival of the state as a free society if, when the great and hard issues of war and peace, of security and solvency, of revolution and order are up for decision, the executive and judicial departments, with their civil servants and technicians, have lost their power to decide.
Footnotes
1 Sir Harry Johnston, “Common Sense in Foreign Policy,” pp. 1–2, cited in Howard Lee McBain & Lindsay Rogers, The New Constitutions of Europe (1922), p. 139.
2 Cf. Harold Nicholson, Peacemaking, Chap. III.
3 “As we look over the list of the early leaders of the republic, Washington, John Adams, Hamilton, and others, we discern that they were all men who insisted upon being themselves and who refused to truckle to the people. With each succeeding generation, the growing demand of the people that its elective officials shall not lead but merely register the popular will has steadily undermined the independence of those who derive their power from popular election. The persistent refusal of the Adamses to sacrifice the integrity of their own intellectual and moral standards and values for the sake of winning public office or popular favor is another of the measuring rods by which we may measure the divergence of American life from its starting point.” James Truslow Adams, The Adams Family (1930), p. 95.