Widening Gap Between Public Will, Government Action

Widening Gap Between Public Will, Government Action

Mar 24, 2014 03:00 am | Robert W. Merry

Robert W. Merry

When cometh the political volcano? When does an American politician emerge to lead his country’s citizens on an assault against an out-of-control government? When will the nation’s leaders in Washington begin to craft and tailor their policies and activities once again to public opinion in the land?
In other words, when will the American people rise up politically with a full-throated cry of “Give us back our democracy?” That, incidentally, is one of the most powerful recurrent themes of our history. It animated the politics of Andrew Jackson after 1825, when John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay entered into what appeared to be a “corrupt bargain”—House Speaker Clay throwing the presidential election to Adams in House balloting and subsequently getting from Adams the highly prized job of secretary of state, then the most prominent stepping stone to the presidency.
This theme also drove the politics of Progressivism at the turn of the last century, when many Americans felt that their country had become dominated by industrial and political oligarchs. It found echo in the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan when he assaulted the managerial class that dominated the federal bureaucracy in the 1980s. It was particularly powerful when House GOP leader Newt Gingrich led his party to the 1994 House takeover amid revelations of petty corruption in that chamber, born of longstanding entrenched power.
But seldom in our history has there been such a gap between the sensibilities of the American people and the willingness of government officials to ignore and trample those sensibilities. Let’s take just three prominent, though by no means exclusive, examples.
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