Campaigning 2.0: The Limits of Democracy
First John Edwards' Second Life campaign HQ was smeared with e-excrement. Then there was the whole Hillary 1984 thing on YouTube. It's been a rough few weeks for those in that very, very long jog to the White House. What's glaringly apparent in all this is just how far we've come since the last election when Dean was heralded as the first candidate of the Internet just for using Meetup. Barack Obama has his own social network. Edwards has his own Twitter page (and a huge cleaning bill to pay in Linden dollars). Every candidate is trying to harness the power (TM), but the web is a tiger you mostly cling to loosely by the tail. These people, trained to operate within a system of government designed to guard against the volatility of public opinion, need to ask whether they are ready to weather the web's unique, unfiltered, and often very brutal version of democracy. And we should ask whether we really want the person who comes out on top.
Of course, the reality is that the web is not unique as an unruly democracy. Democracy is unruly by definition. Going back all the way to the Federalist Papers, James Madison described it thus:
... there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. (The Federalist Papers, #10)
Which is why we are theoretically a nation ruled by laws (a constitutional republic), instead of a nation ruled by the people directly (a democracy). While there are laws that pertain to campaigns, the worst aspects of democracy are in full effect: mob rule, demagoguery, Fox News. The volume on these has been turned up significantly since the advent of the web. I'm not referring to the actual election mind you, but the war for weekly opinion polls that dominates the campaign season. The campaign is a little democracy that is designed to self-destruct and remake itself anew with each election. It has no care for self-preservation. The ability of even more people to participate online makes for even greater instability, not to mention the sheer unregulated meanness.
On one hand, it's easy to by cynical about the kind of person who could win at this game. The candidate with the loudest voice and the biggest warchest traditionally has come out on top. And this has been reasonable preparation for the kind of partisan screaming match that the government has largely become. These qualities, unfortunately, have very little to do with the kind of qualities I'm hoping for in a leader.
Fortunately, media was easier to manipulate before we were all making it. It's possible that the demands of Campaigning 2.0 are actually good preparation for life as a public servant. Ideally, only the most transparent candidate will survive. I have little doubt that the run for the 2008 White House will be the among the most volatile and nasty on record. I wouldn't want to be in any of the candidates' shoes as they are flayed bare by YouTube and the blogosphere. But whoever limps in in 2008 will be someone we know very well, and hopefully have every reason to trust.
