The Messiness of Democracy

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have tried from time to time.
            Winston Churchill, 1947

The immediate failure of the Egyptian democracy experiment is not tragic – to call it such would suggest that it was unpredictable.  Unfortunately, the travails in one of our oldest civilizations are banal with a litter of broken civilizations lining the years since democracy was first conceived.  In the movie Body Heat, Teddy the arsonist (played by Mickey Rourke) says “you got fifty ways you can (screw) up and if you can think of twenty-five of them, you’re a genius and you ain’t no genius.”  So fall those who attempt democracy.  The situation in Egypt today is dangerous, regionally threatening and requires the strongest language and action from President Obama and other of the world’s democratic leaders.    

The United States undoubtedly was lucky.  Our government was put together by men who understood and valued the law.  Yet, despite the fact that our founding fathers were geniuses for their time, they screwed up and often.  The Federalist government during the Adams administration passed a law making it essentially illegal to criticize the government.  There was a presidential donnybrook in the aftermath of the 1800 presidential election when a tied electorate threw the outcome in doubt.  When President William Henry Harrison died in 1841, it created an uncertainty as to who was indeed the president.  Vice President John Tyler became president but was constantly challenged by Harrison’s cabinet, doubting his legitimacy.   

Civil War broke apart the country for five years over our inability to understand and implement the best intentions of our founding fathers.  Presidents during the Gilded Age of the late 1800s were mere bystanders to the events that transpired around them.  Historians have charged various presidents ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush of overstepping their power.  Leaders ranging from Andrew Johnson to Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton have broken laws.  We’ve denied rights to many of our citizens at one time or another.  Our country has faced scandal, defeat, embarrassment and uncertainty.  Yet, we are extolled as one of the oldest, operable democracies on the planet.  We are, as John Winthrop called us, a city upon the hill – an example to the rest of the world.   We take our mistakes and always try to learn from them in the spirit of creating a more perfect union. 

And so, we turn our war weary heads to the bedlam that is Egypt.  The worst thing that could have happened was the military control of the government and the imprisonment of Mohammad Morsi.  He is flawed, he is possibly corrupt and he was at times dismissive of the constitutional restraints of his office.  He was likely not what the majority of Egyptians wanted but for the sake of future democracy in the land of the pharaohs, it was paramount that he remain in office and finish out his term.  The course that the country is taking is not towards stability but towards anarchy and a permanent distrust of the will of the people.  The lasting gift of democracy is a people’s belief that the government will act as it needs to in times of turmoil and when faltering, right itself.  For a democratic government to work, the people must have faith in it.  The Egyptians, certainly the supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, do not, though the aforementioned group does not help by persecuting various religious minorities. 

The military leaders are serving as an éminence grise but the beauty of democracy is that rule and authority are out in the open and available for all to see.  The world’s democratic leaders need to up their pressure on the Egyptian military while at the same time putting measures in place that could assist a righted Egypt back on the course of democracy.  George W. Bush was right in that all people have an inherent desire for the freedoms of democracy.  Yet, democracy demands a heavy responsibility from the leaders who wield authority and from the people who must accept the decision of the nation, however misguided they might think the majority to be.  Prime Minister Churchill was correct.  Let us hope that the Egyptians have the chance to understand and embrace that.