WaPo Op-Ed Calling for Less Democracy Sparks Swift Backlash
19th February 2020
A Washington Post op-ed published Tuesday calling for less democracy sparked swift backlash online, causing the publication’s motto to trend on Twitter Wednesday morning.
The op-ed, titled “It’s time to give the elites a bigger say in choosing the president,” suggests that a “better primary system would empower elites to bargain and make decisions, instructed by voters.” It adds that having “intermediate representatives” who are elected and “understand the priorities of their constituents” could be far better than the system of democracy currently in place.
The suggestion was written by Julia Azari, an associate professor at Marquette University. Wapo’s op-ed was ill-received and the publication’s famous slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” ironically began to trend on Twitter.
My brother went to Marquette, and he’s a Bernie supporter. I suspect that the two are not unrelated.
To be fair, we don’t have democracy in America; all of our public policies are fashioned by groups of elected representatives, from the local school board on up. Formally, this constitutes a republican form of government, as guaranteed in the Constitution.
Furthermore, each of these bodies pretends to have members chosen as the ‘best person for the job’, which the ancient Greeks would categorize as aristocracy, not democracy. But nobody cares what words mean any more.