"Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried."
So said Winston Churchill in 1947, and he should know; the form of government he led to triumph in World War II was also the one that turned him out on his ear a few months later.
Democracy. A word that terrified America's founders, that from the 5th century BC until the 19th century was almost universally a political slur, and that today upwards of 190 countries -- from Belgium to North Korea -- claim as their bedrock principle.
Humanity's best-worst political system, universally reviled until universally acclaimed. Proud ideal. Hypocritical window-dressing. Greeks, Romans, semantics, constitutions: it's all a bit confusing.
In America, as Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out in our book club's prologue, we care a little bit less about philosophy and a little more about results.
In that spirit, think of today's book club session as a "Car Talk" for democratic constitutions. How does a democratic system fit together? How do you tune up a used one? And how do you tell an endearing quirk from a full-on engine meltdown?
Enter three of the shrewdest political mechanics who ever lived: Polybius, Machiavelli, and James Madison.
Born in Greece around 200 BC, Polybius was a bookish young aristocrat who, after being taken prisoner by the Roman army, rose to become tutor and confidante to Rome's leading statesmen. Written in the 140s BC, his Histories sought to answer the question then on every Mediterranean's lips: How the hell did a nowhere town like Rome take over the world?
Dogged toughness and dumb luck played a part, but Polybius argued that Rome's real secret weapon was its unheard-of constitution. The idea of a "mixed" constitution -- with elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and popular rule blended together -- had first been cooked up by Aristotle in the late 4th-century. Unlike the Greeks, however, Rome had built its republic not on the laws of a single legislator but by the trial and error of generations, a constitution under perpetual renegotiation. Polybius' genius was in taking Aristotle's lofty theory and transforming it into a practical, first-hand account of how a well-balanced constitution turned a backwater village into an empire.
When we debate the good and bad in modern democracies, our gold standard is generally not an Athenian-style direct democracy (except, god help us, in California), but rather a tailored and evolving balance of institutions meant to work in concert for the public good. Polybius is where this conversation really begins.
Remembering Niccolo Macchiavelli for The Prince is like remembering Paul McCartney for Band on the Run. Take a look at the work Machiavelli considered his masterpiece, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio ('The Discourses'), and you'll encounter a profound and humane work of Renaissance political thought, a million miles from the say-anything, crush-everyone caricature we commonly imagine him to be. The Discourses, like Polybius' Histories, was a kind of love letter to the Roman Republic, still in Machiavelli's day the only society in history to attempt a mixed constitution on something like a national scale. He agreed that it was Rome's unprecedented ability to adjust and tinker with its constitution -- adding new offices here, changing voting rights there -- that made its people powerful, prosperous, and free all at the same time.
Where he surpassed Polybius was on the question of political conflict. The Greek had argued that a good constitution would minimize conflict between rich and poor. Machiavelli, like Gordon Gekko, said no: politically speaking, greed is good. Rome worked not because its constitution kept people in their place, but because it harnessed the energies of citizens who always wanted more. The ideal constitution, therefore, was not one which suppressed the universal human taste for conflict but one which sustained and employed it.
We remember him for his blood-chilling quips, but it was Machiavelli who carried classical genius to the doorstep of the modern democratic world.
Which brings us to the 4th President of the United States. At 5'4" and 100 pounds, "Little Jemmy" Madison fit no one's picture of a statesman-hero. What he was, however, was a staggering political genius; mastering Latin in boyhood, finishing Princeton in two years, and, in the hot summer of 1787, substituting for Jefferson and Adams in Philadelphia as the chief negotiator of America's new constitution. After polishing off the modern world's first mixed constitution, Madison went on the road to sell it; his 85-part sales pitch (co-written with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, and signed 'Publius') became known as The Federalist Papers.
The former Princeton classics ace knew his Polybius and Machiavelli by heart (with a large dose of the hard-headed, clear-eyed Scottish Enlightenment alongside), and the themes of constitutional balance and managing political conflict became Madison's tonic chords. But with the U.S. Constitution, and the essays he used to promote it, Madison takes democratic theory another quantum leap forward. Geniuses of the ancient world had taken political divisions -- the one, the few, the many -- as a given; their main debate was how much political power each should enjoy. Madison surpasses Polybius in his idea that authority will not be traded off between classes but rather wielded by a constantly evolving coalition of individuals and interests, a majority-in-flux. He incorporates and outpaces Machiavelli as well, taking the Italian's brief hymn to Roman political conflict and turning it into a meticulously explored constitutional principle.
Power against power, party against party, executive veto against congressional initiative: if you want to understand American politics, read Federalist #51. Never before was such a sober assessment of human selfishness joined to a more poetic vision of how a good society could be built in spite of it. Madison's core belief, that "the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights," is the one America continues to grapple with.
How is our system managing its conflicting energies? Does America's constitution strike the right balance?
What will be the next great idea to take us forward?