The Big Bailout: Product of a Flawed Democracy           

Heather Whipps, LiveScience's History columnist,

LiveScience.com

When the $700 billion emergency bailout of the struggling

U.S. economy was finally passed by Congress on Oct. 3

after an arduous period of political wrangling, it was

against the wishes of an overwhelming majority of the

American public.

Now, with more bailouts in the offing and Main Street still

skeptical about handing so much cash to Wall Street (and

now possibly Detroit), it's worth asking:

How the heck did that happen? 

While economists, politicians and the public remain

divided on whether giant bailouts ultimately help or harm

the economy, many argue the act was simply an affront to

American democracy.

Is a government that ignores the sentiment of its people

what the Founding Fathers had in mind?

In a word, yes.

Democracy in America was flawed, on purpose, from the

beginning.

Founding Fathers worried about us

When George Washington, James Madison, Thomas

Jefferson and other early leaders sat down to draft the

documents that would define the new government of the

United States, it never crossed their minds to create a

purely democratic state, historians say.

In many ways, the Founding Fathers believed that

collectively we could be - for lack of more eloquent words

- a gaggle of idiots.

Pure democracy, born in ancient Greece, allows citizens

to directly control a state's decisions by having vote on

each issue. In Athens, these votes were conducted

among an assembly of 500 citizens not elected to the

post but chosen by annual lottery.

In addition to the obvious problems of operating a pure

democracy in a large, populous territory like the United

States, this ancient system was rejected outright because

the Founding Fathers believed that the classic majority-

rules tenet of democracy could actually become

dangerous, allowing mobs of 50 percent plus one to force

their will on minority groups. Two wolves and one sheep

voting on who gets eaten for dinner does not a

democracy make, they argued.

Instead, the drafters of the constitution preferred a

system where government was run in the people's

interests but not by proxy on each issue, making the

legislative process much more convenient and speedier, if

necessary.

A representative democracy in the form of constitutional

republic, with a set of individuals given the authority by

the people to run the country on their behalf, was their

compromise.

Arguably, the system has worked ever since, with checks

and balances put in place to prevent anyone from wielding 

too much power and to protect individual freedoms. It isn't

a pure democracy, but a functional one that, in theory, still

lets the people make decisions.

Unpopular decisions go way back

Of course, in practice, that isn't always the case.

Congressmen and women don't always vote according to

the will of their constituents and people don't necessarily

trust them to.

In a pure democracy, public opinion would have squashed

the bailout - technically called the Emergency Economic

Stabilization Act - quite easily. But it certainly isn't the first

unpopular bill approved by congress, nor will it be the last.

The beginning of this millennium alone has seen several

cases where Congress went against public opinion, the

watchdog Patriot Act of 2001 and the Iraq Resolution of

2002 among them.

It has happened earlier than that too. Several emergency

bailouts in the 1970s of American industrial stalwarts such

as Lockheed and Chrysler were unpopular but approved.

Few were happy about the military draft bill passed in the

1940s and put to use during World War II and the Vietnam

War, but that didn't stop Congress either. Even Franklin

D. Roosevelt's sweeping New Deal reforms in the 1930s

were denounced at first by the majority of the American

people, who couldn't stomach the thought of even more of

their dwindling savings frittered away to taxes.

The bailout then, as uncertain as its outcome remains,

may be unpopular but is still a part of the democratic

process as intended by the Founding Fathers, many

experts argue.

Ultimately it means that the government will sometimes

get it wrong, tick people off and make decisions that don't

seem to make sense at the time. They will also get some

things right. The Founders simply hoped that the latter

would happen more often.

·           Video - Finding George Washington: Truths Revealed

·           Financial Fiasco: Can America Recover This Time?

·           Recession Worries Help Fuel Recession  

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