Sabrina Karim critically reviews statements that Senators McCain and Obama provided for the latest issue of Teaching Tolerance Magazine. Karim’s critique is thoughtful and target, but it also seems worth noting that both national candidates chose to write for this venue and both addressed young people as active, contributing citizens. They wouldn’t have thought that way 5 or 10 years ago.

This line from Sarah Palin’s convention speech has people in my world–the non-partisan world of civic engagement–furious: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.”

I wrote a letter to my new home-town newspaper, the Boston Globe, but they printed a better one instead. I submitted mine online and didn’t keep a copy, but the gist was this. It’s strange that a Republican candidate would imply that only people who work for the government and use tax dollars have “responsibilities.” Community organizers organize citizen volunteers in civil society, in the great tradition of the Committees of Correspondence, the abolitionists, the Civil Rights Movement, and the labor movement. There was a time when Republicans prided themselves on recognizing the power and responsibility of the private sector. But apparently they are so zealous to retain control of Washington power that they are willing to disparage active citizenship.

I was thinking about the charge that Barack Obama lacks executive experience: they say he has even less than Governor Palin. It occurred to me that a modern presidential campaign is a rather large enterprise of which the candidate is the executive. That thought sent me to OpenSecrets.org, which provides some handy charts of campaign contributions and expenditures. Obama has raised about $390 million so far and spent $312 million. That’s a lot less than the $4.3 billion annual budget of Alaska; but it’s a lot of money, and he controls it all directly. He’s spent a little less than half–$152 million–on media, the vast majority of that on broadcast. I don’t know how many people he employs, but he has spent $40 million on salaries, not counting consultants and vendors. This whole enterprise is an enormous start-up, operating in a highly competitive environment and under relentless scrutiny. One can debate whether running such an operation is a good test of the skills required of a president. That it represents “executive experience” seems clear.

I love many aspects of the Obama Campaign, but until recently, I had been thinking that its “change” slogan was pretty much empty. Then it occurred to me that the slogan could reflect a particular conception of democracy–if not intentionally, at least in the way it is being received. This is that idea that the people’s job is to vote the incumbent party in or out, depending on recent performance. As Joseph Schumpeter wrote in 1942:

[D]emocracy does not mean and cannot mean that the people actually rule in any obvious sense of the terms ‘people’ and ‘rule.’ Democracy means only that the people have the opportunity of accepting or refusing the men who are to rule them. But since they might decide this also in entirely undemocratic ways, we have had to narrow our definition by adding a further criterion identifying the democratic method, viz., free competition among would-be leaders for the vote of the electorate.

Applying Schumpeter to the 2008 election would mean saying that the Republicans and Democrats are “would-be leaders,” and the Democrats are asking to be chosen because the Republicans have messed up. That could be a good way for Democrats to get elected, assuming (a) that Americans act like Schumpeterians and (b) that we render verdicts on parties rather than individuals.

There are two big problems with Schumpeter’s theory, however. First, immediate past performance is often a poor predictor of future performance. Schumpeter believed that citizens voted on the past record because they simply couldn’t make rational predictions. But that’s bad news, if true.

Second, limiting voters’ role to an up-or-down verdict is very much at odds with the other rhetoric of the Obama Campaign, which (pace Schumpeter) is about the people actually ruling. Perhaps “change” means a new way of tapping the energies and ideas of American citizens. If that’s the intention, it must be made very clear.

My first job was at Common Cause, one of the main lobbies that seeks to improve formal American politics by reforming the way campaigns are financed, voters are registered, electoral districts are drawn, and regulations are approved. Even then, I was also interested in the citizen side of politics–how people organize themselves, deliberate, learn from one another, give time and money, and obtain power. I’ve always wanted those two topics to be more tightly connected in theory and especially in practice. In fact, that was the theme of my 1999 book The New Progressive Era. Government reform can stimulate or enable public engagement, but the nature of the engagement will differ depending on the reform. Therefore, it’s crucial to consider what kind of democracy you want. Is your goal equality of power? Involving as many people as possible in creative public work? Mixing people with different opinions and backgrounds? Improving knowledge and understanding? Each goal requires somewhat different reforms. In turn, how citizens organize themselves will determine which reforms pass Congress and will also affect how people use any new rights and opportunities.

In late July, a mix of political reformers and organizers of citizen activities met in Washington. I had to miss the meeting because we were in Europe, but Demos, a reform group, has now posted notes online (PDF). The group converged on ideas drawn from the political reform world (such as “public financing of state and federal elections”) plus proposals from the world of public deliberation (e.g., “a Public Participation Act that eliminates obstacles preventing Federal agencies from using higher quality public participation practices”). The lead idea is a new “White House Office of Participation” to bring it all together.