{"id":12513,"date":"2013-10-01T09:17:22","date_gmt":"2013-10-01T13:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=12513"},"modified":"2013-10-01T09:17:22","modified_gmt":"2013-10-01T13:17:22","slug":"asking-congress-to-vote-on-syria-was-a-deliberative-move","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=12513","title":{"rendered":"asking Congress to vote on Syria was a deliberative act"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Sacramento) President Obama’s decision to ask Congress for authorization to bomb targets in Syria may have been wise or foolish. It had\u00a0 military and diplomatic repercussions that I cannot judge. But when the president asked legislators to discuss the issue and then make a decision, he used a deliberative style of leadership that we ought to recognize, at least. It is a style that reasonable people use when they lead ordinary associations and communities, and the founders expected it when they created Congress as a deliberative body.\u00a0 So I wrote on Sept. 10<\/a>, and the Boston’s Globe’s Farah Stockman picks up the theme in today’s opinion piece<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Of course, Obama got called a lot of names for the delay that made that outcome possible: \u201cweakling,\u201d \u201cditherer-in-chief\u201d and\u00a0 – nastiest of all, in some corners –\u00a0 \u201ccommunity organizer.\u201d I must admit that even I thought he was crazy for going to Congress, which often seems more eager to tar and feather him than to approve of anything he wants.<\/p>\n

But political theorist Dennis Thompson, co-author of the book \u201cWhy Deliberative Democracy?\u201d says Obama\u2019s moves mirrored a style of leadership he taught at Harvard. Thompson believes that, in a true democracy, a leader ought to explain the reasoning behind the course of action he or she wants to take. But in the end, wherever possible, the group itself should debate it and have the final word.<\/p>\n

… So, why then were Americas so infuriated that Obama took the issue to Congress?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is as if we expect decisions of war and peace to be made by the president rather than society as a whole,\u201d said Archon Fung, another Harvard professor who had studied the virtues of \u201cdeliberative democracy.\u201d \u201cDecisions about when to use military force . . .involve killing as a state act. If any decision should be made democratically, then it\u2019s this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Levine, a professor at Tufts University, sees the public reaction as a sign of the times. Americans have grown less interested in the public deliberations that that make democracies work. Participation on juries and PTA meetings are at an all time low, he said. Voters expect their elected leaders to solve their problems. Debates over the best way to go about it are seen as a sign of failure or weakness.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur system is supposed to be deliberative,\u201d Levine said. \u201cBut we live in a profoundly anti-deliberative moment.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Sacramento) President Obama’s decision to ask Congress for authorization to bomb targets in Syria may have been wise or foolish. It had\u00a0 military and diplomatic repercussions that I cannot judge. But when the president asked legislators to discuss the issue and then make a decision, he used a deliberative style of leadership that we ought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deliberation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12513"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12525,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12513\/revisions\/12525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}