John B. Judis: Can American Democracy Survive the Demise of Impartial Institutions?

John B. Judis is a senior editor at The New Republic.

...Disinterestedness was an important part of the Founders’ vision for the country. In The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton described the “independence of the judges” as “requisite to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals from the effects of those ill humors, which ... occasion dangerous innovations in the government, and serious oppressions of the minor party in the community.” But it was in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that disinterested institutions truly became integral to the functioning of the American polity. At the time, the rise of giant corporations and the growth of an industrial working class had given the lie to the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian dream of democracy based upon the dispersion of small-property owners. As business and labor clashed, the preservation of democracy appeared to rest on finding a way to reconcile these two groups. But who could possibly mediate between labor and business, and ensure an outcome acceptable to both? Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson both staked out this ground; but the role also fell to a new kind of policy group and publication that was committed to being above party, class, interest, and ideology.

The first of these groups was the National Civic Federation, which one of its founders described as a “sort of Hague tribunal” that would provide “a neutral ground where conflicting interests can meet and adjust themselves.” The Brookings Institution also dates from this period. Retired St. Louis businessman Robert Brookings, who founded it in 1916, said he wanted an institution “free from any political or pecuniary interest” that would “lay before the country in a coherent form the fundamental economic facts.” Brookings’s first president, Harold Moulton, was a laissez-faire economist, yet, when coal operators complained bitterly about a Brookings study in 1928 calling for the nationalization of the industry, he rebuked them for demanding that his think tank heed their interests in its research....

Together, these new institutions occupied a gray space between civil society and the state. They saw themselves as providing direct guidance to government and educating the public about national and world affairs. They didn’t always say so publicly or explicitly, but, by defining themselves as above party and interest, they adopted a mediating role in society—between business and labor, and later between the general public and the more militant wings of the civil rights, consumer, and environmental movements....

In the early ’70s, conservative Republicans began to charge that think tanks and mainstream media were not above ideology and interest but were in fact arms of Democratic Party liberalism. They attempted to establish counterinstitutions, such as the Heritage Foundation, which they claimed were equivalent in overall mission to the older policy groups but were conservative rather than liberal. And, taking advantage of the genuine commitment of the mainstream media to being above party and ideology, they demanded equal time and space for their experts....

Disinterestedness is a complex thing. At one level, it means trying to mediate between conflicting classes, social groups, and interests. It means not tying yourself to business or labor, Northerners or Southerners, whites or blacks, natives or immigrants, but trying to develop an outlook and policies that reconcile them. It doesn’t entail support for any specific reforms or any specific methods of achieving reform. This is a stance that should be able to cut across much of liberalism and conservatism, including the kind of conservatism for which Brooks stands....

Ultimately, the success of disinterested institutions depends on two things: the character and views of the individuals who serve them, and widespread public support for their existence. This second pillar appears to be eroding. There have always been anti-capitalist revolutionaries and hard-line reactionaries in the United States who rejected the possibility of disinterestedness, but, except for brief periods, they have been marginalized. What’s disturbing about the present is that a significant percentage of conservatives now refuse to accept the Times as a trustworthy news outlet, or the courts as a vehicle for simply analyzing the Constitution, or think tanks like Brookings as a reasonable source of research. And some liberals have responded to this not by defending disinterestedness, but by beginning to mimic the right’s rejection of it.

Will this challenge to disinterestedness fade with time? Will it go the way of the Illinois Appeals Court’s overturned decision to deny residence to Rahm Emanuel? I certainly hope so, because, if it does not, we could be looking at a political system that begins to resemble that of the late nineteenth century, with its sharp and seemingly unresolvable clashes between different groups in American society. The next big test will be the Supreme Court’s ruling on Obama’s health care plan. If the court rejects the plan on the kind of spurious grounds that its opponents have endorsed, then it will have abandoned its historic commitment to disinterestedness. And American democracy will be in very big trouble.