If confident in their passage of health care legislation, Democrats would be willing to maintain the debate so that in due time its merits would be solidified to voters throughout their public defense. Some would argue that the debate rests when the people’s representatives make a decision through their duly elected offices. However, it is important to note that the United States is a democratic republic. The description of “republic” with the adjective “democratic” implies that democracy is the sole attribute of our republic. It is through demos, the people, which the republic is defined and given character. Or, are we henceforth to be a republican democracy? Is the republic defining the democracy in its own terms? With such a close margin of dissent regarding healthcare, the Democrats in Congress used an unorthodox method to pass health care legislation around the objections of democratically elected representatives from the opposition party. The Founders spoke of the importance of tension between factions in cooling the passion of the mob and allowing for deliberate political thought. Their ideal republican form of government was to be a means of channeling and mediating the will of the democracy.
Good public policy does not belong solely to the Democratic Party. The Republican Party in Congress represents a little over the equivalent of 20 states in the Senate, and an equivalent of nearly 50% of states in the House. If the democracy defined the republic during the healthcare debate, healthcare would not have passed. The opinion of a large constituency of voting citizens was undermined by slickly attaching healthcare to a must-pass spending bill. Good public policy works its way into law through our republican government in the sight of and with the approval from most of the American people, from our democracy. Good public policy always walks proudly through the front door, passing democracy first. It does not slither through a crack in the republic while no one is looking. Due to the division of representation districts and tenure in our Constitution, it takes an overwhelming amount of public agreement to send a simple majority of support for a popular policy to Congress. Was there not enough agreement among the American people to pass this legislation in the traditional manner, or were the Democrats smarter than the Founders for filling in the lines of the Constitution and passing health care? If the few who have obtained democratically elected power in our republic manipulate the internal workings of the republic to control the demos, then it is the government attempting to define the will of the entire democracy. The question Americans must ask themselves from this day forward is simple: do we want the democracy to define the actions of the republic, or will the representatives of the few dictate their will to the democracy?