The best word to describe our form of government is no longer “democracy.” The United States isn’t exactly an “oligarchy” either, despite a recent study alleging as much. The most fitting term to describe America’s current state of affairs is an unfamiliar one: “kakistocracy.”
Kakistocracy means “a form of government in which the worst persons are in power.” The word comes from the Greek kákistos, meaning “the worst,” and the suffix -cracy, meaning “rule by.” Kákistos, it is worth noting, possibly shares a root with “defecate.” Spanish speakers will recognize a distant relative of kákistos in caca.
The voters can smell kakistocracy coming from a mile away. One citizen with an especially good nose for kakistocracy managed to avoid it altogether. To quote a refreshingly tongue-in-cheek obituary from this past May, “Faced with the prospect of voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Mary Anne Noland of Richmond chose, instead, to pass into the eternal love of God.”
Since Mary Anne’s departure, the presidential race has somewhat expanded. Our political palette now contains four colors instead of the usual two: Jill Stein’s green and Gary Johnson’s gold have augmented Donald Trump’s red and Hillary Clinton’s blue. Swirl them together and you get the color of kakistocracy: brown.
To support the claim that America is a kakistocracy and that the 2016 candidates don’t represent the best of America, it is worth recapping the striking poverty of choices for which 2016 will surely be remembered.
Jill Stein. The Green Party candidate is a doctor best known for the dog-whistle heard round the medical world: anti-vaxxers, she argued earlier this summer, have “real questions” that deserve more attention. Adding to doubts about Stein’s judgment, she has failed to disavow her running mate’s characterization of President Obama an “Uncle Tom.”
Gary Johnson. The former New Mexico governor does have political experience and has brought important issues—such as criminal justice reform—to the fore. But for someone who has been running for president since 2011, his ignorance of foreign policy is inexcusable. “What is Aleppo?” and “I’m not sure”—Johnson’s response to a question about whether America should have intervened in World War II—do not inspire confidence in a would-be Commander-in-Chief.
Donald Trump. I have written previously about Trump’s many flaws. At this point in the campaign, it’s worth adding another: None of the promised “Trump change” has materialized. He hasn’t matured as a candidate over the course of the campaign, and if his staff and convention speakers are any indication of a Trump presidency, he will continue to fail to attract top talent. Instead, the Trump administration would be filled with resume-pushing, celebrity-chasing office-seekers.
Hillary Clinton. Clinton is a conventional politician with years of experience, making her the most experienced nominee since George H. W. Bush in 1988. If participation points were the only metric in grading Clinton, she’d have an A+. But experience is an input measure, and it’s worth assessing Clinton by output measures, such as what she has achieved. As Senator, Clinton did build productive partnerships with Republicans, such as John McCain, who served with her on the Armed Services Committee. But her legislative record is sparse; over eight years in the Senate, only three of the bills Clinton sponsored became law, all of them minor commemorative acts approved by voice vote.
Clinton’s greatest accomplishment as Secretary of State was teeing up the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade deal she once called the “gold standard.” Now she condemns TPP on the campaign trail. This last episode demonstratesf Clinton’s greatest flaw: She will say anything to get elected. Instead of picking good policy and using her bully pulpit as a candidate to persuade and educate the public on the wisdom of her positions, she drops her ideas the moment they seem unpopular. On other issues, such as same-sex marriage, she only joins the fight once it has already been won. Clinton is a peculiar kind of conviction politician—one whose only overriding conviction is that she deserves more power.
Nothing in this column should be interpreted as suggesting that all four candidates would make equally terrible presidents—there are shades of kakistocracy, for some forms of misrule are more tolerable than others. In this election, we must choose among four candidates with serious weaknesses, none of whom promises presidential greatness. A subsequent column will explore my struggle to pick a candidate and the factors at work in my decision. But it would be foolish to get in the business of advocating for any candidate in this race without first acknowledging that our poor choices in 2016 represent a larger problem, kakistocracy, which threatens the Republic in a far more fundamental way than the outcome of a single election.
It will take substantial reforms to undo the mess we’re in. I don’t know an exact formula to solve the problems in American politics, but any package of reforms would probably touch on gerrymandering, campaign finance, civic education, primaries, parties and special interests. We’re living through an age that resembles Rotten Borough-ridden Britain before the Reform Bills or political machine-driven America before the Progressive Era. This is a time when everyone is losing faith in our institutions, for good reason—they’re failing us. Making politics more functional would help to break the vicious cycle we see today, with good leaders avoiding politics because they think they can’t make a difference, leaving mediocre or genuinely bad leaders free to rise to the top, which in turn discourages good leaders from entering politics.
I refuse to believe that the four candidates in the presidential race represent the best leadership America has to offer. With a population of 324 million, the United States surely has dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of better leaders than the ones presently contending for the Oval Office. We can do better than this.
Matthew T. King is a Trinity junior. His column, “at the water's edge” runs on alternate Mondays.
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