DEMOCRACY IN ONE BOOK OR LESS

Former White House speechwriter and humorist Litt digs in deep to discuss what’s ailing us politically—and gets in a few laughs along the way.

The author begins with an amusing guerrilla action that demands a John Belushi to play it onscreen: namely, trying to bust his way into Mitch McConnell’s fraternity at the University of Kentucky. Why? Because somewhere in those roots lies the development of a political system that does not represent the people or reflect the consent of the governed in the slightest, giving rise to a polity most of whose members do not trust the government to act correctly, with those who do “roughly the number of Americans who believe in Bigfoot.” The genius of the system McConnell authored, Litt rightly observes, is that thanks to gerrymandering and polarization, there are practically no political consequences inherent in ignoring the wishes of the electorate. The fixes are pretty simple, or at least some are. If you’re not a voter, Litt suggests, then you don’t really count, and if you don’t vote, then you cede the field to the boomers who went for the current occupant of the White House. “Along nearly every dimension,” Litt writes, “the average voter looks more like Donald Trump than the average American does.” Only a mass turnout of the young—the author is in his 30s—will change that picture. Just so, because so many minority voters have been disenfranchised, voters are wealthier than nonvoters, acquiescent in congressional and presidential acts that benefit the rich. The irony is that we now have a tyranny of the minority—an easy fix if only the majority will act, in part by throwing out McConnell, for whom “our dysfunctional legislature is working just fine.”

A pleasure to read, even in its darkest moments, and refreshingly optimistic about the future of the republic.