Hope and Politics Fostering a healthy democracy By Reed Davis,
Professor of Political Science [firstname.lastname@example.org]
As he lay on his deathbed, the legendary speaker of the
California Assembly, Jesse Unruh, summed up a life devoted to
politics in these words: “Who knows? Who cares? Why bother?” Now
that’s pessimism. Unfortunately, it is the sort of pessimism to
which citizens in a democracy are all too prone. Alexis de
Tocqueville, the 19th-century French thinker, once observed that
the clamor and tumult of liberal democracy can be so
overwhelming at times that many citizens come to believe that
their political actions are ultimately of little import or
significance. However, Tocqueville argued, in order to flourish,
democracy requires more than the simple acceptance of rights;
democracy also requires the metaphysical conviction that people
can make meaningful choices and that those choices can make a
difference in their personal lives and in the life of their
country. Otherwise, if a citizenry come