Teaching American Politics in 2024

As the 2024 presidential election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump approaches, I am compelled to reflect on my role as a teaching assistant for an Introduction to American Politics course — i.e., as a political science educator-in-training. For the remainder of this essay, then, I necessarily embrace my multiplicity as I momentarily step aside from my intellectual ideals and commitments to critical social inquiry to write this brief and scattered piece on the more normative subject of U.S. electoral politics.

In the few months left before the electoral game begins, I am tasked with guiding fifty undergraduate students through the histories and intricacies of American political systems. As first-year college students, it struck me that most of them were in elementary school (a mere ten years old) during the tumultuous Clinton-Trump contest (see the county-by-county breakdown of the 2016 results). Their engagement with politics prior to this point, however grand or slight, has been shaped by a political landscape that has transmogrified into something qualitatively distinct from my own formative years.

Witnessing Barack Obama’s first inauguration at the age of eight undoubtedly marked my early political consciousness. That experience, seen through the eyes of both a youthful innocence and growing reflection, embodied a profound affirmation of participatory and inclusive democratic ideals and the promise of progress reminiscent of the American Dream. It was not simply a ceremonial transition but a deeply emotional validation of hope, change, and the essence of civic participation. “On this day,” Obama announced to those witnessing history in the making, “we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.” He was a leader who plucked at the chords of humanity inside the soul of the electorate, an extraordinary individual but also someone uniquely human, the kind of man who could sing Al Green's “Let's Stay Together” in front of an auditorium composed of the American public.

The event offered the nation a reprieve from the Bush administration’s hawkish and corporatist policies that were unleashed in the post-9/11 era, a period in American history that will forever be memorialized by the unjust and heavily protested Iraq War and an unabashed xenophobic temperament excused by the national security state’s aversion to so-called “dangerous others.” The strain of the wartime atmosphere was accompanied, of course, by the economy of the Wall Street bailout (the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008). Whether or not Obama’s presidency was effective is an entirely separate matter. One cannot overlook the label of ‘Deporter in Chief’, the dramatic increase in the loss of innocent human life attributed to drone strikes sanitized under the term ‘collateral damage,’ or the lost chance to take action on police brutality following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer and the resultant Ferguson protests in 2014.

Nevertheless, the general mood of the nation on 20 January 2009 was characterized by a cautious optimism. The mood at the start was consistent with later progressive social achievements of the Obama years, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage through Obergefell v. Hodges or the nation’s formal entry into the Paris Climate Accords in 2015. Soon, however, and from my then sophomoric high school vantage, this outlook of optimism would be shattered by Donald Trump’s victory in the Electoral College over Hillary Clinton in 2016 (Clinton won the popular vote by nearly three million votes). Recent scholarly literature comparing Trump’s politics to fascist politics and situating his leadership within the contemporary trend of ascending far-right populist heads of state across the globe (e.g., Bolsonaro in Brazil, Orbán in Hungary, Erdoğan in Turkey, Meloni in Italy, and so on) makes many on the political spectrum — left, right, and center; in the U.S. and around the world — frightened by the prospect of a second Trump term.

As my students and I come together each week to discuss American politics on the brink of the 2024 election, I feel a profound responsibility to impart the gravity of civic engagement and political participation to a generation whose early historical memories are colored by this intense polarization and widespread disillusionment with the integrity of the nation’s political systems and elected officials. On the latter front, outside of the presidential scene and within the affairs of the legislative branch, one may cite the recent resignation and conviction of Bob Menendez (NJ-D) or the antics of fellow convicted felon and former Congressman George Santos (NY-R). Not even the Justices on the Supreme Court (viz. Clarence Thomas) are immune to ethical missteps and misconduct.

More to the point, as an aspiring educator and scholar, I cannot overlook how this sense of detachment from the real world of human affairs and corresponding cynicism towards earnest notions of hope fostered in the wake of 2016 have been further exacerbated by the proliferation of misinformation on social media and other information echo chambers, in addition to concerted illiberal, (neo)reactionary efforts to establish a unitary executive — an idea that sullies the Founders’ (see Thomas Paine's Common Sense for an example of classical radicalism) and their contemporaries’ (see Adam Smith's remarks on inequality in The Wealth of Nations) explicit rejection of monarchy (constitutional or otherwise) which rests, in part, on public procedures of 'checks and balances’ that administer the separation of powers doctrine handed down from Polybius to Locke (Second Treatise) and Montesquieu (the Spirit of Law) to Madison (the ‘Madisonian model’), or Aristotle’s ancient postulate found in his Politics and Rhetoric that it is better to be ruled by the “best laws” than by the “best men” (i.e., the rule of law), two concepts at the heart of republican and classical liberal theory and the constitutional principles and forms of government derived therefrom. The Founders evidently saw the structural separation of powers as a requisite for and an integral component of political freedom and robust democratic institutions. Both phenomena, the dissemination of misinformation together with modern reactionary thought and praxis, have aggravated the erosion of public trust in U.S. democratic institutions.

In this context, as someone who studies politics and human affairs and thus bears a responsibility to prepare my students for active participation in civil society, my role extends beyond merely elucidating the mechanics of elections and governance. It is imperative to cultivate a deeper understanding of democratic participation grounded in the ethical and philosophical dimensions that underscore our collective responsibilities as citizens of this Republic. To get straight to the heart of the matter then, I invoke the words of Plato, who put it quite bluntly when he concluded in The Republic — Cicero’s Latin translation of the original ancient Greek title Politeia (πολιτεία) — that “the greatest punishment” for the idle and ill-informed citizen is “being ruled by someone worse than oneself” (Bk. I, 347c, tr. C.D.C. Reeve). Renowned figures in the history of U.S. politics have reiterated essentially the same sentiment. Thomas Jefferson, for example, is quoted as saying, “Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe their minds must be improved to a certain degree.”

I emphasize that the term 'republic' is a deliberate choice inspired by the ancient Roman philosopher and consul Cicero, for the root of the word, res publica, i.e., ‘public affair,’ or the fundamentally democratic principle of ‘rule of the people’ (the demos, δῆμος) retained by the Roman Republic through Jefferson and onward in the Western canon, reminds the reader of the primary purpose of the American form of government. The Republic — to say nothing at this time of the inseparable and co-constitutive modern commitment to liberal democracy — is designed to represent the general will of the people (the term from Rousseau's Social Contract) expressed through their active participation in public spaces as informed citizens (see, Arendt's On Revolution). Attention to this crucial nexus between education and a healthy democracy extends far beyond the pens of the revolutionary Founding Fathers and their contemporaries in the intellectual milieu of the American Enlightenment. F.D.R. wrote in 1938, “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education."

Education, in principle, is the most accessible safeguard against the “vicious arts by which elections are too often carried,” according to James Madison’s prescriptions for the American Republic in the Federalist Papers (No. 10). Madison was specifically referring to the advantages of an electorate large enough to select candidates on the basis of their merits and capacity for persuasive (ideally eloquent) argument yet still exclusive enough, he reasoned at the Constitutional Convention, “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority,” an explicitly bourgeois, elitist, and socially stratified variant of indirect democracy and representative government where wealth reigns supreme — an oligarchy as opposed to democracy in Aristotelian terms and in the realistic contours of administrative governance. Though I may stow away for the moment my penchant for critical theory, it is important to highlight these crucial facts and their durability throughout the history of U.S. political thought and governance; however, these concerns fall outside the immediate scope of this reflection concerning the relationship between education and democracy. But it is notable how the inequalities embedded in the American Republic at its founding mirror the social relations of Plato's Republic, wherein enslaved laborers and women relegated to the οἶκος were excluded from the domain of political life, the public affairs of the πόλις. This was the case in the U.S. until popular struggle and sacrifice ushered in national policy change through the 13th, 14th, 15th, (17th), 19th, and 26th Amendments, among a host of federal and state statutes and jurisprudence, that slowly expanded the enfranchised electorate beyond the ruling class of propertied white males and bulwarked, with few restrictions, every adult citizens’ right to vote for their representatives. (For more on the constraints of realizing genuine democracy, consider Robert A. Dahl’s descriptive theory of democracy as polyarchy, i.e., ‘rule by the many’ — a form of pluralistic governance that is neither purely democratic nor tyrannical. Alternatively, you might find Noam Chomsky’s lecture on the Madisonian principle informative if you prefer listening to reading).

To cut through the muck and mire of misinformation and engage with democracy in good faith, students must recognize not only the procedural aspects but also the fundamental values, ideals, and principles of tolerance and consensus or even respectful agonism that serve as the democratic glue of our diverse and pluralistic civil society. Progress in a democracy hinges on the free and open exchange of information, and this applies to empirical research as much as polemical dissent (Also, see the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment). However, the challenges presented by this presidential election cycle are augmented not only by the imperative to educate young minds and improve their capacity to navigate and participate in political spaces. Prior elections have demonstrated that educators who concern themselves with politics and human affairs must prepare both themselves and their students to decipher, filter out, and combat the misinformation that undermines informed citizenship and hence — when it comes to elections — bars the electorate from making the “right” decision, from choosing representatives who will express their general will and act in accordance with the common good. As the poet abolitionist Henry David Thoreau wrote in his Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers (1890), “All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.”

If one takes Madison’s warning against the “vicious” nature of some elections seriously, the evident parallels between the disillusionment following the 2016 election and the current climate of skepticism and falsehoods eight years later (e.g., Trump’s 162 “lies and distortions” in a single 64-minute-long press conference in August) ought to come as no surprise. In Plato’s Republic, one finds the idea of a ‘noble lie’, an untruth told by a political leader to serve some civic and hence common good, resolve stasis (στάσις, meaning ‘civil strife’ or ‘factional discord’), maintain harmony, or avoid panic. One would be naive not to suspect that there might be ignoble lies and demagoguery in the mix. Regardless of the historical backdrop, the integrity of the democratic process is threatened by the deluge of misleading narratives that distort reality and obscure truth.

To bridge the gap between theory and practice, it is essential to engage students in discussions that connect electoral politics to real-world issues, especially to issues that will impact their generation more acutely (e.g., climate change, housing, economic inequality, energy, automation). Exploring how political decisions practically influence employment, environmental protections, jurisprudence, and other related dimensions of public affairs directly linked to their everyday lives can help students see the tangible impact of their participation, even when their participation might otherwise be hindered by the apparent fact that (and I say this as a social scientist with respect to neat statistics) any one voter’s single vote makes no causal difference in the ultimate outcome of an election. Discussions also provide them with opportunities to apply rigid concepts to the complexity of public affairs. In any case, by illustrating the interconnectedness of political, social, and other such issues, one can foster a more comprehensive understanding of civic engagement that organically draws on and, in turn, enriches the diversity of each student’s developing worldview. Perhaps this approach will also prevent undeclared undergraduates or students in unrelated majors (i.e., not social science) from dropping the course four weeks from now. Only time will tell.

That said, I go into our discussion sections with a heightened and honest awareness of my own political ideals and potential biases. I do my best to ensure that my personal policy preferences do not ooze out into the classroom and infect my own desire to excite my students about this nebulous quest for truth in the realms of politics and human affairs. During our first meeting, I even took a moment to tell them that my goal was not to proselytize or “brainwash” them. Political science is our discipline; hence, through our discussions, our goal is not to achieve “dogmatic” but “disciplined” thinking. In a word, it is essential to respect their individuality. Whether a majority or conspicuously sizeable minority, many young people today are either disinterested in politics and/or view the political system as corrupt or ineffectual, a sentiment fueled by the constant barrage of misinformation that sows division and discourages humble and open discourse among peers. Tackling these concerns openly, reminding students of the diverse viewpoints and counterarguments sitting with them in the same room (not to mention out in the ‘real world’), and presenting opportunities for dialogue, I hope, can help mitigate feelings of apathy in at least a few minds.

My personal opinions about who they vote for are beside the point. The primary goal is to ensure that they will not shy away from the controversies and challenges on the road ahead and that they are set on a path where they can make informed and thoughtful decisions for themselves.

As we prepare to choose our representatives this 2024 presidential election cycle, my objective must not be to foster partisan hacks or apparatchiki but to cultivate critical thinkers who can navigate a complex and often deceptive information environment. “Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all,” wrote the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, “Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of ‘justice’ but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when ‘freedom’ becomes a special privilege.” The task of education for democracy thus extends beyond the classroom setting; it is about instilling a sense of agency and commitment to the common good rooted in the first principles of this Republic.