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Academic

: Essentially Contested America

Is Obama a Deliberative Democrat?

By Robert Justin Lipkin

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With Joe J. Andrew's jumping ship, Americans must decide whether there's any difference between the old and the new forms of politics. The old politics--"interest-group politics"--seeks to formulate policy goals, join with like-minded individuals, and then wage war against other interest jand:

groups without any active conception of a just war or appropriate ways to battle. Practitioners of the old politics envision their job as doing anything they can to persuade, cajole, or bully their opponents in their quest for victory. With the advent of 24 hour cable news, practitioner's of the old politics seek to expose weaknesses in their opponents, even infinitesimally weak weaknesses and repeat them on the air until they can cajole as many intermittent viewers as possible to join their side. Practitioners of the new politics formulate their policy objectives, but recognize that democracy requires respectful deliberation, discussion, and negotiation. New politicians not only realize that they inevitably must compromise, but that in a deliberative democracy, compromise is the only way to formulate the reflective judgment of the community. Deliberative democrats have their own values but they do not equate these values with the community's values until, though the deliberative process, a majority of the community embraces those values. In short, deliberative democrats appreciate that the deliberative process is necessary to arrive at political truth. They do not think that they have cornered the market on political truth and embrace democracy only as a means of imposing that truth on everyone else. Deliberative democracy is both less absolutist and less relativist than interest group democracy.

Is Obama a deliberative democrat? Arguably, he's trying to be and that would be a monumental change in itself without even evaluating the substantive changes that deliberative democracy might bring about. Whether the old politics of crash and burn, of pesticide politics will ultimately permit this new deliberative flower to bloom remains to be seen.

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Full post as published by Essentially Contested America on May 02, 2008 (boomark / email).