Democracy Dies Without a Credible Opposition

The biggest challenge that western democracies face today, bar none, is the demise of those democracies that do not have a credible opposition.  Lacking that, the party in power can easily ride roughshod over an entire population because, quite frankly, they are the only game in town.

Here in Israel, we have a political situation which is emblematic of this challenge.  The current prime minister has held his position for 18 of the last 29 years making him the longest serving prime minister in Israel’s history.   He was, of course, democratically elected to that post during those years and is widely seen as having done a good job, especially in the area of security.

Yet, close to half the population of Israel, as polls have shown, believes he has been in the position too long and needs to be replaced.  I won’t deal here with the merits of that argument or how I personally feel about it.   However, suppose you are a member of the almost half of Israel that agrees it is time for him to go, is there a credible opposition that could be elected to replace him?  Sadly, the answer is a resounding no!

The presumed head of the opposition, Yair Lapid, appears to be a shell of his former self.  He is rarely seen and, when he does appear, often looks disheveled and hardly someone that could be perceived as a serous candidate for prime minister ever again.

Even worse, the opposition has no plan, no program for change, no road map as to what happens after the war with Hamas ends, as it surely will, and no stated vison for the next stage of Israel’s life as we enter our fourth quarter century of existence.  The country then is left with an absent opposition leader who, even if he were to appear on TV every day, does not have a viable alternative vision for the future of Israel.

In a word we are setting ourselves up for the demise of democracy unless…..a credible opposition can surface to challenge the status quo, create a plan for future growth and restore the faith in government that was seriously challenged after the failures of October 7^th.  I certainly believe that can be done, but the right people need to come forward and work on that.

Sadly, the country that has been a model of democracy for almost 250 years, the USA, is also at risk and for the same reason, the lack of a credible opposition.

Without passing judgement on the new administration in Washington, there is plenty of unrest around the country.   Clearly many people would like the opposition to successfully do just that, oppose what appears to many to be a tear down of what America has stood for since its inception in 1776.

For proof all one has to do is watch what Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has been doing the last few weeks.   He has been traveling throughout America’s heartland holding town hall style meetings to call attention to Washington’s chaotic attempt to cut governmental waste by using a chainsaw rather than a carefully honed scalpel, hopefully curated, of course, with some good common sense as well.

Although Senator Sanders is not running for office, he is railing against the rule of oligarchs and the peeling away of social benefits from the people who need them most. For example, he drew 9,200 unhappy voters to such a meeting in Warren, Michigan on Saturday and over 5,000 to a meeting in Kenosha, Wisconsin the day before.  Wherever he goes he urges those in attendance to demand more of their congressional representatives.

To be sure he is doing amazing things in the name of saving the country from those who would turn America into an autocracy.  However, the official opposition, the Democrat party, has confined its activity to criticizing the administration but not putting out a program of its own that addresses the concerns of the voting public.  No doubt, individual state governors have been speaking out on behalf of their citizens, but federal policy is made in Washington by the elected people sitting in Congress and the Senate.  And the opposition there seems incapable of mustering any argument other than the people currently in power are ruining America.  Hardly a platform that will elect anyone.

Benjamin Disraeli is quoted as having said: “No government can be long secure without a formidable opposition.”  In today’s parlance this can be written, no democracy can be long secure without a formidable opposition.  Democracies that don’t internalize this and act on it may lose their hard-earned freedoms and, once lost, may be impossible to recover.