There is nothing new here. Every few decades, a frost of conceptual exhaustion blankets the political arena, bringing with it a longing for the technocrat, someone to run the country in a more or less competent fashion and make sure that the problem of governance is “taken care of.” In the wake of World War II, Western voters turned to leaders whom they considered to be “above ideology.” In Italy and France, conservatives and Communists joined to form governing coalitions based on technocracy; in the United States, Earl Warren’s worldview-free campaign in 1947 earned him the gubernatorial nomination in California from both the Democratic and Republican parties. In the 1950s and early 1960s, a number of books were published proclaiming the new era, most notably Daniel Bell’s 1960 The End of Ideology—only to be falsified by the ideological upheavals of the Left in the 1960s, and the Right in the 1980s. And now, with both Communism and welfare-socialism all but defeated, the Left has found itself without a plausible ideology, and the Right is without plausible foes to fight. The “end of ideology,” it turns out, is the pretty face being put on the paradigmatic meltdown of Western politics.

So the Israeli public has grown cynical, licking its wounds and spurning anyone who would offer a comprehensive vision for the country. Ideology is gone (the Europeans said so), and good riddance. Better to find a leader with character, with punch, with a good agent. Politicians have been quick to respond, suppressing anything that might be mistaken for a worldview, offering “personality” alone as their saving grace—and hoping that no one will notice how boring personalities are when bereft of ideas.

 

Democracies depend on fruitful political debate to be effective. Institutions such as freedom of speech and press, party politics and parliamentary rules all assume a vibrant public discourse, in which ideas can be weighed and tested against the national interest. By allowing the free competition of opinions, democracy makes us wiser, not just freer. But these institutions cannot guarantee that debate, any more than universal suffrage can guarantee that citizens will vote on election day. When opinion leaders refuse to engage the debate; when they have given up on political ideas, looking instead for the end of ideology and apolitical national management; when elected politicians are denigrated by virtue of their being politicians, even as they are representing the desires of their voters, then democracy itself is spurned, and ultimately endangered.

 

Ofir Haivry, for the Editors

March 31, 1999