The History of Democracy Has Yet to Be Written

Synopsis

End the filibuster. Abolish the Senate. Make everyone vote. Only if we do this (and then some), says Thomas Geoghegan, might we heal our fractured democracy. In 2008 Geoghegan?then an established labor lawyer and prolific writer?embarked on a campaign to represent Chicago's Fifth District in the U.S. House, in a special election called when the sitting congressman, Rahm Emanuel, stepped down to serve as newly elected President Barack Obama's chief of staff. For ninety days leading up to the election Geoghegan, a political neophyte at age sixty, knocked on doors and shook hands at train stations and made fundraising calls. On election night he lost, badly. But this humbling experience helped him develop a framework for re-imagining American government in a way that is truly just, fair, and Constitutional. Taking its title from Whitman, The History of Democracy Is Yet to Be Written: How We Have to Learn to Govern All Over Again, combines tales from the campaign trail with an incisive vision of how we might get there. In a polarized country, where 100 million citizens don't vote, and those who do are otherwise rarely politically engaged, he makes an impassioned and witty case for the possibility of a truly representative democracy, one built on the ideals of the House, the true chamber of the people, and inspired by the poet who gives the book its name. At once an engaging memoir and a call to arms, The History of Democracy Is Yet to Be Written will inspire and invigorate political veterans and young activists alike.