Celebrating the First Steps toward Iraqi Democracy
Ventura Star, January 2, 2006

By Terry Paulson, PhD

What would a proud founding father have told his grandchildren about the day our country's Constitution was ratified? What might a citizen have written in his diary after George Washington was elected America's first president? This week in Iraq a new democracy is taking its first steps. The world is watching and waiting to see whether democracy will take root in the Middle East!

On the eve of the election, President Bush warned of the difficult work ahead, but remained optimistic. Contrary to past Iraqi interim elections, the Sunni Arabs, the primary supporters of insurgency, actively participated. With a broad-based election turnout and growing frustration with the loss of Iraqi lives to terrorist attacks, there's hope that the vast majority of Iraqis are now ready to give democracy a chance.

The positive news from this election is hard to deny. Many Iraqi citizens outside of polling centers were thanking America for giving them the chance to be free. Voters working patiently through the long ballot would break into cheers once completed. Today it is easy for Americans to take our freedom and our right to vote for granted, but it was not always so.

Our own democracy had more than its share of struggles. We celebrate July 4, 1776 as the official founding date of the United States. On that date, representatives from thirteen British colonies met at the Second Continental Congress and adopted the Declaration of Independence. There were difficult days ahead-a war to be won and a workable government to be formed.

Even after the Revolutionary War, there was conflict between our own citizens. The Shays' Rebellion, the 1786 insurrection led by debt-ridden farmers in Massachusetts, was frustrating to early leaders. Henry Knox, then secretary of war, indicated that the federal government was almost helpless to deal with the insurrection. George Washington wrote to James Madison, "Without some alteration in our political creed, the superstructure we have been seven years raising at the expense of so much blood and treasure, must fall. We are fast verging to anarchy and confusion."

A woman reporting on efforts to form a combined military wrote, "Washington tried to persuade his New Jersey troops to swear allegiance to the United States. They refused. `New Jersey is our country!' They said stubbornly."

In May of 1787, the Virginia legislature, responding to Washington's appeal, led the call for a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to seek "a general revision of the federal system." As president of the convention, Washington scrupulously maintained his impartiality as the presiding officer but privately pushed for a strong federal government. To the Pennsylvania delegate, Gouverneur Morris, who drafted much of the Constitution, he wrote: "If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair. The event is in the hands of God."

On September 17, 1787, the completed Constitution of the United States was formally signed by the delegates. Convinced that the Constitution was the best that could be hoped for at the time, Washington threw himself with vigor into pushing for its ratification. Angered by his own Virginia's call for another convention, Washington himself made the choice clear-ratification of the proposed Constitution or "a continued drift toward ruin." In June the great decision became final when New Hampshire produced the ninth and decisive ratification approval.

Under the terms of the Constitution, the formal election for president was done by an Electoral College. Each elector was to vote for two persons; the winner would be the president, and the runner-up would be the vice president. On February 4th, the electors unanimously voted for George Washington, who thereby became president. Their second choice, far from unanimous, was John Adams of Massachusetts.

Washington's continuing concerns for the future of America's fragile democracy were evident in his letter to Henry Knox: "My movements to the chair of government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of execution …. I am sensible that I am embarking the voice of the people and a good name of my own on this voyage; but what returns will be made for them, Heaven alone can foretell."

On April 30, 1789, Washington took the oath of office in New York City. In his inaugural address, he made but one political request. He suggested that, while Congress must decide how far it would go in proposing amendments to the Constitution, its members "would carefully avoid every alteration which might endanger the benefits of an united and effective government, or which ought to await the future lessons of experience."

President Bush commented on Iraq's election: "There's a lot of joy…in seeing the Iraqi people accomplish this major milestone on the march to democracy…. This will send such a powerful example to others in the region." May the lessons of experience with their own democracy leave a legacy that will make Iraqis as proud of their history of freedom as we are of our own!

Dr. Terry Paulson is a psychologist, speaker and author of The Dinner: The Political Conversation Your Mother Told You Never to Have. Share your comments at his PoliticalTalk Blog or contact him at Terry@TerryPaulson.com.

—May we never forget how truly blessed we are!