A Tocqueville for our time
Almost two centuries after he traveled around the United States studying its people and government, the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville remains one of the most influential of all commentators on American politics. Tocqueville’s two-volume masterwork, Democracy in America, published in 1835 and 1840, retains “the uncanny glamour of scripture, cited by all who wish to say something about democracy and its prospects or America and its destiny,” writes MIT emeritus historian Arthur Kaledin in a new book about Tocqueville. And because Tocqueville often related the strengths of the U.S. government to the optimism and vitality of the country’s culture — “Every day in America is new,” he wrote — citing him allows Americans a double dose of self-flattery: The country’s government works because of the qualities of the people. But was Tocqueville as sanguine about American democracy...