On the morning after elections, many voters wake up and instinctively quote Dorothy Parker: “What fresh hell is this?” “Will of the people!” is the correct answer—at least if a Democrat won the election. Actually, the notion that election results represent the “will of the people” is one of the most audacious triumphs of democratic propaganda. Ever since the Civil War era, presidents have periodically invoked “will of the people” to sanctify their own power. President Andrew Johnson declared in 1867 that “the appointing power”—i.e., himself—“represents the collective majesty and speaks the...

Presidential season is a time for Americans to restore their faith in democracy. How can folks not be filled with gratitude for being permitted a perfunctory choice of who will seize their paychecks and tyrannize them in the following four years? Actually, I’ve had a bad attitude on presidential elections going back to the end of the Reagan era. In a 1988 Detroit News piece headlined “Quadrennial Hunt for the Great Man,” I wrote, “Every four years or so, the absurdity of our current system becomes vivid. We have created a huge engine of government—even though there is no one even vaguely...