I closed my reflec­tions on Egypt with the title’s Ben Franklin quo­ta­tion. And I want to expand on that point briefly, because there’s often con­fu­sion about what it takes to make a repub­lic. We some­times think that a nation has become a demo­c­ra­t­ic repub­lic because it elects its lead­ers and has a con­sti­tu­tion that checks the right box­es. But we know that some of his­to­ry’s great­est mon­sters first came to pow­er through legit­i­mate elec­tions, seiz­ing and con­sol­i­dat­ing pow­er through con­sti­tu­tion­al means, until their repub­lic atro­phied into dic­ta­tor­ship. Exam­ples of this process stretch back at least to the rise of Julius Cae­sar him­self, and cer­tain­ly include Mubarak.

A democ­ra­cy demands more than elec­tions, and more than guar­an­tees on paper about demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es. For the Unit­ed States, proof that we’d keep our democ­ra­cy took 12 years after the first pres­i­dent was elect­ed. The first great moment was George Wash­ing­ton’s deci­sion not to run for re-elec­tion. He could eas­i­ly have had him­self crowned king, and named his suc­ces­sor. But he stepped aside and remained large­ly dis­tant from pol­i­tics after leav­ing office, allow­ing a fair play­ing field for sub­se­quent pres­i­den­tial elections.

The oth­er great ear­ly moment in democ­ra­cy was when Thomas Jef­fer­son took pow­er from his bit­ter rival John Adams. Such a smooth shift in pow­er was unprece­dent­ed, and set the tone for lat­er elec­toral rival­ries. Al Gore’s con­ces­sion of the 2000 elec­tion was filled with echoes from the civ­il trans­fer of pow­er 200 years ear­li­er. Adams (or Gore) could have kept his cab­i­net as a shad­ow gov­ern­ment, foul­ing every act of the new gov­ern­ment, but instead he allowed his rival to take pow­er smoothly.

The key to these moments was a ded­i­ca­tion to the prin­ci­ples of a shared rev­o­lu­tion. Adams and Wash­ing­ton and Jef­fer­son dis­agreed about many things, but they fought togeth­er to bring about this gov­ern­ment, and they would not betray their prin­ci­ples. They built insti­tu­tions and norms of gov­ern­ment that, while not in the Con­sti­tu­tion, are con­sti­tu­tion­al to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. Some, like lim­it­ing a pres­i­dent to 2 terms, have become con­sti­tu­tion­al. Oth­ers, like elec­toral oppo­nents unit­ing behind the even­tu­al vic­tor of an elec­tion, exist more as estab­lished con­ven­tions than as laws. Per­haps the great­est of these qua­si-con­sti­tu­tion­al norms is the prin­ci­ple of judi­cial review, the notion that the Pres­i­dent and Con­gress must obey the rul­ings of courts who declare their actions unconstitutional.

The rea­son I reject the cyn­i­cism we see from some quar­ters (e.g., also lots of twit­ter com­ments yes­ter­day) is that Egypt has demon­strat­ed that it has many of the key traits it will need. There is a uni­ty to the demands of pro­test­ers, and the cel­e­bra­tions across Egypt, the rolling strikes that pre­ced­ed Mubarak’s res­ig­na­tion, and espe­cial­ly the uni­ty of mes­sage from oppo­si­tion par­ties and even the mil­i­tary and some mem­bers of Mubarak’s own par­ty, all sig­nal that the Egypt­ian peo­ple are unit­ed behind their new democ­ra­cy. Just as the pro­test­ers are now repaving Tahrir square with stones torn up as they defend­ed it from Mubarak’s forces, they’ll have to rebuild their democ­ra­cy. But the fact that so many are out rebuild­ing the nation already is a strong sign.

Fur­ther­more, despite Mubarak’s depre­da­tions, the con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides a good frame­work. Some amend­ments will be nec­es­sary, the pro­test­ers iden­ti­fied the changes that must be made, and the tran­si­tion­al gov­ern­ment has com­mit­ted to mak­ing them before the next elec­tions. This democ­ra­cy isn’t being imposed by a UN man­date or by a mil­i­tary coup seek­ing to legit­imize itself, it is a promise that the peo­ple made to them­selves, and they will not see it betrayed.
More­over, all the reports I’ve seen from experts sug­gest that the courts in Egypt have a strong inde­pen­dent streak, and will be pre­pared to ensure jus­tice as soon as the emer­gency pow­ers law is repealed. The cul­ture of democ­ra­cy already exists, and the chal­lenge will sim­ply be to chan­nel it in healthy ways.

Final­ly, while some have fret­ted that a mil­i­tary coup is hard­ly an aus­pi­cious start to a democ­ra­cy, it should be not­ed that the army has con­sis­tent­ly sig­naled its intent to tran­si­tion to a democ­ra­cy swift­ly, and at least some of the pro­test­ers in Egypt had been look­ing to the mil­i­tary for exact­ly this sort of tran­si­tion­al role. One of the things that has con­tributed to the sta­bil­i­ty of US democ­ra­cy has been a strong tra­di­tion of civil­ian con­trol, a tra­di­tion incul­cat­ed in politi­cians and into mil­i­tary cul­ture. But that isn’t the only way it can work. In Turkey, the mil­i­tary oper­ates essen­tial­ly as anoth­er lev­el of checks and bal­ances on the civil­ian gov­ern­ment, using its might to pre­vent extrem­ist politi­cians from vio­lat­ing the nation’s tra­di­tion of sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment. It’s not a sys­tem I’d want in the US, but it isn’t incon­ceiv­able that the Egypt­ian army could serve a sim­i­lar role, an insti­tu­tion­al defend­er of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy against dem­a­gogues. Through­out this cri­sis, the army made clear that it would not allow Mubarak to use vio­lence to put down dis­sent, and its inter­ven­tion allowed this rev­o­lu­tion to be remark­ably free of vio­lence. There’s no rea­son to doubt its com­mit­ment to this tran­si­tion. There’s a rea­son pro­test­ers are now tak­ing time to clean graf­fi­ti off of the army’s tanks in Tahrir Square: those are the peo­ple’s tanks, now.

It also does­n’t hurt that the US gov­ern­ment has giv­en tons and tons of mon­ey, train­ing, and good­will, to the Egypt­ian mil­i­tary. That should give the US and oth­er inter­na­tion­al observers some lever­age on the tran­si­tion­al mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment, as well as cred­i­bil­i­ty in what­ev­er nego­ti­a­tions we might have with the tran­si­tion­al gov­ern­ment. The Egypt­ian peo­ple want democ­ra­cy, the for­mal and infor­mal struc­ture of the gov­ern­ment is con­ducive to democ­ra­cy, and Egyp­t’s inter­na­tion­al part­ners want democracy. 

Let’s enjoy the warm glow.

Images via Arwa Mah­moud’s twit­ter stream.