Open Government

Chapter 3. By the People

Carl Malamud

Address to the Gov 2.0 Summit

Washington, D.C.

September 10, 2009

When Abraham Lincoln spoke of “a government of the people, by the people, for the people,” he was speaking of more than the consecration of a battlefield, he was speaking of a wave of transformation that was changing the way government related to the citizens it served.

This transformation was the second of three waves of change. The first—the Founders’ wave—began when printers such as Ben Franklin and pamphleteers such as Thomas Paine dared to involve themselves in civic affairs, publishing their opinions about how government should function, the policies it should follow, daring even to say that the people should go so far as to select their own leaders.

This first wave of transformation culminated when Thomas Jefferson took the White House, riding in on a crest of populist sentiment, a reaction against his more button-down predecessors, George Washington and John Adams. While both Washington and Adams were revolutionaries, they were aristocratic revolutionaries, governing from the top down, an elite who favored the populace with public service by governing them.

John Adams took great pains to instill a sense of dignity (some said majesty) in the new offices of government. He designed an official vice presidential uniform and suggested that Washington be addressed as “Your Excellency.” Adams’ sense of pomp was such that the Jeffersonians took to referring to him as “His Rotundity” ...