In the middle of the 1970s, Zbigniew Brzezinski approached his friend, Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington, with a question: Is democracy in crisis? It was a subject of much concern at the Trilateral Commission, a kind of Rotary Club for members of the international power elite that Brzezinski had co-founded in 1973 with David Rockefeller, head of Chase Manhattan and grandson of the famous robber baron. With the Trilateral Commission's backing, Huntington and two co-authors produced a survey of democracy's health in the United States, Europe, and Asia. They found that faith in government had nosedived, political parties were fracturing, and efforts to pacify voters through more public spending had sent both inflation rates and deficits soaring. Too many people—Huntington's list included “blacks, Indians, Chicanos, white ethnic groups, students, and women”—were demanding too much from politics, rendering the entire system ungovernable.
