My first year of graduate school I took a couple of courses on American politics, including “Voting and Elections.” Both courses began by noting that the framers of our Constitution feared, perhaps more than anything, the appearance of demagogues in our republican system. This point was repeated so often throughout the semester that I accepted it as democratic dogma. I never questioned the claim—and there is plenty of evidence in the Founding documents to back it up—and often repeated it to my own students.
