Democracy Means No One Is Irreplaceable

Recent events in New York City have brought into sharp focus a dangerous misconception in modern democracy: the idea of the irreplaceable leader. No doubt this is behind Trump’s “personalization of power” and also behind the fact that we have a Congressional gerontocracy that clings to office like ancient monarchs, convinced their decades-long reign is somehow essential to democracy itself. While the ethical sense that each of us is singular and irreplaceable is correct, the moment we extend this sentiment to political office, we corrupt the very foundations of democratic governance.

As Mayor Eric Adams faces corruption charges and allegations of making deals with Trump's Department of Justice, we're witnessing the perilous intersection of personality politics and institutional decay. Adams' attempt to leverage his office to escape accountability isn't just corruption—it's a miniature version of the very power-personalizing playbook Trump has made his signature. 

New York governor Kathy Hochul's reflexive sense that there's something undemocratic to replacing Adams has it exactly backward while misunderstanding what makes democratic and republican forms of governance possible in the first place.

As such, this crisis offers more than just another example of political corruption—it provides an opportunity to reinvigorate our fundamental assumptions about democratic leadership. For example, the ancient Athenians would have found our current predicament both familiar and strange. Familiar in its display of how power corrupts, strange in our apparent inability to implement the simplest of safeguards against such corruption. Their solution to this eternal problem was radical by today's standards: democracy by lot, or sortition. Rather than placing faith in specific individuals deemed irreplaceable, they created a system where leadership positions were filled by random selection from the citizen body.

The Greek experiment with sortition offers valuable insights for our current predicament. When citizens were randomly selected for public service, it became impossible for any individual to accumulate excessive power or to become "irreplaceable." This system had several advantages that resonate with our modern challenges: First, it prevented the concentration of power that enables corruption. Random selection made it difficult for special interests to capture the system because they couldn't know in advance who would hold power. Second, it promoted genuine citizen engagement—when anyone might be called to serve, everyone had reason to stay informed and engaged with public affairs. Third, it ensured diverse representation, as the selected body naturally reflected the demographic makeup of the citizenry.

While one could rightly say that small-r republicans, especially the founders, might chafe against such an idea—the office holders they sought were virtuous, not just anyone—this wasn't merely an ancient curiosity. That’s because republicans took from the Athenian system a fundamental truth: democracy functions best when it doesn't depend on the virtue of individual leaders. The current situation in New York City—where a mayor allegedly leverages his position to negotiate with federal authorities—illustrates the dangers of consolidating too much power in any single individual or confusing the person for the office they inhabit. 

Niccolò Machiavelli, writing in The Discourses on Livy, argued that the health of a republic depends on its ability to check and replace leaders so that no single person or faction can dominate. In the broader neo-Roman republican tradition, public officials are temporary stewards rather than permanent governors, always subject to removal if they betray the public trust. 

Inheriting this tradition, the founders of the American Republic created a system of checks and balances precisely because they knew the dangers of relying on individual virtue. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 51, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." The current crisis in New York City suggests we've strayed from this wisdom, allowing personality to override the office.

John Adams, writing in 1776, insisted that "where annual elections end, there slavery begins," and advocated for the rotation of all offices. This regular turnover, he argued, would "teach them the great political virtues of humility, patience, and moderation, without which every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey."

Now, before one thinks this makes elections sacrosanct, the Constitution continually reinforces the principle of replaceability. The founders deliberately created mechanisms to replace officials who abuse their position, recognizing that preserving the republic must take precedence over any individual's hold on power. At each turn, whether one looks to early state forms of impeachment or the U.S. Constitution or the republican thinkers that influenced them, one finds no examples of procedures demanding the kinds of proof Hochul suggests—for example, the U.S. Constitution clearly divorces impeachment from any kind of criminal proceedings. These mechanisms aren't anti-democratic—they're essential features of democratic governance. 

In the case of Eric Adams, the question isn't whether removing him would subvert democracy, but whether failing to do so would allow the corruption of democratic institutions to continue. When an elected official attempts to leverage their position to avoid accountability, they've already betrayed the trust placed in the office they hold. The democratic response isn't to preserve their position out of misplaced reverence for electoral outcomes, but to utilize the constitutional mechanisms designed precisely for such situations.

Moreover, even if one weren't given over to reading Montesquieu and the rest on this point, there's the fact that political parties have largely done the work of safeguarding that people electing Adams get what they want. The party system, for all its flaws, ensures a degree of ideological and policy consistency that transcends any individual officeholder. Indeed, it’s not too far to say the party system helps form much of the “voter intent” Hochul and the like seem to think inheres in such personalities as that of Eric Adams. 

To put it plainly: your thinking has clearly gone wrong if you take yourself to be honoring democratic and republican forms of governance to keep in office those who display the viciousness that the founders never tired of warning us about. Indeed, in an age where so many Americans navigate the precarity of the gig economy, it's darkly ironic that the politicians, many of whom have presided over this transformation, have taken to think of their offices as permanent sinecures.

In this time of democratic crisis, it's crucial to remember that the strength of democracy lies not in its leaders—that is the way to tyranny—but in its institutions and the principle that no one person is above the law or irreplaceable in their role. Hochul was thus wrong to claim, too, that in a time when Trump is attacking all sorts of institutions, we must keep Adams in office. As the founders and the republican tradition make clear, removing Adams is how you honor these institutions—anything else further degrades them.

Thus, we’d do no better than heed the counsel of Eric Adams’ namesake, who had it right about democratic leaders—"Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, They rise, they break, and to that sea return."

Featured image is The Senate as a court of impeachment for the trial of Andrew Johnson, by Theodore R. Davis