Michael Wolraich's Blog - Posts Tagged "president"

Thanks to Michael M. for highlighting Matthew Yglesias's Cassandra prophesy at Vox: "American Democracy is Doomed." In the piece, Yglesias warns that political polarization will sooner or later trigger "a collapse of the legal and political order" in the United States. "If we're lucky," he adds gloomily, "it won't be violent."

You don't have to be a seer to see that the federal government is in crisis. We have been reading about congressional paralysis for five years straight. The immediate cause is no mystery--the American checks-and-balances system does not handle polarization well. The founding fathers, in their zeal to prevent totalitarianism, designed a system that empowers its various branches to sabotage one another for political gain.

If Yglesias had limited his conclusions to these observations, the result would have been an interesting if prosaic political commentary. But where's the fun in that? Headline-grabbing doom prophesies trend much better than humdrum political commentary. Fortunately for the health of American democracy, they are invariably specious, and this one is no exception.

To his credit, Yglesias knows enough history to recognize that partisan polarization is nothing new. Inter-party hostilty has plagued federal government for most of American history. But he argues that this time is different because the polarization is ideological, in contrast to the spoils system that divided the parties in the Gilded Age.

That characterization is not completely accurate, but the real flaw in Yglesias's argument is another confusion.The political system he portrays is a rigid thing, shackled in place by ancient Constitutional chains. In fact, our government is perpetually evolving to deal with political crises like the one we face today.

For example, Yglesias cites the filibuster crisis as one threat to the Republic. To be precise, we should call it the Senate filibuster crisis, for there is also such a thing as a House filibuster--or at least there used to be. In the late 1800s, congressmen from the minority party used to "vanish" whenever the clerk called roll for a bill they opposed. They remained in their seats, but by pretending to be absent, they denied the Speaker his quorum, and the vote could not proceed. Such obstructive tactics would tie up the House for weeks, effectively killing the legislation.

Speaker Thomas Brackett Reed solved that problem in 1890 by pushing through a new set of rules that abolished the disappearing quorum trick and granted additional power to the Speaker. Democratic congressmen reacted with a fury that easily outclasses any modern examples of partisan polarization:

A hundred of them “were on their feet howling for recognition,” wrote a reporter. "Fighting Joe" Wheeler, the diminutive former Confederate cavalry general, unable to reach the front because of the crowded aisles, came down from the rear “leaping from desk to desk as an ibex leaps from crag to crag.” As the excitement grew wilder, the only Democrat not on his feet was a huge representative from Texas who sat in his seat significantly whetting a bowie knife on his boot.

-- Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower

Eat your heart out, Ted Cruz!

What worked in the House 125 years ago can work in the Senate today. If the effectiveness of the Senate continues to deteriorate, some future Senate Majority Leader will follow Speaker Reed's lead and eliminate the filibuster by invoking the so-called nuclear option. Perhaps journalists of the 22nd century worrying about some future political crisis will forget that the filibuster ever existed.

Yglesias also points to the conflict between modern presidents and Congress, remarking on the overheated charges of "dictator" leveled against both George W. Bush and Barak Obama. Yet, long-dead legislators have routinely hurled the same epithets against every assertive president in American history, though they used to say "monarch" instead of "dictator."

In fact, the expansion of presidential power is another example of how our government has evolved to overcome Constitutional constraints. Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory. Andrew Jackson wielded the presidential veto. Abraham Lincoln emancipated the slaves. Theodore Roosevelt prosecuted the trusts. FDR packed the courts. Bitter legislators warned of despotism just like they do in response to Obama's executive actions, but their doom prophesies were quickly forgotten. Today, the same presidents are lionized for decisive leadership, and the powers they assumed are taken for granted.

So don't fret too much. Yes, American democracy is in crisis, but it has survived worse.