Once upon a time, loud dissent, filibustering in the Senate, and gridlock in the House were as democratic as apple pie.
A Senator Obama once defended his attempts to block confirmation votes on judicial appointments by alleging, “The Founding Fathers established the filibuster as a means of protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority.”
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In 2005, progressives were relieved that a Democratic minority had just gridlocked Congress — ending recently reelected president George W. Bush’s plan to reform Social Security. Gridlock, in other words, was a helpful constitutional tool when a minority party wanted to block a president’s legislative initiatives. A then-cool Senator Obama suggested Bush and his congressional supporters “back off” and “let go of their egos.”
How about loud opposition to a sitting president? Well, in 2003, Sen. Hillary Clinton unloaded on those she claimed had called for less dissent: “I am sick and tired of people who call you unpatriotic if you debate this administration’s policies.”
These examples could be multiplied. But they are enough to offer contrast with a suddenly much different attitude toward what was only recently seen as the wonderful complexity of American democracy.
Take Obama, now the president — and apparently frustrated. He’s angry that his progressive efforts are facing legislative opposition: “We knew this was going to take time because we’ve got this big, messy, tough democracy.”
Obama expanded on “messy” to La Raza activists, who wanted amnesty for illegal aliens, by lamenting that he could not somehow “bypass Congress and change the laws on my own.” He later added for emphasis: “Believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting.”
To quote former Senator Clinton, many people are now “sick and tired” of the Obama administration’s efforts to silence critics. First, during the 2008 campaign, there was “Fight the Smears,” a website Team Obama started to monitor its critics. JournoList followed, with a liberals-only forum of influential media pundits venting their private anger over criticism of Obama. Now there is yet another version, AttackWatch.com, a creepy website — set up with melodramatic photos and “files” like an intelligence service’s red and black dossiers — that implores readers to scout around and send in examples of criticism of Obama.
In fact, lots of liberal politicians and commentators suddenly do not like our ancestral “messy” democracy. North Carolina governor Beverly Perdue recently unloaded on the current gridlock over the president’s jobs bill: “I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years. . . . I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.”
Former Obama budget director Peter Orszag is also angry about “the Civics 101 fairy tale about pure representative democracy.” Suddenly, after the 2010 midterm elections, he now wants “a new set of rules and institutions that would make legislative inertia less detrimental to our nation’s long-term health.”
Columnist Fareed Zakaria not long ago lamented the rigidity of the U.S. Constitution itself, and wants to change the “highly undemocratic” Electoral College and the method of electing senators.
Is this sudden liberal discontent with “messy” democracy just typical American politics evident in both parties — the “out” minority party praising obstructionism only to blast it when it becomes the “in” governing party?
Of course.
But there is a deeper problem with the entire premise of Obamaism, which was not sold to voters as just another Democratic alternative, but rather as a holistic hope-and-change movement. Obamaism was to do everything from cool the planet to lower the rising waters, as giddy editors and historians compared its architect to a god, and pronounced a near novice the smartest man ever to be elected president.
If polls and the economy are any indication, that utopian dream is now mostly over. One way of explaining the unexpected Obama meltdown would be that a president with so little prior executive experience was bound not to be up to the job of administering the most powerful nation in history.
Another explanation would be the wrong agenda itself: Progressives finally got their long-awaited messianic messenger — so unlike the inept Jimmy Carter and the triangulator Bill Clinton — but his left-wing message turned off the people as never before.
But there is a third and apparently more useful excuse. The American system itself — suddenly, around 2010 — simply became too rigid and obstructionist to appreciate Obama’s agenda, so now it must be changed.
How odd that some progressive thinkers forgot the age-old fallacy that supposedly noble ends can justify questionable means. Or, to paraphrase the Bard, the problem is not in the stars, but within yourselves.
The Left has a fundamentally flawed image of human nature. It abandons the classic view that people are a perverse blend of nobility and vice and substitutes the "enlightened" idea that some of us are unreservedly "good" while others are unreservedly "bad." In this view democracy is reserved for the good people while the bad people need to be silenced and disenfranchised through every means available.
This is the sort of narcissistic, self-serving philosophy that inevitably follows when Judeo-Christian morality is jettisoned: when there is no God, every man is God -- and all Hell breaks loose.
With a true understanding of human nature in mind it's plain we need the checks and balances of our Constitution not just as a safeguard against "them" but also, and primarily, as a safeguard against "us."
There is a good chance that the GOP will win the Senate in the November 2012 election (cf. the betting on Intrade).
After which time, the Democrats will swiftly forget all the attacks they made on the filibuster as "obstructionist and undemocratic," and start filibustering Republican legislation to "protect the people from the tyranny of the majority."
Dateline March 2013:
Q: "Haven't you changed your view on the filibuster, Minority Leader Reid?"
A: "No. The Republican party used the filibuster to protect the rich. We Democrats use the filibuster to protect the people!"
My favorite card game is any game in which the players are vague on the rules. As the hands are dealt, it’s amusing and instructive to note how rules are suddenly remembered by a player with an urgent need. Of course, those same rules may end up causing that player to lose the entire game when later applied to his detriment.
Moral: Rules are the game within the game, not without.
Hanson's execution is the usual garbage, but his point is absolutely right.
If we can't stand the filibuster, we need to elect more than 60 senators from one party (and allow the other to tire out after reading phone books).
Even the decision to allow "elites" to make major policy decisions is itself a major policy decision that should ultimately be the subject of periodic general elections. Americans are not smart enough to figure out which bridges need fixing, but they are smart enough to figure out that they ought to empower someone to do the figuring out, or in the alternative to decide that it shouldn't be figured out at all. And if it takes until the next election for American to figure out that they made a grave mistake when they decided not to have someone figure out which bridges out to be fixed, that ain't so hot, but it sure beats the alternative.
Why can’t my locally elected county commissioner or my state department of transportation engineering department decide which bridges need fixing? I cannot understand the impulse to surrender these issues to some unelected, and thus unaccountable, Czar for redress unless there are hidden motives at work.
This whole infrastructure spending idea is a straw man. How many of the unemployed or unemployable are fit enough for jobs in heavy construction in the first place? Do you really want a guy- and let’s face it, females, gays, the differentially abled , single moms, college grads with liberal arts majors etc.. are way underrepresented in the construction trades- with no experience working red iron hundreds of feet up in the air or driving a D-9 Caterpillar ? There isn’t much shovel work in big construction projects anymore and civil engineers, heavy equipment operators and skilled heavy construction workers are not likely to be unemployed even in these trying times.
You are not serious Mike, none of you liberals are. If you wanted to reduce our energy consumption by 10 percent, preserve forest and wetlands, provide higher wages for workers, decrease pollution and increase employment opportunities for most Americans you would be marching against our open boarder policy and our obscene levels of legal immigration from the third world. In other words get the tens of millions of people who have no legal right to be here out of here. But you are not serious and neither are your corrupt gangster union bosses and neither are the predominantly white urban hipsters at the forefront of your faux revolution.
By the way when publications from Oxford University Press start listing you as a source for their scholarship in classic antiquity will your critique of Dr. Hanson be anything but a bad joke.
There are several Secretaries in charge of various Departments of the executive branch. Basically, we have czars because Presidents don't want to deal directly with Secretaries, including disciplining or firing them. A President with czars is a President who does not know how to manage.
Congress should reduce White House staffing to 1950-1960 levels. Any more staff, including czars, is pure dysfunction.
Congrats Mike B, you just figured out why we have state and local governments. And further bolstered the reason we need to rein in Federal and empower States.
Central command and control looks good on paper, makes it easy to rule, and easier to corrupt than 50 different state houses. But like most issues liberals pick and choose their states rights. States rights are grand for medical marijuana, bad for things like immigration.
"Americans are not smart enough to figure out which bridges need fixing....".
Dimwitted "Americans" would most likely select the bridge that they had long recognized as the most obviously in a state of poor maintenance. The experts in the political class will figure it out for sure. They would most likely chose the one with the highest political visability (regardless of its state of needed repair)and then proceed to turn the work over to the union controlled construction company owned by some really smart politician's brother-in-law. I'll go with the not-so-smart Americans that you put down.
It has been suggested that it is near impossible to adequately govern 300 million people. If so, perhaps it is yet another reason why the states should do most of the governing, allowing for different laws in different states, and keep the federal government to what really requires a national scope (e.g. defense, foreign treaties).
Obama may thus have a point that the job is too difficult for anyone to do, but the deconstruction of the system is not the only solution. It is also rational to go back to the federalism model that was the basis for the government originally. Why should the federal government decide what is best for us, with its "one size fits all" solutions? Let the states be the laboratories of democracy they were intended to be, and let people move to those states they find most congenial.
Great comment. The loss of states rights is a huge issue in so many of our problems. My reading of the constitution indicates that the federal government exists first for the common defense and secondly to provide just enough uniformity to allow the states to interact with one another smoothly and provide a common face to the rest of the world predominantly in matters of commerce.
In the 20th century (and I believe nearly the whole century) we went so far away from this that we cannot even imagine what that is like any more. Everyone that eye witnessed this America is dead. We can only read about it now. This drift from federalism is what has turned the presidency into a virtually impossible job and made it virtually impossible to have a congress with any kind of decent approval rating.
Backing out of this situation is going to be tricky though. We can hurt a lot of people badly if we do it wrong. But we will hurt these same people worse if we do nothing and continue until the whole thing collapses or explodes.
The candidate I am looking for right now is the one with the best exit plan from excessively intrusive government. I reject the one that wants to pull the plug on everything instantly. I also reject the one that does not want real change.
There are some candidates that have some good ideas, but so far nobody with what I am looking for. Basically a person with Tea Party ideas but that has a realistic and phased implementation plan of those ideas. I just don't see any comprehensive plans.
I might be looking for the impossible or maybe I would not recognize the right plan if I saw it. I don't know but I will continue to look.
It is obvious to me that Obama and the progressives want to "fundamentally change" this nation from a representative republic, a free market economy, to a socialist state. I believe that this president had, from the beginning, the goal to change our economy to a government is boss economy. He has been successful in his efforts to make more people dependent on government rather than encouraging self-reliance. His goal is to continue to increase that number until all are dependent. Look at the policies that Obama has put forth thus far. Look at the agencies that spew forth regulation after regulation with no regard for the economic impact. Obamacare, "the rich need to pay their fair share" tax increases (that will hit anyone making $200K and up), redistribution of wealth based on Obama's version of fairness, regulate the coal fired electic generation facilities out of existance (without regard for the economic impact on the citizenry), and there are many more examples.
Businesses will not hire and entrepreneurs will not start new businesses until one of three things happen: Obama changes his philosophy of government from big gov to "get out of the way gov", or he opts out of the 2012 elections, or he is defeated in 2012. Nothing he is currently doing is designed to turn this economy around.
Thank God for the filibuster! It is not intransigence on either party's part when they oppose legislation that they feel is not in the best intrest of the country.
VDH, thank you for another good article. If it brings out the Paid Prog to comment here, you know it was a good one. There are only thirteen months until we can vote to rid ourselves of the grossly incompetent Prog Pope and begin eradicating the Obamunist influence in the federal government with its failed European socialist policies.
"It's the economy stupid." I know our Chief in Class-Warfare Monger is doing his best to split our country apart as seen by signs on occupied Wall Street "Abolish Capatilism, Fight for Socialism!" But we have to focus on jobs and growth of the economy. We only need to dump Obama in the wastebasket of failed democratic leaders along with his Ivy League ideaology which has bankrupted this country and move forward toward greater prosperity in 2012.
On the nose again. The media, were they up to their job, would be highlighting the direct link between Obama's demagoguery and the sudden congregation of useful idiots occupying Wall Street, demanding an end to capitalism and all manner of utopian fantasies. Of course, they also want an immediate improvement in the economy so they can get back on the benefits gravy train that is now endangered by the very policies they want to see more of. Obama's irresponsible divisive rhetoric is clearly intended to whip up the passions of his base at whatever cost to the nation.
Of course, Bush's Social Security privatization scheme was never filibustered, because everybody (by a 55-40 margin) hated it. It was never even brought up in committee.
Let's keep in mind that only by the lies and distortion of the media was that achieved. Had we had an accurate media...or at least a media that acknowledged its bias before reporting...I suspect the outcome would be different.
Same thing for Democrats running as true believers in American Principles. If they explained that they want to do away w/ them...and prefer socialism...they wouldn't win. So they act like they respect the Constitution and Declaration of Independence...but they don't. These comments that Hanson mentions show the disrespect. They don't like it because it constrains their ability to govern (e.g. rule) according to their wishes.
I also disagree w/ Hanson's assertion that both parties do that. I think the only way that conservatives engage in that is to lament the parliamentary tactics and rules of the Senate and House...and their unprecedented use by the Democrats. I have never read of a conservative lamenting our democratic Republic and its founding documents and principles (except Lindsey Graham...and let's face it...if he could run in SC as a liberal Democrat and win...he would).
