Lyle Denniston, the National Constitution Center’s constitutional literacy adviser, looks at how the founders would not have imagined a national government shutdown in a disagreement over national policy.
THE STATEMENTS AT ISSUE:
“One of our two major political parties is hostage to an extreme subgroup that won’t brook compromise, values theatrical protests over actual governing and is adolescent in its ideological vanity. Of course, [House Speaker John] Boehner couldn’t last: He’s an adult….The qualities of maturity, steadiness and prudence aren’t in especially big favor right now with an animated, engaged and frighteningly influential segment of the Republican electorate.”
– Excerpt from an opinion column by Frank Bruni in The New York Times on September 27, commenting on the effects of deep political polarization in the House of Representatives and its role in the sudden resignation of the Speaker of the House.
“Some in Congress and the White House hold out hope that Mr. Boehner’s departure and the election of a new speaker will break the fever among conservatives, who have been plotting his downfall for over a year, and grant his replacement a grace period….But more pervasive is a sense of dread that an already bitter and divisive political atmosphere is about to get even worse….With conservatives claiming Mr. Boehner’s demise as a political victory, many expect his successor to face tremendous pressure to bring that combative spirit to the halls of Congress, and to instigate a showdown with the president over budget limits and the debt ceiling at the end of the year.”
– Excerpt from a front-page story in The New York Times on September 27, by staff writers Jonathan Weisman and Michael D. Shear discussing prospects for future gridlock in Washington and the possibility of another government shutdown.
WE CHECKED THE CONSTITUTION, AND…
The founders who fashioned a new government for America in 1787 were entirely familiar with factional politics. James Madison said in Federalist Paper No. 10 that factions were to be expected in human nature, and were “the diseases most incident to republican government” – government by the people. But he and his contemporaries might have been naïve about whether the destructive potential of factionalism could be held in check.
In the No. 10 essay on the subject, Madison wrote confidently: “The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular states but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other states.” An isolated faction, in other words, would remain either isolated, or checked by other forces of influence on government. That optimism may not be valid in today’s era of mass communication, in which a movement that starts out as a splinter group can gain adherents across the country, and can elect a sizeable bloc of representatives to Congress. The founders probably would never have imagined that a shutdown of the entire national government would be considered an appropriate way, or would ever succeed as a way, to win in a disagreement over national policy.
Indeed, one of the assumptions commonly held by the draftsmen of the Constitution at the Philadelphia Convention was that, by and large, those elected to national office would be civic-minded, and would be concerned primarily with serving what Madison called “the public good.” The system of government they were setting up, they believed confidently, would not have a large place for unworthy practitioners of factional politics.
If it is now true that the spirit of faction has grown to the point that a leader who believes that compromise is necessary to a functioning government can no longer lead the House of Representatives, it is small wonder that serious commentators are now questioning whether governing itself is actually possible in this new environment. In other words, has the nation reached the point where, at least in the view of some who are involved in the process, no government is better than a government built on compromise?
It is an odd coincidence that such questions now arise so soon after Pope Francis, in his address to Congress last week, cautioned that “we must move forward together, as one, in a renewed spirit of fraternity and solidarity, cooperating generously for the common good.” He insisted that “the challenges facing us today call for a renewal of that spirit of cooperation which has accomplished so much good throughout the history of the United States.”
That the Pope’s message has not had an immediate effect may suggest that what America is now witnessing is merely a matter of transitory politics, and that, before long, a more mature judgment will emerge and the policy crisis of the moment will pass. Still, it is in order to ask whether what is now happening is, instead, a problem of constitutional proportions, one not so easily overcome?
The basic structure of the national government bequeathed to America by the founding generation has actually not changed that much over more than two centuries. It is true that, in strength and in power, the national government has grown immensely, and that is seen by those who favor less government as a threat to constitutional governance. There are serious scholars who write about restoring the “lost” Constitution, by which they mainly mean decentralizing the performance of governmental functions.
When pursued politically rather than philosophically, however, that ambition at times has sometimes been transformed into an extreme form of obstructionism, a perception that virtually any tactic of opposition is acceptable if the ultimate policy goal is worth pursuing.
That perception is reinforced, of course, by an apparent change in the political tastes of a segment of the voting public, which now seems to favor presidential candidates who have been outsiders to government, who fashion campaigns specifically around the argument that government itself is broken and needs fresh hands at the levers of power.
That kind of politics, of course, can be seen as little more than a new form of confrontation, hardly likely to reduce the spirit of faction and to build up, instead, the spirit of cooperation.
It may be that what has been happening in Washington in recent months, perhaps over the past couple of years, is that the Constitution itself is not in need of being mended, so much as civic virtue needs to be rehabilitated by a more active citizenry taking notice of the threatening trends and doing something about them. That, perhaps, is what James Madison would say.
