Catch of the Day

Please, bloggers who write about democracy and institutions, read this from Andrew Rudalevige:

Now, for the record, we do not actually have an executive-centered presidential system, or even a presidential system. At least, if we do, that’s not the Constitution’s fault. Congress is Article I, and for a reason: Congress is a hugely powerful legislative institution. It can act in almost all areas of governance, overruling the president — given sufficient unity. Indeed, Congress can get rid of the president — again, given sufficient unity.

I have plenty more to say about all of this, but I think I'm going to stop right there, other than referring you to the rest of the post, because this is really, really, important. The US system is one of separated institutions sharing powers. It is not a "presidential" system.

Great catch!

It's Still About the Broken GOP

I have to commend Ezra Klein for push, push, pushing everyone to understand the place of the presidency in the US political system. As he says, that system "is centered around Congress rather than the White House," and he's been doing terrific and incredibly valuable work explaining to people what this means in terms of the limits of what presidents can do. I do hope everyone reads his latest essay on the topic, from his Wonkblog on Friday.

That said, I continue to dissent from what Klein, Rick Hasen, and others say about polarization. Oh, there's no question about the levels of partisan polarization: we all agree about that. The key points are well documented; it's been the case for over a decade that the most liberal Republicans in the House and in the Senate are more conservative than the most conservative Democrats. Or at least that's how they vote in Congress, which is basically the same thing. And I think there's general consensus that polarization is probably pretty stable at these levels. Other than the emergence of some new and so far unexpected new ue area of public policy which cuts in a totally different way than current issues, there's really no reason to expect significant change.

The question -- and Hasen goes over this pretty thoroughly in his paper -- is whether institutional change is needed for the political system to function with partisan polarization.

And I continue to believe that there's nothing inherent in partisan polarization that makes Madisonian politics -- separated institutions sharing powers -- a problem.

It's true that Madisonian institutions often yield gridlock; in my view, the strongest critique of the US system is that it is biased in favor of the status quo. Gridlock -- situations in which issues lie unresolved for extended periods, often despite majority public opinion appearing to favor one side of the argument, or perhaps despite the availability of what appears (to the critic) to be obvious "common sense" compromises -- is frustrating. But gridlock doesn't depend on polarization. Current gridlock, I'd say, is nowhere near the problem of the gridlock of the era of the conservative coalition, and especially the period from 1959 through the Kennedy presidency, when liberals held large majorities in Congress and eventually the presidency but often couldn't manage to get legislation out of committees in the pre-reformed Congress. Which certainly doesn't mean reform isn't needed now (after all, reform is part of what ended that era of gridlock), but does remind us that gridlock is a normal part of the system.

All that said: I agree with Hasen and Klein that we have a good deal of dysfunctional gridlock in the present system. Dysfunctional gridlock -- the kind that not only delays "common sense" solutions but also does things like leaving executive branch and judicial positions vacant, threatening to default the government of the United States, and (perhaps) encourages and then allows a party which loses an election to attempt to undermine the economy in order to secure future electoral advantage. The question is whether that sort of dysfunctional gridlock is partisan polarization or not. They both believe that it is; Klein believes that institutional reform is the solution, while Hasen believes that moderate reforms will be ineffective and that it still premature to talk radical Constitutional reform, especially since effecting radical reform is unlikely anyway.

Where I differ with them is that I do not believe that partisan polarization makes dysfunctional gridlock likely. It's not partisan polarization that's the problem; it's the broken, radical Republican Party. Essentially, party polarization isn't nearly as important as the array of problems within the GOP -- antagonism to compromise as an organizing principle; a closed information loop dominated by the Republican-aligned press; a conservative marketplace which blunts the electoral incentive for much of the party; and loss of interest in and capacity for public policy. Without those internal dysfunctions, even an extremely conservative Republican Party would be able to cut deals and allow the political system to function relatively smoothly even with divided government; with those internal dysfunctions, the current system works poorly but any other system would be equally disastrous or worse.

Again, I think that's easiest to see on budget questions. The basic budget question, after all, is basically just about reaching a compromise between two numbers. That shouldn't be difficult, and partisan polarization should actually make it easier, because it allows centralized negotiations. And yet Republicans during this and the previous Congress are stymied because, among many of their constituents, compromise -- even on Republican terms -- means that Republicans have lost, since compromise itself is seen as a disaster.

In my view, then, the real question isn't so much how to change the system to accommodate partisan polarization; the system can handle polarization between two healthy political parties just fine (other than that status quo bias and perhaps other traditionally discussed problems). Instead, what's really needed is some thought about what it would take to cure what's broken with the GOP.

Now, some will argue that it's a problem that's self-correcting: a broken party will lose elections, and we do know that ideologically extreme parties tend to moderate after extended electoral loss. I worry, however, that the current GOP isn't normal enough to follow that pattern. I worry about the conservative marketplace and the downgrading of the electoral incentive. I worry about the information loop, and the inability of even those Republicans who want to win elections to correctly diagnose what it takes to do so. I worry that those who do stay in touch with reality tend to be exiled from the party. And I worry that the electoral incentive for moderation simply isn't great enough to overcome all of that.

Mostly, however, I worry that it's not really just a question of ideological positioning. If Republicans really believe that compromise is evil, then it doesn't really matter whether the ideological gap between their position and the Democratic position is narrow or wide.

Let me put it another way. If I'm correct that the Republican Party is really broken, then "fixing" the system to allow electoral winners to get their way easily is extremely dangerous because sooner or later that broken Republican Party will win but be incapable of governing well. That's a recipe for disaster. Remember, in parliamentary systems, winning parties don't simply impose the most extreme version of their platform; there are usually important institutional constraints (such as a strong bureaucracy, for example) that moderate change. But a reformed US system might not have those constraints -- and if those constraints are system norms, the current Republican Party might simply trample over them.

If, however, the GOP can be "fixed," then the traditional reasons for opposing strict majority party rule still apply, even at the cost of some gridlock. It's still the case that democracy should be rule of the people, not just rule of majorities; it's still the case that those who want voters to choose between two programs are asking for something that voting can't really do, and at any rate something that most voters don't seem particularly interested in.

So it seems to me that the real questions here are about the Republican Party. Has it in fact become dysfunctional? If so, what can be done to restore its health? Will it be self-correcting, thanks to electoral incentives? Or do we need to devise new incentives, and if so, what?

As for reforms to accommodate the current party system, it seems to me that the job of reformers is mostly about finding fixes for those institutions which have been trampled by the dysfunctional GOP, fixes which restore, in many cases, norms which worked fine but have been lost. So Senate reform should be about finding rules to restore what was good about the Senate before it became a 60-vote Senate.

Obviously, none of that is going to happen if people are focused on fairy tales about magic presidents. So what Ezra Klein has been doing is extremely valuable. The next steps, however, are a lot trickier; political scientists really disagree about this stuff, probably because (unlike the question of whether a presidential speech can get Congress to act) it's not really something that can be determined through empirical research. Oh, I think that the questions I raise about the GOP are essentially empirical -- we could determine whether or not electoral incentives are driving them -- but not the questions of majority party rule. On that one, those of us who are with Ranney, with Madison, and with Arendt (at least as I read them) are swimming against the tide in the political culture. But if those thinkers are correct, then it would be a great tragedy indeed if the strengths of the US political system are abandoned.

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Johnny Bench, 65. 

Plenty of good stuff today:

1. Stuart Rothenberg has the best case I've seen for waiting a bit before diving into 2014 (or presumably 2016). I'm on the other side, but I have little to disagree with. See also Walter Shapiro. I disagree with more there (what's wrong with categorizing the nomination chances of potential/earlybird candidates?), but he makes some fair points.

2. Bad news for now for everyone who cares about good political reporting: David Dayen is leaving FDL, and generally going on hiatus. I feel as if the times I've mentioned Dayen (or he's mentioned me) we're usually disagreeing about something, but in fact I very much respect and appreciate his reporting, and I selfishly hope he continues, and soon, the kind of excellent policy and legislative journalism he's been doing.

3. A story that can't be told too often: James Madison, wartime president. Shane Harris has it.

4. If you don't know what all the fuss about Jim DeMint is about, try Dave Weigel's item.

5. Yet another precinct heard from: Sarah Binder on "Lincoln" and the House.

6. John Sides passes along research by Tim LaPira and H.F. Thomas III about lobbyists and Members of Congress (relevant to the post here a couple of days ago about leaving Congress, not to mention the DeMint story).

7. And if you're wondering about how much think tank head honchos make, Sarah Kliff has what you want.

Read Stuff, You Should

I'll start with a general recommendation: if for some reason you haven't been reading the Monkey Cage regularly,  it's really time to try again. I've always been a huge fan of the core group, but recently they've been expanding in two ways. There seem to be a lot more guest posts, usually bringing in someone with relevant expertise when something is in the news. That's excellent. But they've also expanded their group of regular occasional contributors. I mean, having Sarah Binder (and others) was great enough, but look who they've added recently: Hans Noel! David Karol! Larry Bartels! It truly is an All Star list. I mean, the Cage was always worth reading for John Sides and the other regulars, but it's significantly better now.

Also, the great blog The Edge of the American West is back after a recent hiatus.

And now the more specific good stuff...

1. Jack Rakove on James Madison.

2. Good comments on money in politics from Seth Masket. Sounds like a great book project, too.

3. Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein knock down the bad advice David Brooks keeps giving to Barack Obama.

4. Barry Pump looks at the behavior of Senate Democrats.

5. The political scientists at Rule22 have been doing a great series on basics from "institutionalism" -- Joshua Huder looks at time. OK, that doesn't sound interesting, but really, it's important stuff.

6. Matt Glassman answers my question from yesterday about coverage of the JSC and the appropriations trainwreck-to-be. Good analysis; I especially like #5. As I said in comments yesterday, I should have noted, by the way, that Norm Ornstein has been on the the appropriations case from early on, too, so make that Ornstein, Collender, and me.

7. Excellent overview of US military policy and Obama from Fred Kaplan.

8. Adam Serwer is really good on "high tech lynching" (and by the way: it's a phrase that obviously worked, so kudos to whoever wrote it for Clarence Thomas, but there's still nothing "high tech" about either Congressional hearings or Politico stories). Question for John Dickerson, by the way: do you really want to assert that Thomas was "not a public figure or politician" at the time of his confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court? Really? Also, Conor Friedersdorf on the race-obsessed Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives, and E.J. Graff on sexual harassment. One more: David Frum on the "coming Herman Cain culture war." Yes, but I think Marx's thing about tragedy and farce probably applies.

9. Always like to see this: Spencer Ackerman has a nice post saying that he was wrong about Libya, and discussing some of the reasons. Good stuff.

10. Graff on one of the weaker arguments against choice on abortion.

11. Serwer explains the "ethnic revenge flick." Also Michael Tomasky on the ugly history of the Washington Redskins. And Alyssa Rosenberg, first on First Families and then on culture, politics, and Lil Wayne.

On Politics and Principles

Regular readers know that I'm a great fan of Neil Sinhababu, but I really think he's terribly wrong in a post he titled "What Philosophy Can Save You From" last week, in which he argues that the way to avoid the various traps people might fall into in politics -- such as emotional manipulation from professional experts -- is to keep your eyes on the bottom line, which he insists consists of core principles:

What's of fundamental importance in the world, and what good people are really trying to advance through involvement in public life, doesn't have a proper name like "Obama", "Bush", "Reagan", or "the Republican Party." It's described by more general terms like "the greatest happiness for all" or "helping people" or (according to views I think are wrong) "obeying God" or "property rights" or "the revolution." If you don't try to sort out what you care about at this level, the emotions that tie you to politics may attach to politicians and tribes and not the things that are described in well-reasoned principles. And then the things that motivate you won't be the things of real value. Maybe you'll do the right thing accidentally -- that happens often enough. But you'll be very easy to lead astray.
I've been known to get very excited about particular politicians. But if I'm doing it right, I'll be able to subordinate my feelings about them to the thing my utilitarian views tell me is most important -- the greatest happiness for all.

I'm fully, completely, and totally against this view of politics.

First of all, most of us don't actually have "well-reasoned principles" to apply to particular cases. Sinhababu is a philosopher, but most of us aren't -- and we're not ideologues, either. Establishing a hierarchy in which "well-reasoned principles" are the best basis for politics is, in my view, awfully risky if one is concerned about full participation for all, including those unable, untrained, or just uninterested in formulating or adopting such principles.

Second, I'm sympathetic to Arendtian concerns about the mismatch between absolute principles and the intensely particular world of human affairs.

Despite all that, I have no real objection to anyone who chooses to base their own political choices on some sort of first principles. But I also have no objections to those who base political choices on something else, including that most common basis: affiliation with and advocacy for some in-group or groups.* That would include, by the way, political party as the relevant in-group. Of course, our choices of which groups to affiliate with politically is in itself an intensely political decision, whether or not we perceive it that way -- we choose whether to be "gun owners" or "Iowans" or "left handed" or "Polish-American" or "conservative" or "urban" or "suburban" or "bowler" or "small business" or "podiatrist" or "Protestant" or "Star Wars fan" or whatever, even when all of those are descriptively true (okay, I made up an odd mix, but you get the idea).

Nor do I have any problem with those who make political choices based on raw emotional impulse. You like Barack Obama because he seems like a nice person to you, and that seems like a good reason to support a politician? Fine; I might caution you about accuracy of impressions filtered through the media and campaigns, but I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

Now, could those non-principled bases for political action lead to errors? Sure: it's politics! You don't get to know in advance what the "correct" choice is. Sinhababu is worried that emotional attachment to a "tribe or politician" may lead to poor choices, choices that don't conform to one's deeper values -- but that's irrelevant for those who don't have those principles (or whose principles include loyalty to a group), and at any rate it's, again, a hopeless standard, because there is no way to avoid errors in politics.**

The reason I care about all of this gets back to the very beginning, when I was mentioned the possibility of being "uninterested" in principles. More to the point, I worry about those whose principles are not strongly enough held to entice them into political action, because I do share what I see as Madison's concern: that it's one thing to establish a republic in which all citizens are empowered to act equally, and quite another to figure out how to entice them to actually get involved. That's the crisis of 1787; not just that the mechanics of the Articles were broken, but that republicans had always assumed that only a virtuous people could make a republic work, and as 1776 gives way to 1787 it's increasingly clear that the people were to be corrupt, not virtuous. In my reading, Madison's leap is to essentially jettison the assumption of virtue and try to use self-interest to entice people back into public action. That's why Madison's Federalist essays are so radical: he's overturning not only centuries of assumptions about the mechanics of republics, but far more critical assumptions about the citizens of republics. Madison makes self-interest -- not well-argued principles -- the entryway for political participation precisely because he's seeing all around him the lure of private happiness, rather than the appeal of public happiness. Now, I think Madison certainly still cared about virtue, but he chose to hope that once people entered politics (usually for self-interested reasons) that they then would enlarge their views and eventually (perhaps, or at least potentially) learn virtue.***

So what worries me is that over two centuries on we still have a residue of contempt for the plurality of things that actually get real-life citizens to enter into public affairs, and that we should fight hard against that residue -- because the far more real danger isn't that people will enter political life and then make poor choices, but that they won't enter into public affairs at all.

OK, I think I'll quit there. One of these days I need to talk about the angels in Fed 51, but I've written enough for now, and I need something to save for a slow news day!



*Indeed, I'm tempted to define away Sinhababu's first principles into a group advocacy: he doesn't really advocate for utilitarian principles, but instead advocates in favor of what-utilitarians-should-support. But that's probably not only cheating and overly clever, but also wrong, so I wouldn't really go that far.

**I'm tempted here by two arguments. One is that I'm likely to avoid certain types of errors through group affiliation politics; if my only question is "Is it good for the Jews?", then I may still be wrong about what's actually good for the Jews, and I may also accidentally support some monstrous policy because I overlook its implications outside of the Jews, but it's at least got to be a heck of a lot easier than figuring out whether a policy meets utilitarian (or, say, Randian) principles. The other is that it's all illusion anyway, since most of us most of the time are unlikely to actually understand our own reasons for choosing a candidate or policy, and quite good at manipulating our own arguments to justify why our choices conform with whatever we think of as our core principles.

***OK, I know, I'm oversimplifying the idea of "virtue" here. Sorry.

[Update: Please be sure to see Sinhababu's response. Also, as long as I'm here, the comments on this one were well worth reading through -- thanks to all]

Presidentialism vs. Madisonianism

Ah, the day-that-isn't-Presidents-day is a good excuse to get around to a response I've been meaning to get to, to a typically provocative aside at the bottom of a recent Matt Yglesias post about nothing less than the future of the current American Constitution. His view is that "US-style constitutional setups are usually very unstable," and that given the current party structure, that inherent instability may well result in significant change. Dylan Matthews agreed, more or less, and talked about what it kinds of change would mean that "divided government is capable of producing real legislation again."

As regular readers might expect, I think they're wrong. On several counts.


First of all, what's the evidence for Matthews' proposition that divided government is no longer capable of producing "real" legislation? It's true that not all that much passed in the 110th Congress, during the waning days of the George W. Bush administration. But Clinton-era divided government produced plenty of significant legislation, including welfare reform, S-CHIP, a significant minimum wage increase, and balanced budgets -- and during Clinton's second term, they handled budget issues in general with a minimum of drama and brinkmanship. Yes, the 112th Congress promises to be unproductive, but it's also little more than month old; it's a little soon to conclude that it will wind up seeming dysfunctional. 


Second, and more importantly, in my view the differences between the Constitutional system in the United States and the other "presidential" systems covered in the comparative studies Yglesias likes to cite are far more important than the similarities. Mainly, the United States isn't really a "presidential" system; it's a separated-powers system, or more accurately one of separated institutions sharing powers. Congress is generally thought of as by far the greatest example of a transformative legislature, which (along with federalism, and other decentralizing features of the American system) allows lots of interests to feel meaningfully represented in government. He's absolutely right that "high stakes" elections are problematic in a democracy. But the solution isn't necessarily parliamentary elections -- which can also produce single, all-powerful winners -- but to have multiple, overlapping elections. 


Stepping back a bit...I agree with Madison (see Federalists 10 and 51, of course) that majority-rules systems tend to be unstable. Parliamentary systems tend to deal with that in a few different ways. One is, as Yglesias says, by inserting another round of elite bargaining in order to form a government after the voters have had their say. Most parliamentary systems also have a strong bureaucracy that narrows the importance of the elected government. In my view, these devises (as well as corporatist arrangements, which are not necessarily related to parliamentary forms of government but do tend to go with them), are all ways of avoiding the instability of majority rule by weakening democracy. That's especially true of bureaucratic rule; corporatism and elite-driven party rule can be democratic, depending in large part, I believe, in how permeable and internally democratic the parties and other institutions are.


The American system deals with it by weakening the influence of majorities, or (ideally) by preventing majorities from forming in the first place. For example, there is no "majority" on health care reform whether there was a plurality against passing ACA last year, or a plurality against simple repeal this time, so many people have different opinions or are entirely indifferent that a victory or loss is unlikely to break the system. And then when majorities do form, the various mechanisms of the system keeps them enacting things easily. That leads to plenty of short-term frustration for electoral winners, but also means that losing an election isn't that big a deal.


However, when I talk about the ways in which Madisonian democracy promotes stability, I always try to include three dangers. The first is that if everyone in the nation believes that a single issue is of overwhelming importance, the odds of producing a true majority which will either oppress the minority or be oppressed increase. The obvious example of that situation in American history was slavery. A second possibility is if everyone is strongly ideological; if that's the case, then losing on one issue probably means losing on every issue. My reading of the evidence (and I don't really keep up on new research in this area, but I'm pretty confident that this is still true) is that most Americans are not ideological -- not just in a strong sense of having identifiable broad ideas that drive issue positions, but even in the sense that issue positions are strongly correlated. In other words, knowing someone's position on abortion will not necessarily predict their position on gun control, or labor policy, or the Iraq War, or other issues. 


The third danger is extreme partisanship: if regardless of issues we all believe that our side must be in office or else all is lost, it's a problem for stability. I think that's a fair description of some activists; it fits the Tea Party profile, in my view, a lot better than ideological coherence does. But still, only a relatively small percentage of Americans feel that way. Most of us, when our party loses an election, do not automatically feel tyrannized. 


Now, in my view we're pretty far from either of the latter two conditions (and the first one isn't a factor at all; there's no single issue that even a strong plurality of Americans believe is the most important). Only our most politically active citizens are either so ideological, or so partisan, that they find our elections very high-stakes contests. Of course, those politically active citizens are also, more or less by definition, the ones most likely to bring us to a Constitutional crisis, so that's worth paying attention to, but I don't see it as a grave danger.


All that said...I think that strong parties are good for democracy, but that American parties are unique (as far as I know) in that they can be strong without being rigorously ideologically coherent and without being hierarchically organized. So I'm in favor of things that decentralize (but don't necessarily weaken) political parties, and I do think that Congress works better when Members reflect not only their partisan loyalties but also strong local influences. To the extent that American parties have become nationalized (which is certainly true) and more top-down (which might be true), it's a bad development for American democracy, at least as I view it. But we're nowhere near the point at which I'd join Yglesias and Matthews and worry about the stability of the system.   

Sign Language, Morse Code, Semaphore and Gibberish (A Note on the Vocabulary of Democracy)

I want to clarify what I mean when I use the word "democracy,"  and I guess by extension how I think others should use it.

By the way, have I bragged about Plain Blog's commenters recently?  Really worth reading, at least in my opinion.  This item is brought on commenter Jeff, who frequently weighs in whenever I talk about democratic theory and the Framers.  He and I, as far as I can tell, agree on some things, disagree on others -- he's well worth reading, and the specific point I'm basing this post around is only a piece of what he has to say.

With regard to my comments on Congress, democracy, and other issues, Jeff noted:

As I've said before, I have real doubts that anything we're seeing today can fairly be called "Madisonian" or imputed to the "design" of the Framers. At the very least, we have to be careful about claiming that they valued "democracy," (a) because many of them didn't, and said so ("the Democracy" was a term of abuse well into the 19th century, often used in the same sentence as "the mob" or "the rabble"), and (b) because even where we find praise of democracy in the late 18th century, we have to be carefully not to read it anachronistically in light of our own understanding of the term instead of theirs. 

Jeff is certainly correct that pretty much everyone in the 18th century, certainly including the Framers, hated what they called "democracy."  What they wanted was something that they called a "republic."  Now, the question is how to treat that.

Following Robert Dahl, I'm convinced that the two words don't usefully distinguish between two different forms of government for us.  In other words, we should -- and I tend to -- use them as synonyms.  Both, it seems to me, refer to a system of popular government, a system in which all (more or less) people are formally equal, and in some sense the people rule.  Now, if we look back at the history of the words, what's obviously the case is that one is from Rome, the other from Greece.  But that doesn't really help us very much.  Rome and Athens had very different systems of government, but neither looks a lot like anything today, and neither came anywhere close to fulfilling conditions of formal equality for people.  That the framers looked  to Rome for their terminology is interesting, and in some ways may have mattered, but the United States Constitution isn't, in any meaningful sense, based on the actual institutions of the Roman Republic (other, I guess, than the absence of kings).

What we do want to distinguish are different forms or types of democracy: direct democracy, representative democracy, majoritarian democracy, what I call Madisonian (or anti-majoritarian) democracy, Athenian democracy, perhaps participatory democracy, and whatever others there might be.  I think that's what Madison and friends were doing, just in their own language, which was far less developed than ours since there had been so little democracy to that point.

So when Madison says he doesn't like democracy but does want a republic, we need to translate that into our own usage to make sense of it, and that's going to yield something to complete this sentence: Madison didn't like [one form of] democracy but did support [another form of] democracy.  Actually filling in those brackets is going to take careful reading (and perhaps careful additional research), and while I'm comfortable arguing that Madison opposed majoritarian democracy while supporting what I call, well, Madisonian democracy, I'm open to evidence that I have that wrong.  I'm reasonably certain, however, that simply saying that he (or the framers) opposed democracy confuses the issue.  What they were after was something in what we would consider today a part of the democratic family, even if Athens was out of fashion at that point.

Madison as an Argument

Today's flap seems to be an argument about the Senate, Madison, the Framers, and etc., all coming out of a panel at the political science meetings on the filibuster.  Since I happened to have been there* I figured I'd blog about it eventually, but in the meantime I'm always interested when people talk Madison.   Basically, I think Bruce McQuain's claims about Madison are quite weak, and fully demolished by both James Joyner and Steven Taylor.  McQuain (and Brian Darling) rest on Federalist 37 to understand what Madison really believed not only about federalism, but also about the specific role of the Senate within the system.  Of course, we know very well that, as Joyner and Taylor point out, the Constitution was the result of a series of compromises that hardly conformed to anyone's ideas, and the Federalist Papers were pieces of political propaganda, intended to sell the Constitution they had, not the one that they would have wanted.  Indeed, not only did Madison not want a Senate (mal)apportioned equally by states, but Madison wanted the national government to have a veto power over ordinary state laws, and considered is failure to secure such a veto a major defeat. 

I do believe that while Madison's arguments in the Federalists were constrained by the necessity of supporting whatever institutions were created in Philadelphia, his arguments on grounds of democratic theory were, generally, sincere (and complex and contested) -- they were consistent with his private correspondence and notes pre-Philadelphia.**  That is, I think the abstract arguments about majoritarian democracy in (most famously) Federalists 10 and 51 were what Madison really thought, but it's also certainly true that as Taylor says, "They are certainly not the reflection of what Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay thought were the most ideal collection of institutions that could have been devised" (emphasis his).  At any rate, however much we appreciate Madison and the rest -- and we should appreciate and honor them quite a bit -- their arguments, at the end of the day, must rise or fall on their own strength, not on the reputations of their authors.  It would hardly be difficult to make a disturbingly noxious stew of the odder beliefs of Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Washington, and the others (did I mention Jefferson?  Oh yeah.  And yes, I know he's not implicated in what happened in Philadelphia; the luckiest thing that ever happened to the USA, in my opinion).  Indeed, there's a strong point to be made here about democracy.  Venerating the Framers of the Constitution is a terrific democratic ritual; fetishizing their every word as fully binding on us is thoroughly anti-democratic.  Americans are, of course, bound by the Constitution -- but because it is law, not because of who wrote it.

About the rest: more to come, later.


*No, I wound up not asking a question about Superbill! for the C-SPAN cameras.  I did, however, discuss Superbill! with several Congressional scholars, and I'm still convinced it's a winner, along with several other reforms -- if one's goal is, as mine is, to make the Senate less disfunctional while also retaining minority, and minority party, rights.

**Sorry, no citations...the constraints entailed in blogging from the lobby of a political science conference.  Also, there are distractions.

Let's Get Moving Into Action

I'm happy to see Monkey Cager John Sides guesting for Ezra Klein this week, and I recommend his first post over there, taking on Scott Rassmussen on the question of whether Americans really want to govern themselves.  John knows a lot more than I do about public opinion, so I have nothing really to add to what he says, but I'll use it as an excuse to talk about James Madison and the crisis of the 1780s, which is not exactly related but close enough, and something I'm interested in anyway, because it brings up an interesting question: why democracy?

One of the goofy things about the US is that we so much take it for granted that democracy is the best form of government -- and all other forms are in turn stigmatized -- that we really don't think about it very much or very carefully, which I think winds up producing a fair amount of sloppy thinking when we get around to doing institutional reform.  I'm not going to go through all of the ideas behind democracy in this post, but I'll just say that most of us have been mainly exposed to Lockean, liberal reasons for democracy, which I think for most people come down to questions about outcomes: democracy is best because it produces, or at least promises to produce, the best, or fairest, or most justifiable public policies.  Yet there are also participatory arguments in favor of democracy, which are related to republican arguments generally associated with a long line of thinkers often traced to Machiavelli.  Theorists in that tradition argue that public action is, at least for some people, self-fulfilling; that is, they believe that one of the things that set humans apart is that we have a capacity for collectively organizing the way we live, and those who get involved in politics for whatever motives often find that it is deeply satisfying.  Hannah Arendt talks about this capacity for "public happiness" extensively in On Revolution, noting that people caught up in revolutions often express surprise that getting involved was so personally fulfilling; see also Gordon Wood's discussion of the American revolutionaries, or, for that matter, what veterans of the civil rights movement have said about it. Arendt makes the point that Jefferson's odd formulation of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" contains an ambiguity (one can see our discomfort with that phrasing by watching the excellent Schoolhouse Rock on the Declaration -- if you haven't watched it recently, check out how they deal with pursuit of happiness).  Read as private happiness, Jefferson's formula is a good liberal equivalent of the more common "life, liberty, and property."  By that reading, government's main function is to protect individuals from encroachments on their private affairs, and at the same time to support those private activities, even if it takes government action to do so.  But read as public happiness, Jefferson is asserting that the opportunity to participate in collective self-government -- something that can only happen in some form of democratic republic -- is a core human right. 

Which gets us to the 1780s.  As Gordon Wood writes (see generally Part Four, especially Chapter X section 5), what alarmed the revolutionaries was that their assumption that an American republic would deliver both types of happiness was undermined by a turn away from public involvement: on the one hand, representative republican legislatures appeared shockingly prone to tyranny, and on the other hand the people seemed content to ignore politics entirely as long as they were left alone to enrich themselves.  Self-interest, in other words, appeared to be everywhere, and most shockingly it appeared to be perhaps the natural result of the revolution, thus making its higher goals self-negating.  Remove tyranny and establish republican institutions, and people will -- now that the threat of tyranny is gone -- turn away from public affairs to self-interest, thus establishing the conditions for a new, democratic version of tyranny. 

In my reading of Madison -- which I should say from the start is contentious, and hardly the consensus view -- the Constitution is a brilliant attempt to escape from that trap.  Centuries of Whig and republican thought had assumed that their project could only succeed if the people were virtuous, and public spirited.  Madison says: what if we turn the tables on all of that?  What if we take self-interest as a virtue, or at any rate as inevitable in a democracy, but use it against itself?  The genius of Madison's Constitution is that it encourages political participation even if it is originally motivated by selfish gain or ambition, but then counts on the complexity of the system to force people to actively engage in politics if they hope to get anything done. Simply registering one's preference or making demands will never be enough.  Moreover, by separating institutions through checks and balances and federalism, not only is tyranny avoided in the sense that private citizens are protected, (good for private happiness!), but also in the sense that opportunities multiply for citizens to become meaningfully involved in public affairs (good for public happiness!). 

Of course, if you don't believe that participation in politics can be good for its own sake, then you aren't very likely to care very much about that latter virtue of Madisonian democracy.  Even if you are, you may still believe that the costs of Madisonian democracy, the difficulties in translating popular preferences into government policy, aren't worth the benefits (although as usual, I'd caution people about assuming that election results can be easily translated into preferences for specific public policy choices).  And even if neither of those things bother you, if it turns out that capacity for enjoying and thriving at politics is unevenly distributed (the way that capacity for self-fulfillment in, say, music or fine art appear to be unevenly distributed), then it's not clear how we can justify the unequal influence over government that would result from natural sorting.  In other words, I don't really have any answers at the end of this long post.  What I think I can say is that those who write about public happiness, either in their personal stories or as political theorists, tend to emphasize the notion of discovery: people who became involved in politics for other reasons, whether it was self-interest or to right what they saw as an injustice, were surprised at what they found -- you hear versions of the idea that they felt truly alive for the first time, or something to that effect.  One could even perhaps bring in Ronald Reagan's notion of finding "the rest of me" in politics, no?  All of which suggests to me that one should not necessarily count the apathy of the uninvolved to be conclusive.  I'll end with a quote from Arendt (On Revolution, Penguin ed., 131):

And Jefferson's true notion of happiness comes out very clearly...when he lets himself go in a mood of playful and sovereign irony and concludes one of his letters to Adams as follows: "May we meet there again, in Congress, with our antient Colleagues, and receive with them the seal of approbation 'Well done, good and faithful servents.'" Here, behind the irony, we have the candid admission that life in Congress, the joys of discourse of legislation, of transacting business, of persuading and being persuaded, were to Jefferson no less conclusively a foretaste of eternal bliss to come than the delights of contemplation had been for medieval piety. 

Just Don't Call Him "Shorty"

Hey, Michael Tomasky...James Madison was known as "Jemmy", perhaps "Little Jemmy," not "Jim". 

And by the way, he's the wrong guy to cast as the great defender of majority rule, but I'll save that for some other time.

While I'm on the subject, however, I'll repeat my opinion that we haven't sufficiently honored Madison. 

At any rate...James, or Mr. Madison, or Jemmy, or President Madison, or Father of the Constitution.  Not Jim.  OK?

(via Cohn)

Insulting the Framers in Wasilla

Perhaps I'm just in a cranky mood today, but...

We all know that Sarah Palin loves the words "common sense."  And "conservative."  She's recently adopted another one, a favorite of Tea Partiers: "Constitutional."  Alas, she's also taken to combining them: things she likes are now "Common Sense Constitutional Conservative."  Hmmm...make that "Commonsense Constitutional Conservative," as in the candidate she's supporting for the GOP nomination over incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski.

You know what, though?  I won't get into whether conservative ideas are common sense, or Commonsense, or not.  But I'm certain that the Constitution of the United States of America is not common sense.  It's a sophisticated document, based on a complex and subtle theory of politics.  It was drafted by brilliant men, who relied not on common sense but on serious study of politics, history, and philosophy.  Chief among them was James Madison.  Madison was a practical man, and certainly had practical political experience, having served in the Continental Congress and the Virginia General Assembly.  But he did not believe that the sorts of things that he learned from practical experience were enough when he took it upon himself to organize the Constitutional Convention and to prepare a draft plan for a new government.  So Madison made a study of it.  Bandwith being somewhat limited in those days, what Madison did was ask his good friend Tom (who happened to be in France on government business) to scour the bookshops of Paris for books about...here's Adrienne Koch (quoted in William Lee Miller's wonderful The Business of May Next):

Madison specifically requested Jefferson to purchase for him "Treatises on the ancient and modern Federal Republics, on the law of Nations, and the History, natural and political, of the new World," adding to these subjects "such of the Greek and Roman authors, where they will be got very cheap, as are worth having, and are not on the common list of school classics...Jefferson's thoughtful provision of books for Madison, including some thirty-seven volumes of the coveted Encyclopedie methodique, which Madison called "a complete scientific library," treatises on morality, and histories of European countries, surely made Madison the most cosmopolitan statesman never to have quit American shores.

The Constitution was, in large part, the product of what Madison learned from studying the books that Jefferson sent him (as well as, presumably, those Greeks and Romans he already knew from the "common school list").  It's a serious insult to Madison, and to the rest of the framers of the Constitution, to belittle their efforts by referring to it as nothing but applied common sense. 

The Sage of Wasilla isn't going to take my advice to cut it out, but I think I'll start referring to her as  "Madison-insulting," to go with whatever other names she should be called.  Framer-belittling?  Hmmm...if you have a good one, drop a comment below and I'll adopt it.

Two notes, one serious.  In my opinion, that Jefferson happened to be off in Paris when the serious work of writing the Constitution needed to be done is one of the most amazingly lucky things in American history...really, in the history of democracy.  Second, don't miss the Madison-insulting former governor's explanation (follow the link above) about how she's really not feuding with Murkowski.  Classic Palin.  By the way, my guess is that at this point her endorsement is going to be worth a lot more in South Carolina and Nevada and other places that don't know her so well, but I guess we'll see what happens.

Hey, Dick Armey! You Talkin' To Me?

Dana Milbank takes down Dick Armey:

A member of the audience passed a question to the moderator, who read it to Armey: How can the Federalist Papers be an inspiration for the tea party, when their principal author, Alexander Hamilton, "was widely regarded then and now as an advocate of a strong central government"?

Historian Armey was flummoxed by this new information. "Widely regarded by whom?" he challenged, suspiciously. "Today's modern ill-informed political science professors? . . . I just doubt that was the case in fact about Hamilton."

Emphasis, as they say, added.  Both bold and italics, just to make sure.

Here's the thing.  There were two main authors of the Federalist Papers.  Everyone agrees that of the two, Hamilton was more of a centralizer, right?  I'm of course just a ill-informed political scientist, so what do I know, but I do agree on that point.  So that makes Madison the (relatively) states' rights guy.  And what did Madison want?  He wanted the national government to be able to veto any state law. 

Here's Madison, in a letter to Jefferson after the convention, explaining how "private rights will be more secure under the Guardianship of the General Government than under the State Governments":

The due partition of power between the General and local Governments, was perhaps, of all, the most nice and difficult. A few contended for an entire abolition of the States; some, for indefinite power of Legislation in the Congress, with a negative on the laws of the States; some, for such a power without a negative; some, for a limited power of legislation, with such a negative; the majority, finally, for a limited power without the negative. The question with regard to the negative underwent repeated discussions, and was finally rejected by a bare majority. As I formerly intimated to you my opinion in favor of this ingredient, I will take this occasion of explaining myself on the subject. Such a check on the States appears to me necessary...

Oh, and that business of a few wanting to abolish the states?  That would probably be Dick Armey's good friend, about whom he knows so much: Alexander Hamilton.

But for course, what do I know -- I'm just an ill-informed, yadda yadda.

Money and Presidents

I have nothing to add to what Sean Wilentz said about Ulysses S. Grant, other than to say that it's worth following it up with what Matt Yglesias said about Grant, race, and conservatives.  The postwar portion of the 19th century is definitely not my specialty, so I'll defer to those who know more about it.  From what I do know, they sound right to me.

That said, I can talk a little about which presidents we honor too much, and which we honor too little.  On the former, James Madison deserves far more celebration than he gets.  I mean, Washington gets his obelisk, and Jefferson and Lincoln get their temples, but the official Madison memorial -- and I didn't know the "official" part until just now -- is a building that....well, I actually am in what I believe is a minority who do not consider it a complete monstrosity.  C'mon -- Jefferson not only gets his memorial, and the nickel, and the $2 bill, and Rushmore, but when they finally decided to name something after Madison, they only did it along with naming the much nicer and far more beloved building next store after Jefferson.  Not to mention that Congress went and named their bill search engine thingy after Jefferson, despite the fact that he never actually served in (the currently organized) Congress.  Madison was pictured, by the way, on the no-longer-in-circulation $5000 bill, which puts him right there with Grover Cleveland ($1000) and William McKinley ($500). 

Move up to the 20th century, and stick to currency and coins, and the president who is conspicuous with his absence is not Ronald Reagan, but Harry S. Truman.  Truman is generally rated quite highly by most historians and political scientists, and on the specific question of winning the Cold War, Truman (in my opinion at least) towers over the rest of the lot, who essentially just carried out the strategy that Truman put in place.  If I had to rank presidents just on managing the Cold War, which as Wilentz notes is Reagan's best argument, I'd have to say it would be Truman, then Ike, then Bush, and then let Reagan fight it out with the rest of them. 

I'd say Truman, but others might argue that Teddy Roosevelt deserves more official recognition.  I figure -- the guy has Rushmore, and that's enough.  But others would disagree.

As far as overly honored, that's easy -- other than the oddball and purely symbolic Sacagawea choice, the one figure who is currently honored on American currency and coin despite little historical importance is John F. Kennedy.  I suppose that it's unlikely that Kennedy will be bumped until the last baby boomer dies, but if it were up to me I'd probably push him aside for Truman, and let poor Madison have the $2 bill.  Jefferson will survive.