Mellman: How our Constitution works against majority will
I’m certain I disagree with Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) on scores of issues, but he seems like a reasonable, thoughtful, somewhat moderate fellow who looks younger than his years and wants to get things done.
In those respects, he reminds me of the Dakota Democrats for whom I used to work, and who, back when that was possible, held all the House and Senate seats in those two states.
After Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) tumble from the Speakership, the current Rep. Johnson told CNN he hated to blame the rules.
James Madison must be spinning in his grave. The whole thrust of Madisonian political science, and Madisonian constitution-making, is that the rules matter — a lot.
Today, the rules devised by Madison and his fellow Framers are creating enormous frustration, and their suitability for current circumstances are being sorely tested.
As they debated the nascent constitution that summer of 1787, Americans were animated by competing imperatives: They wanted a national government that worked, but one that would not become a source of tyranny.
Having just overthrown a king, they were acutely aware of the ways in which monarchs (and their descendants: executives) could foster tyranny. After all, kings took people’s sons to fight their wars, took people’s daughters to their beds on the bride’s wedding night and took people’s money (property and crops) to finance their wars and whims.
Unlike government today, Kings did not provide health care, education, retirement security or broadband, and they didn’t have to confront a debt ceiling or care for veterans.
Kings were about taking, not giving, and they regularly took too much.
Early among his colleagues, Madison also saw public opinion, or a legislature in its sway, as a potential source of tyranny.
The Framers wanted a national government that was tractable, but to prevent tyranny they wanted to make it difficult for their government to act.
To that end, they separated powers and inserted a variety of veto points. U.S. government still has more veto points than any other democracy in the world.
Most long-term democracies have just one or two veto players.
In the contemporary United Kingdom’s parliamentary system, the executive (the government) and the legislature (Parliament) are essentially one, under the leadership of the prime minister.
The monarch has no real power, nor does the “upper house” (House of Lords). Britain’s Supreme Court may not overrule an act of Parliament. Just one veto point.
Contrast that with our system in which the House must agree with the Senate, and the president must sign off on their joint product. In addition to those three veto points, the Supreme Court arrogated to itself the power, unmentioned in the Constitution, to review and potentially overrule any decision, not to mention the role states play in our federal system.
Beyond its veto points, the system built by the Constitution, whose authors were suspicious of popular democracy, has an anti-majoritarian caste reflected in a Senate where California and Wyoming get equal representation, though their voters do not, and an Electoral College grafted in part onto that unequal Senate apportionment.
The result: Over the last three election cycles, during which all 100 Senate seats were in the hands of voters, Democrats won 53 percent of the national vote for Senate, but Republicans held the majority of seats in two of those three Senate sessions.
Democrats also won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, but because of the bias in the Electoral College, lost the presidency three times. The Senate further imposed on itself a 60-vote threshold, giving the minority the power to stop a 59 percent majority.
When government plays an intricate and vital role in everyday life, and when politics is characterized by partisanship, polarization and parity, it’s a recipe for lurching from crisis to crisis and failing to get important things done.
In an era that honors one-person, one-vote democracy and majority rule, it’s difficult to articulate a principled justification for keeping it.
Upon reflection, it’s no wonder Dusty Johnson wants to keep the rules of the game out of the fight. They’re indefensible, but they are the only thing giving him any power.
Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has helped elect 30 U.S. senators, 12 governors and dozens of House members. Mellman served as pollster to Senate Democratic leaders for more than 20 years, as president of the American Association of Political Consultants, a member of the Association’s Hall of Fame, and is president of Democratic Majority for Israel.