Thursday, July 05, 2012
The other vibe I'm picking up from the book is the overall uselessness of the United States Senate. When Congress was the dominant force in American governance it served a role-- weak executives are what I usually think of when I think about the underlying causes of the Civil War, but, of course, it was more complicated than that. The Senate managed to hold things together for a while, maybe long enough for the nation to endure the Civil War, rather than merely splintering. Would that have been an altogether bad thing? Well, it sure as hell would have been bad for slaves, so I suppose that's justification enough today. The whole notion of State's Rights, and the necessity of state representation in Congress has caused a great deal of mischief, and I think the time has come to start rethinking it.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Charley Pierce articulates a point that I've been musing over lately:
I don't believe there ever has been a time like this in our history. We have had periods of severe political polarization before, but those were periods in which the government was polarized because of conflicting ideas of what the national government should do. Right now, we have a polarization based on the fact that an uncontrollable faction of one of our two political parties — a faction with its own sources of money and power that exist outside conventional political accountability — has decided that the only thing that the national government should do is nothing, a faction that is perfectly situated to make that at least part of a political reality, and a faction that is growing even faster out in the states than it is in Washington. What is leadership if there's more political profit in ignoring your leaders than in being led? Who, in that case, rules? The truly terrifying answer to that is that nobody does. Or, at least, nobody who is elected does.I think that is is pretty true. My PoliSci mentor, Professor Edward Janosik, used to tell us that in the US political parties were essentially non-ideological. He was right, naturally. My summer reading at the moment is present volume in Robert Caro's Lyndon Johnson epic, The Passage of Power, and there it is: Richard Russell and John F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey and John Stennis-- all Democrats. You could play the same mix'n'match with Republicans, and that was the point-- although the two parties were vying for political advantage, they were not so polarized by ideology as to be incapable of functioning.That said, the number of veto points embedded in the American system of government means that it is not difficult to shut things down: as Caro notes, that's exactly what happened to the JFK administration. I would be interested in seeing an empirical study on Congressional stalls since, say, the Truman administration, because I am not so sure that what we are seeing at present is actually unique.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
With the most recent volume of Robert Caro's Lyndon Johnson biography still ringing in my mind (the last two, actually) today's Supreme Court decision kicking the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to the curb sickens me. It was a nearly impossible mountain to climb when it was enacted, and the rational for dispensing with it is an utter fiction. The fact that Congress re-authorized the Act 390 to 33 in the House and 98 to 0 in the Senate seven years ago is blithely waived off. This is, simply stated, a naked usurpation of legislative authority by the Court.
The Washington Post has a map that shows which states were required to submit changes in voting rules for pre-clearence; they are the states you'd expect. More interesting is the list of individual jurisdictions that were covered. For instance, Bronx County, Kings County and New York County. And Monterrey County, California.
The Washington Post has a map that shows which states were required to submit changes in voting rules for pre-clearence; they are the states you'd expect. More interesting is the list of individual jurisdictions that were covered. For instance, Bronx County, Kings County and New York County. And Monterrey County, California.
