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George Will votes for tricameralism

By Jack M. Balkin

In this morning's column in the Washington Post, entitled "McCain's closing argument," George Will comes down squarely in favor of tricameralism, i.e., giving the Great Decider in the White House equal legislative power with majorities of the 435 members of the House and 100 members of the Senate. Thus he advises McCain to spend the rest of his campaign emphasizing that Congress will undoubtedly be Democratic but that he will use his veto pen to make sure that Congress can't pass any legislation not to his (and Sarah Palins?) liking. Thus Will writes,

McCain should . . . enunciate a closing argument for his candidacy that goes to fundamentals of governance, concerning which the vice presidency is usually peripheral. His argument should assert the virtues of something that voters, judging by their behavior over time, prefer --divided government... . By picking Palin, McCain got the country's attention. That is a perishable thing, and before it dissipates, he should show the country his veto pen.

George Will is presumably not a stupid man; he does, after all, have a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton. But it is quite stupid to say that "voters....prefer divided government" if by that statement one suggests that a majority of Americans in fact prefer tricameralism and gridlock over the effective capacity to govern. Only a minority of voters split their tickets between their presidential and congressional favorites. But if the "consistent" voters are split relatively evenly, then the relatively few ticket-splitters, who may well vote for their "opposite-party" senator or representative because (s)he is good at bringing home the bacon (i.e., getting earmarks or other redistributive subsidies), get to foist upon us the divided governments that have been, relatively speaking, the norm since Richard Nixon's election in 1968--and have led to the remarkable disillusionment, whatever one's place on the political spectrum, with the institutions of American government.

Moreover, the "veto pen" argument is, as I hope I've demonstrated, anti-democratic and feeds the tendency toward "constitutional dictatorship." It is, to be sure, a "dictatorship" that can, by and large, only prevent certain things from happening rather than bringing new programs into being (for that, one has to look at presidential control over administrative agencies or, as we've seen so dramatically this past week, the independent authority of the Fed). But, whatever it is, it certainly isn't "democratic" except in the doubletalk of "American-speak" concerning the meaning of "democracy" in the 21st century. One can, of course, argue that the president is "the choice of the people," but, surely, so long as we have the Electoral College, that argument is, if not outright bogus, at least highly contingent.

Again, I wonder if anyone elsewhere in the world, faced with the task of designing a workable constitution that would engender the loyalty of a thinking citizenry, would be "inspired" by Will's column to say, "We should certainly emulate the US and its propensity for tricameralism, gridlock, and the excessive power granted one man or woman, whatever his or her competence."

Full post as published by Balkinization on September 17, 2008 (boomark / email).