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Tom Friedman still can't connect the dots

By Jack M. Balkin

From tomorrow's column by Tom Friedman in the NYTmes:

I?ve always believed that America?s government was a unique political system ? one designed by geniuses so that it could be run by idiots. I was wrong. No system can be smart enough to survive this level of incompetence and recklessness by the people charged to run it.....

I always said to myself: Our government is so broken that it can only work in response to a huge crisis. But now we?ve had a huge crisis, and the system still doesn?t seem to work. Our leaders, Republicans and Democrats, have gotten so out of practice of working together that even in the face of this system-threatening meltdown they could not agree on a rescue package, as if they lived on Mars and were just visiting us for the week, with no stake in the outcome.

I don't always agree with Friedman, but I think he is smart and savvy. But note the tension in the two paragraphs. Paragraph one accurately describes the American system as "unique," and it may even have been designed by "geniuses" in order to solve the problems they perceived in 1787 America. For example, James Madison loathed the principle of equal representation in the Senate, but he submitted to it as a necessary political compromise at the time. And, by the way, he didn't really believe that it could be run by "idiots." The best reading of Federalist 10 is that representative government would serve as a filtration system to select out the most public-spirited (in civic-republican language, "virtuous") among us. For a variety of reasons, including the inability to predict the rise of the mass-based political party, that vision didn't survive.

The second paragraph returns to the "broken government" trope that is a feature of this year's campaign. But Friedman locates the "brokenness" in an almost inexplicable inability to "work together." Nowhere is there any suggestion that the Constitution, designed by "geniuses" though it may be, may have played some role. It's not only the multiple checks and balances and ambitions countering ambition; it's also the fact that not a single member of Congress, except those running for the White House, has an incentive to think in terms of the "national interest" (assuming that term makes any real sense), since each and every one is a local official elected by a necessarily parochial local constituency. Thus the impact of angry constituents and their phone calls. Would a more "nationally-minded" House necessarily have passed the bill? We'll obviously never know. But what we do know is that parochialism remains supreme, especially when one of the parties no long has a "leader" it is willing to defer to, as has so dramatically happened with George W. Bush, who is reduced to his legal powers but is otherwise wholly without "authority." It's every man and woman for him/herself in the Republican Party right now, especially as they see the McCain candidacy collapsing. Perhaps some year some very bright and well-paid pundit will realize that one really can't explain the American political system without paying at least a modicum of attention to the Constitution.

Full post as published by Balkinization on September 30, 2008 (boomark / email).