In praise of our system
'especially to explore solutions'
Too often our country appears overflowing with failure yet we remain relatively prosperous with options. No, it is not perfect but opportunities remain for people to use options available to them. Criticisms fly across our country as if we could make our country perfect if everyone would follow a single approach to something. I find this laughable at best and willfully ignorant too often. People who know something about our political system love love love to quote the Founders yet do so as selectively as possible. And figure that no one will know it’s selective use of those ideas.
I am not a constitutional lawyer nor do I play one on tv (I slept at home last night rather than at a Holiday Inn for starters) but I do realise the Founders left us a wealth of thought about our complex and deliberately cumbersome system in a miraculous book that I doubt you have opened recently. The Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, addresses so many aspects of our current political dynamics that it is startling.
Our system intends an interplay of various levels of government and people across the society. It’s not checkers but chess. Our Founders crafted a relatively flexible constitution, with a mere seven articles, to frame our society’s laws. It’s a brilliant document with philosophy of our nation undergirding it rather than a religious text or a wish list for Santa Claus. The Founders did not write in a vacuum, issuing writs from on high but crafted the boundaries for our government through debate. That give and take allowed participants to articulate their positions, then hear rebuttals from others, for a national discussion on policy and the future. The Constitution itself resulted from a convention, held for almost four moths in the steamy conditions of a Philadelphia non-airconditioned summer; the guiding document for our nation was not unilaterally issued as Seven unalterable Articles on tablets.
This nation’s diversity, whether regional between the powerful Massachusetts or Virginia commonwealths, or religious between Jews, Anabaptists, Congregationalists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, or anyone else, has always been our strength because it allows for a wider array of ideas to solve our problems. We have always, despite some major needs for revision, benefitted from inclusion as it spurs more ideas. That diversity often forces us to we revise our initial ideas, improving upon them almost invariably while strengthening the sense of who we are. That strength, coupled with a respect for rule of law, makes us a unique place that the rest of the world has emulated for two and a half centuries.
We are not perfect nor have we ever been. Slavery was reprehensible under any conditions; Jim Crow laws that followed were hardly better. Women not having a legal right to vote until the nation approached its hundred and fiftieth anniversary is inexplicable except as fear on the part of men. The list of behaviours ripe for improvement through our history is extensive and exhausting but hardly unique, again. We did have many successes as well but we no longer seem able to identify them if you listen to our politics. Criticism are us.
Yet we do matter to the process. A great deal. But we get frustrated so often.
Too often we focus on our imperfections rather than our strengths. The rule of law, the predictability of its application, and the exquisite balance of powers is an unmatched accomplishment anywhere. The deliberate pace of our processes, intentionally slow to prevent rash decision-making, is a gift and a brilliant strategic approach; it can also be unbelievably frustrating to those wanting to change things. The ingenious balance of large states versus small states in the Senate, versus the raw representational power of population in the House is an amazing vision for a nation now containing nearly three and a half hundred million people.
The constitutional convention itself was grueling, unrelenting drive to find an answer because the existing approach, the Articles of Confederation under which we began as a country, simply were ineffective. Today, we have a hard time passing anything across an entire two-year legislative session because, despite modern ammenities like transportation and communication, our Congress elected officials seem allergic to convening for their work. The truth, of course, is that our electoral system is so expensive these individuals are perpetually on the hunt for campaign dollars but they also seem reluctant to hold serious discussions with those who they oppose on public policy questions. Today’s Congress is too busy being a parttime body for an ever-growing list of fulltime challenges.
Have you ever read the Papers? Have you ever focused on these three individuals, each presenting an informed but preferential approach to governing in 1787, much less today? Their concerns, their foci on elements of power and government, and their solutions were substantially different but directed towards a singular solution: finding an appropriate framework for our nascent republic. These were solution guys.
They struggled, the cajoled, they negotiated, they pondered, they reattacked, and they went through it all over again. It was hardly a ‘one and done’ as today’s phraseology calls too many events.
The Federalist Papers explained the implications and rationales for the body crafting the proposed legal framework as they did. It was a form of both accountability and messaging on the part of three intellectual giants from the process. Today’s governmental leaders rarely provide serious justifications, their press officers issuing tweets laden with innuendo, subtexts, personal attacks, and attempts to smear the other side by personal attribute rather than by countering a logical argument. What negotiating there is seems to happen on dueling television networks.
The Constitutional process failed, as noted, on slavery which continues haunting us. At the same time, the number of positions in that Constitution the people amended to improve our society is somewhat astonishing, upon reflection. The question of former slaves as full citizens, women as voters, rights of free speech, free assembly, religious tolerance without a single state religion, the right to due process, and more than I want to name again show our willingness to evolve in a deliberate, prescribed manner with popular support rather than a top-down mandate. We even acknowledge when we have erred when amendments, such as Prohibition, prove unpopular. I cannot name another place that continues to refine its society quite as seriously as does the United States.
Yet regardless of political preference so many are disenchanted and unwilling to engage in conversation or negotiation to achieve a better mutual outcome. Criticism too often appears the desired end of a rant instead of any engagement to find a solution that we can sell across the country.
It’s a hard sell in many cases. I am not saying that I abandon my deeply held views easily so I wouldn’t expect anyone else to do so. The conversations in our politics, however, rarely have a logical basis, depending instead on mutual affiliations. Those affiliations too often, for my taste, seem to hue to a single set of beliefs as something to endorse or reject with cataclysmic consequences based on prejudice against those with hold different opinions. Why and how those opinions lead to seemingly cataclysmic outcomes is rarely stated, as if opinions equalled actions. Put otherwise, we are in a world of condemnations but few concessions for mutually beneficial outcomes because those ends might not be satisfying for all.
Yet, we do somehow get a budget passed. We get laws. We the voters oust those we supported when they pass some laws we abhor. Look at Congress today: the people who served for four decades is a decreasing number despite the number of geriatic senators. We have the power to elect or reject candidates for whatever reason. Are we holding them accountable for what they promise to do? We have a role here as well.
Why are we so dissatisfied then? Because we keep thinking that if they would pass our individual preferences, it would all work smoothly. Wrong-o. Actions create consequences.
If forty percent of our nation participates in politics, that is still 136 million people. That is an incredible large number of views. With the destruction of political parties as purveyors of agenda, it’s tricky to aggregate policy preferences. Instead, we get lots of screaming but not a lot of discussing. Yet we still do accomplish more than we realise.
The Federalist Papers articulated concerns for a new nation, reasons for proposed actions, and explanations for why they were important. We left that approach behind some time ago yet we are perilously close to reaching precisely the state of affairs the Founders most feared: an ungovernable and failing country full of certainty born of unachievable perfectionism, pathetic ignorance, and almost childlike reactions.
We need discussion, we need debate, we need put ourselves in the shoes of those with whom we see things differently. We each need also ponder what our ultimate national objectives are. For many, the endstates they desire result from a single outcome, a yes or no on some ballot or position. Are we all single issue citizens? If so, where are we willing to compromise on other issues? Are we willing to compromise at all? Can we see those who don’t share our views as having different aspirations or are they inevitably evil because they we can’t have our way? These are no longer arbitrary, distant, fanciful questions yet our system gives us the flexbility for so much more than that. Why aren’t we remembering our successes for so many of us?
Thank you for thinking about these questions. I look forward to your thoughts. I do read and adjust my own thinking as I hear from you. Thank you for reading this and thanks to those of you who subscribe. Please feel free to circulate if you think it of interest to others.
This Friday at noon eastern, I will open our first Actions Create Consequences discussion thread for real time chat. It’s a benefit for paid subscribers but it also relates to topics we cover here. I hope it will satisfy people’s urges for more back and forth!
If you choose to take advantage of the current 20% discount by paying for a subscription by 1 December, here is the link https://cynthiawatson.substack.com/3e031876. You will have my sincere thanks and access to our discussions online.
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, with Maria Hong, The Federalist Papers. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004