Everyday Politics Blog

Madison and Health Care

By Scott Lemieux

One of our fellow political scientists over at The Monkey Cage discusses Thomas Friedman's diagnosis of why the American political system seems unable to address major problems (most notably global warming.)  He identifies five potential reasons:

1. “the wild excess of money in politics”
2. Gerrymandering of congressional districts
3. the 24 news cycle
4. a permanent presidential campaign
5. the emergence of a blogosphere that “at its best enriches our debates, adding new checks on the establishment, and at its worst coarsens our debates to a whole new level, giving a new power to anonymous slanderers to send lies around the world” (I’m going to assume he’s talking about The Monkey Cage in the former part of that quote).

Tucker has a good account of some of the work political scientists have done on these questions.   I, however, was struck by the omission of what strikes me as the most obvious explanatory variable: the structure of American political institutions.   For better or worse, the system was designed so that major legislation was going to be the exception rather than the rule, and this is exactly how it's worked in practice.     

Relatedly, Friedman refers to the saying that the American system was "designed by geniuses so it could be run by idiots."   This is essentially a restatement of Madison's famous argument in Federalist #51 that "[i]f angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."   As the first version suggests, Madison's statement is sometimes interpreted to mean that he didn't see political leadership as being especially important, but this is a misreading.    More accurately, Madison wanted to structure the government that couldn't do too much damage if bad leaders where at the helm, and his structure was an ingenious means to that end.   But it's the other implication of these structures that creates the dilemma that concerns Friedman: structures that make it hard for bad people to enact policies also make it hard for all political leaders to enact major reform policies, even if there's something like a consensus that the status quo is unacceptable.

Whether this is a good or a bad thing, of course, depends on your political values.   But it's not surprising that the American government has been slower to respond to problems like global warming than other comparable democracies.  

Senate Vacancies

By David Watkins

The big news in American Politics today is obviously the arrest and charging of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich on a host of corruption charges. Blagojevich has been under federal investigation for some time. Amongst other charges, Blagojevich is accused of threatening to withhold state assistance for the sale of Wrigley stadium by the owners of the stadium, The Chicago Tribune company, unless some members of the editorial board critical of the governor were fired. Obviously, this kind of abuse of power is a big deal, and a direct threat to the ideal of a free and independent press.

This part of the story, important as it is, is almost certainly going to be overlooked in light of the charges that Blagojevich was attempting to, in essence, sell a Senate seat. Barack Obama's six year Senate term has two years remaining. Blagojevich, as Illinois governor, has the right to appoint someone to fill that seat for the remainder of the term. The full text of the criminal complaint is available here. One this subject, the colorful Blagojevich is reported to have said:

“unless I get something real good for [Senate Candidate 1], s**t, I’ll just send myself, you know what I’m saying....And if I don’t get what I want and I’m not satisfied with it, then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself.”  Later, ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that the Senate seat “is a f**king valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing.”

Later in the conversation, ROD BLAGOJEVICH said he knows that the President-elect wants Senate Candidate 1 for the open seat but "they're not willing to give me anything except appreciation. F**k them."

Setting aside the ethics and the law for a moment, Blagojevich is certainly correct about one thing--the senate seat he has the power to appoint is a valuable commodity indeed. It's just for two years, initially, but as all students of American politics know, incumbency advantage is a powerful thing, and his appointee, as a Democrat, would have a particularly strong advantage in Illinois, an overwhelmingly Democratic state. Under normal circumstances, it takes the most talented and popular politicians millions of dollars and a fair amount of luck to win a seat in the US Senate.

If you find it odd that we'd give this kind of power to a single person, you're not alone. In both the United States and Democratic countries around the world, the norm is to hold special elections to fill mid-term vacancies in legislative bodies. The House of Representatives follows this norm. In the US Senate, however, things are different. The 17th Amendment to the US Constitution governs Senate Vacancies:

When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of each State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.

State legislatures have responded in a variety of different ways. Oregon and Wisconsin do not empower the governor to fill vacancies: they require special elections to fill the seat. Other states place restrictions on who the governor can appoint to fill the seat--by requiring them to fill the seat with someone of the same party as the departing senator (Hawaii, Alaska, Arizona) or by allowing the Governor to choose between three individuals put forth by the state legislature (Utah, Wyoming). More about the different ways states approach this issue can be found here. Dick Durbin, the sole Senator from Illinois, suggested this morning that the Illinois legislature "enact a law as quickly as possible calling for a special election to fill the Senate vacancy of Barack Obama."

What explains this unusual state of affairs? The 17th amendment, ratified in 1913, is mostly known for mandating the direct election of Senators. Previously, the selection of Senators was governed by Article one, section 3 of the Constitution, which granted the power to appoint Senators to the state legislatures. In essence, the current patchwork of policies governing interim appointments are a holdover from an era in which the Senate was not meant to be a democratic body. Today, the idea that the Senate should be selected through democratic process is widely accepted (although some conservative proponents of "states rights," notably former Georgia Senator Zell Miller, argue for its repeal), but many undemocratic features of the Senate remain. The Blagojevich corruption scandal reminds us of the potential costs to the alternatives of democratic decision-making.

In my "Citizenship and US Politics" course this term, we spent some time debating the case for abolishing the US Senate. Of course, this is a profoundly unrealistic goal, as it's very difficult to imagine a supermajority of US Senators, let alone the small states that benefit from overrepresentation in the US Senate, agreeing to this idea. Nevertheless, it's an interesting exercise to try to defend the Senate on principled grounds. The students who were assigned to argue for keeping the Senate found it more difficult than they had anticipated.