A case for majoritarianism? – part I

Frank Luntz, GOP strategist, says the following:

The Democratic Party controls a 77 seat majority in the House and almost 20 seats in the Senate, along with the White House. If they cannot get a bill passed with such overwhelming control of Washington, it says there’s something wrong with the legislation. Rather than forcing a bill through with only limited support, they should keep working until they can get a bill that represents the opinions of most Americans.

Now, it goes without saying that his statements have to be read with an eye on the clear political goals. What he says isn’t meant to analyze; it’s an attempt to persuade. But there’s still a limit (or should be). In this case, it’s the idea that people who might be on the fence here are going to be persuaded by the argument that the legislation must be bad if they can’t get it done despite those majorities. Now, let’s think about this for a second.

First, the idea that they “cannot get a bill passed.” It’s a little early for that isn’t it? After all, the entire point of his memo is to convince people not to pass a bill. Will he admit that it WAS popular after all if it does happen? Also remember that the GOP has consistently complained about the speed with which this legislation has moved through the process. “Just slow things down a little bit so we can consider more.” Whatever you think about that request, it’s a little hard to take it seriously when it runs concurrently with arguments which suggest that the test for whether a bill is acceptable is if it passes quickly.

Then there’s the way that huge Democratic majorities are treated as unrelated to the rest of the question. The tone clearly suggests that Democrats were just randomly gifted with big majorities. Never mind that a lot of those people won contested elections where health care was a pretty big campaign issue. Usually it’s not a very compelling argument for your position that 60% of the races went against it.

What does Occam’s Razor tell us? What we’ve got is a health care bill which has strong support from well over 50% of elected officials and (most likely) the public. Which is more likely: that there’s somethign wrong with the legislation or that there’s something wrong the legislative process?

Really, this is a jumping-off place for some broader thoughts I’ve been having recently. I’ve been reading a lot in the past couple weeks about variations in democracy: in particular, the differences that come with a majoritarian, parliamentary system compared to the Madisonian republic that we’ve got going on here in the US. There’s a lot to be said for a system of checks and balances but situations like this do not put it in a very good light.

Even if you support checks and balances, there’s a pretty strong argument against the multitude of veto points that we’ve set up. Perhaps some are essential, and maybe we dig the idea of bicameralism in general. But it does seem like we’ve got to a bit of an extreme here. Five committees, each of which have to pass a bill. Two houses of Congress which then have to pass a combined bill. And then those bills have to get blended. And then each house has to pass the blended bill. And the whole time, if it ever looks (even for a short period) like you don’t have a clear path to your preposterous 60 vote majority needed to beat that filibuster the whole thing teeters on the brink of political oblivion.

Maybe it made sense to make it this hard for Congress to pass things back in the days of the Federalist Papers when our main fear was legislative tyranny or things moving too quickly and getting out of hand. But our institutions have only gotten more sludge-filled even while society has sped up about 700 million percent.

It’s time for a change. The question mark in the title signifies my general confusion about how far we want to take things. The filibuster (in its current form at least) has got to go. But how much further should it go? Do we want to risk tyrannies of the majority? Sure, majoritarianism sounds good to me now when health care and global warming are on the line, but how will I feel when Jeb Bush is in office?

These are tough questions and I don’t have a firm answer. But in part II we’ll see if there’s a compelling case for majoritarianism as fundamentally progressive, even accounting for these problems.