A working group of senators from both parties is nearing agreement on broad principles for overhauling the nation's immigration laws, representing the most substantive bipartisan effort toward major legislation in years.
Read the whole story at The Washington Post
As I continue my series on the future of American democracy, it seem important to ask whether our democratic distemper has serious, near-term consequence for the survival of the Great Experiment. Are these developments passing digressions, or permanent despair? In short, are we at the tipping point between democratic distemper and dying America?
America historically has demonstrated a mixed and tepid mindset about our collective endeavor; but American society has conducted itself in general accord with the progressive norms of our national democratic experiment. Just as clearly, however, contemporary Americans evidence surprising levels of civic disengagement and dissensus in their attitudes toward American government; and we now seem inclined toward some alternative arrangements for our historic experiment.
Thus this seems to be prime time -- as President Barack Obama enters his legacy years as a self-conscious transformational leader -- for us to consider the future of American democracy.
A Matter of Timing
What makes all of this timely and critical is that our current distemper is taking place simultaneously, cumulatively, and interactively with other important developments. As posited in the preceding propositional observations, (a) the American systemic environment is not as favorably aligned as it has been for most of our history; (b) we have engaged ourselves in an intense philosophical debate about American culture and governance; (c) American democracy no longer works as well as it used to work; and (d) Americans seem to be tiring of the Great Experiment.
To put it another way, public commitment to the essential concepts of our original national democratic endeavor appears increasingly unsteady during fundamentally turbulent times. We seem unsure about American nationalism, democratic ideals, and Republican governance at the same time that our political system is reshaping itself in unpredictable ways. Most importantly, the American people may be tiring of their historic experiment while demanding and assuming immense popular control over the workings of American democracy. This setting of distempered democracy and systemic volatility invites uncomfortable discussion about the aforementioned "ultimate, unhealthy authority" inherent in our Great Experiment.
Undoubtedly, America has functioned successfully in the past without full, popular, national consensus, engagement, and commitment to the Great Experiment; but just as undoubtedly, our historic functional success is no guarantee that we can and will perform as well in the future. Sooner or later, systemic constraints, philosophical debates, and political realities will prove disruptive and challenging to the historical order of American democracy.
Disturbing Inclinations
In my opinion, and drawing from the propositions and observations presented in this series, "tired" America is trending in patterned fashion and disturbing directions. Increasingly we seem to be revisiting and revising -- sometimes consciously but often unthinkingly -- the original, essential, conceptual elements of our Great Experiment:
(1) First, the American people are experiencing and evidencing a declined sense of themselves as a nation. Societal divergence, centrifugal democracy, and economic globalism are reorienting and diminishing traditional national community.
(2) Secondly, while popularly-expressed support for democratic ideals in general remains strong, in-depth study and public referenda reveal that Americans are developing reservations about the specific application and advancement of these ideals through national government; additionally, some want to elevate cultural values (such as the family, religion, community, and diversity) as central elements -- alongside or above traditional democratic ideals--of our national experiment.
(3) Thirdly, we seem increasingly impatient with our national experiment's difficult, contentious balancing of inconsistent, contradictory, confusing democratic ideals. "Culture-warriors" and "demo-fanatics" drive public debate in troubling philosophical and political directions; and too often we talk about re-arranging the historic framework of limited, representative governance to accommodate contemporary inclinations.
(4) Finally, we seem insufficiently concerned as a nation about the danger of these unsettling tendencies for our democratic endeavor. A sense of civic irrelevancy -- combined with the above-mentioned ailments -- appears to have weakened our commitment to the national experiment in democratic ideals; and there is a disturbing propensity -- both "inside the Beltway" and "out here" -- for individuals, institutions, and communities to simply walk away from our historic democratic experiment in favor of less inspired alternatives.
Radical Possibilities
The danger of these critical times is that eventually, without corrective action, an impatient populace may -- democratically and incrementally -- exercise its ultimate authority and alter our historic version of America in radical ways.
I would like to think that today's developments constitute a case of temporary distemper, or a simple pause, or a few targeted adjustments, or a re-balancing of some of the burden of democratic progress between the federal government and a broader, supportive society. In the long run, some of these developments may be inconsequential or even therapeutic for America.
However, there is a reasonable chance that, early in this new century, we will have to deal with daunting new public problems; and we may have to ask ourselves the final, uncomfortable question posed in my definitional discussion about "America," "American democracy," and "dying": "How far can we pursue democratic ideals through limited, representative governance without succumbing to the inherent, destructive tendencies of democracy?"
Where Are We Going?
My "dying" speculation is an unlikely outcome, but it serves as useful, sobering background for assessing our present predicament. It is worthwhile analysis, not idle speculation, to conclude that these are unhealthy times for America.
Tired America, at a critical juncture, seems to be questioning its Great Experiment, moving -- quite often consonant with democratic principles and processes -- in ways and directions that are contradictory to the historic spirit and course of American democracy.
Fortuitously, California provides an example of where America may be heading; and that is the topic of my next post.
(For previous posts in this series, click here.)
Author's Note: This is the eleventh in a sixteen-part series of discussions about Election 2012, Barack Obama, and the future of American democracy. This series includes edited, updated material from my book, The Future of American Democracy: A Former Congressman's Unconventional Analysis (2002). I'm grateful to University Press of America for allowing me to borrow from that publication for my discussions on Huffington Post.
Former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown raised eyebrows on Twitter Friday night when his verified account published a succession of three inscrutable messages -- the first of which appears to have been a severe misspelling of the word "whatever," and the last referring to a "brilliant," but as-yet-unidentified acquaintance named Matt.
The first tweet was published at 12:46 a.m. ET. The final tweet went out two minutes later.
Note: The above tweets appear in reverse-chronological order
UPDATE: As Slate's Dave Weigel points outs, the three tweets sent out to Brown's entire following were shortly preceded by a series of curt replies to Twitter accounts who had earlier in the evening tweeted critical statements at Brown.
Also on HuffPost:
WASHINGTON ' In an embarrassing setback for President Barack Obama, a federal appeals court panel ruled Friday that he violated the Constitution in making certain recess appointments and moved to curtail a chief executive's ability in the future to circumvent the Senate in such scenarios.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that Obama did not have the power to make three recess appointments last year to the National Labor Relations Board because the Senate was officially in session ' and not in recess ' at the time. If the decision stands, it could invalidate hundreds of board decisions.
The court said the president could only fill vacancies with the recess appointment procedure if the openings arise when the Senate is in an official recess, which it defined as the break between sessions of Congress.
The ruling threw into question Obama's recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray's appointment, also made at the same time, has been challenged in a separate case.
The White House had no immediate comment.
Obama made the recess appointments on Jan. 4, 2012, after Senate Republicans spent months blocking his choices for an agency they contended was biased in favor of unions. Obama claims he acted properly because the Senate was away for the holidays on a 20-day recess. The Constitution allows for such appointments without Senate approval when Congress is in recess.
But during that time, GOP lawmakers argued, the Senate technically had stayed in session because it was gaveled in and out every few days for so-called "pro forma" sessions.
GOP lawmakers used the tactic ' as Democrats had done in the past ' specifically to prevent the president from using his recess power to install members to the labor board. They had also vigorously opposed the nomination of Cordray. The White House argued that the pro forma sessions ' some lasting less than a minute ' were a sham.
The three-judge panel, all appointed by Republican presidents, ruled that during one of those pro forma sessions on Jan. 3, the Senate officially convened its second session of the 112th Congress, as required by the Constitution.
"Either the Senate is in session, or it is in recess," Chief Judge David Sentelle wrote in the 46-page ruling. "If it has broken for three days within an ongoing session, it is not in "the Recess" described in the Constitution."
Simply taking a break of an evening or a weekend during a regular working session cannot count, he said. Sentelle said that otherwise "the president could make appointments any time the Senate so much as broke for lunch."
The judge rejected arguments from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which claimed the president has discretion to decide that the Senate is unavailable to perform its advice and consent function.
"Allowing the president to define the scope of his own appointment power would eviscerate the Constitution's separation of powers," Sentelle wrote.
Sentelle was joined in the ruling by Judge Thomas Griffith, appointed to the court by President George W. Bush, and Karen LeCraft Henderson, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush.
The Obama administration is expected to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. But if the ruling stands, it means that hundreds of decisions issued by the board over more than a year would be invalid. It also would leave the five-member labor board with just one validly appointed member, effectively shutting it down. The board is allowed to issue decisions only when it has at least three sitting members.
Obama used the recess appointment to appoint Deputy Labor Secretary Sharon Block, union lawyer Richard Griffin and NLRB counsel Terence Flynn to fill vacancies on the NLRB, giving it a full contingent for the first time in more than a year. Block and Griffin are Democrats, while Flynn is a Republican. Flynn stepped down from the board last year.
The court's decision is a victory for Republicans and business groups that have been attacking the labor board for issuing a series of decisions and rules that make it easier for the nation's labor unions to organize new members.
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After Barack Obama's stirring second inaugural address, Democrats anticipate action on vital domestic issues, such as immigration reform and gun control. Nonetheless, the national security budget will continue to dominate discretionary expenditures, as the president pursues the "war" on terror using aerial robots -- drones.
A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll asked about Obama's first-term accomplishments. "Bringing all the troops home from Iraq" and "killing Osama bin Laden" were ranked number one and two. While 22 percent of the NBC/WSJ poll respondents were pleased with the end of the war in Iraq and 21 percent looked favorably on the demise of bin Laden, 16 percent said Obama's biggest failure was "keeping American troops in Afghanistan."
Obama's aggressive use of drones is a tacit acknowledgement that Americans have grown tired of endless war and military casualties. As a consequence, rather than subvert George W. Bush's war on terror, President Obama has expanded it; he has increased warrantless wiretapping, military tribunals, indefinite detentions and killer-drone strikes. Estimates are that aerial robots have killed several thousand suspected al Qaeda militants, including at least three American citizens. (Roughly 14 to 19 percent of the drone strike victims have been civilians.)
On February 4, 2002, the first killer-drone strike occurred in Afghanistan. Since then there have been approximately 423 similar attacks, 52 authorized by George W. Bush and the balance by Obama. Both presidents used the same legal justification, Congress' 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force as well as the international law regarding nations' right to self-defense. The killer-drone strikes have occurred in six countries that we know of: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The bulk of the strikes, and deaths, have occurred in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province or the adjacent area of Afghanistan, an area known to house both al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. There's no evidence that the U.S. has used killer drones in Iraq since the end of the war on December 15, 2011, although we continue to use surveillance drones there. On December 4, 2012, Iran claimed to have captured a U.S. drone that flew over its airspace.
Most of America's 10,000+ drones are operated by the CIA and the elite military Joint Special Operations Command. The most commonly used killer drone is the Predator MQ-1 equipped with Hellfire missiles. Cruising at 85 miles per hour, the 360 Predators each have a range of 770 miles and can stay aloft for 24 hours at heights up to 25,000 feet. The Predator program has cost at least $2.38 billion; each drone costs $4 million to build and millions more to operate. Drone operations are conducted from an estimated sixty bases around the world.
President Obama has made killer drones his weapon of choice in the war on terror. This strategy has benefitted Obama in two ways.
First, it has worked politically. Obama is the first Democratic President in sixty years to have unassailable credentials on national security. During the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama was seen as stronger than Mitt Romney. Obama won the final debate, on foreign policy and national security, because Romney couldn't differentiate himself from the president -- Romney's stance on most issues was, "Me, too." Obama's closing remarks summarized his perspective: "As Commander in Chief, I will maintain the strongest military in the world, keep faith with our troops, and go after those who would do us harm."
Second, the expansion of drone usage has given the administration an inexpensive and popular way to fight the war on terror. A war weary public views killer drones as a preferable alternative to boots on the ground.
After his victory in 2008, many Democrats expected Barack Obama's national security policy to be guided by ethical considerations. Instead the White House borrowed from Henry Kissinger's Realpolitik and adopted a strategy based upon pragmatics. Chief among these is pursuit of al Qaeda operatives in a manner that minimizes loss of American lives.
Obama is not the first Democratic President whose national security policy has been driven by pragmatics. Franklin Roosevelt approved the internment of Japanese Americans. Harry Truman authorized the atomic bombing of Japan. John Kennedy approved a CIA plan to invade Cuba. Lyndon Johnson launched the War in Vietnam.
Many of us expected better of Barack Obama. We did not think he would steal a page from the Bush/Cheney playbook. As journalist Mark Danner observed, "If President Obama has made himself largely invulnerable to the politics of fear it is because he has to a great extent taken it over in advance by his cool and ruthless methods, and left little political space for discussion."
During his second term, Obama may take action on vital domestic issues but he will also continue the war on terror with a bloated national security establishment and ferocious use of killer drones. The president's legacy will be drone warfare.
There is something both honorable and maddeningly infuriating with the current incarnation of the Democratic Party. Even as it seems to represent the policy preferences a growing majority of Americans, it remains unable to translate this authority into real, political power.
How is it that the increasingly popular Democrats refuse to wield the political cudgel that the voters have placed in their hand, while the increasingly unpopular Republicans have no qualms about pushing radical reforms to maintain a toehold on power?
Witness for example the debate over reforming the filibuster, but place it in a greater context. The GOP -- a party that has lost the popular vote in five out of the past six presidential elections, and that is structurally overrepresented in the Senate anyway -- has no problem enacting laws around the country that serve no purpose other than cementing their political influence. Yet at the same time, Democrats are reluctant to push forward modest reforms that, ironically, are both popular and more egalitarian.
Recent GOP initiatives such as mid-decade redistricting in Virginia, electoral-vote reapportionment in Pennsylvania, and the institution of numerous laws making it more difficult to vote are accepted as standard Republican maneuvering. But an attempt to limit the use of the filibuster? Not only is this a "naked power grab," according to Senator Mitch McConnell, but even some Democrats are reluctant to change rules that would aid both the president and their own agendas.
Similar scenarios abound in which Democrats who seek to find common ground with their opponents across the aisle find that the resulting legislation will be opposed regardless. And this has occurred even when the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency. Obamacare, anyone?
What is it about the Democratic Party that it refuses to take full advantage of the power it has, while the GOP has little problem changing the rules to suit its own designs? Why the need to constantly cooperate or the reluctance to blame their opponents? Do Democrats not realize that political power begets policy change, or are they too wedded to the ideal of comity to aggressively shame their opponents? Maybe they really are, as Timothy Noah writes, simply a bunch of wimps?
"[T]here is something in the modern Democrat that abhors the raw exercise of power as a little bit, I don't know, vulgar. Franklin Roosevelt didn't have this handicap. Neither did Lyndon Johnson. But their latter-day successors do."
As much as I want to disagree with him, and as much as I believe in the ideals of bipartisanship and negotiation, there are times that call for politicians to -- are you ready for this -- exercise the power granted to them by the electorate.
So why is it that Democrats find this idea so radical?
Even accepting the argument that filibuster reform would backfire if the Democrats find themselves in the minority, isn't this price worth the institution of their popular agenda? (And sure, I understand that the Republican-controlled House necessarily limits their power, but still.)
My point here is that Democrats seem unwilling to take the final steps necessary to implement assault weapon, climate change, immigration, and other progressive legislation. They know that the opposition to their quite-popular agenda is the Republican Party, yet they can't seem to recognize that their policy implementation necessarily requires attacking their opponents.
Too often both parties seem to forget that politics itself is only a means to an end, and that the institution of policy is the ultimate goal. When the GOP has been in power, it has no problem pushing its agenda, such as tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the failed effort to privatize Social Security. Yet when the Democrats are in charge, they feel the need to hamstring themselves and not push full force. The Affordable Care Act, for example, while great in many ways, was completely watered down through Democratic attempts to include Republicans in its formation. And then the Republicans didn't vote for it anyway.
The Democratic party requires a strong opposition to keep it honest and respect the electorate. But it therefore needs to correlate the institution of its agenda with a defeat of that opposition. In other words, a political defeat of the Republican Party and the implementation of Obama's second-term agenda necessarily go hand in hand.
The Republican Party right now is only as strong as the Democrats allow it to be. The Republicans know this, which is why they are doubling down on efforts to swing elections in their favor through redistricting and voting restrictions -- moves that smack of real desperation. The Democrats thus need to stop them, even if it means dirtying their hands shaming their opposition.
It may not be pretty, and it may not be civil, but it is politics. Maybe if they play it right, the Democrats can actually implement their agenda when the nation has just elected them to do so.
WASHINGTON ' Congressional Democrats are reintroducing legislation to ban assault weapons but the measure faces long odds even after last month's mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn.
The measure being unveiled Thursday is authored by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who wrote the original assault weapons ban. That law expired in 2004 when Congress refused to renew it under pressure from the National Rifle Association.
An assault weapons ban is among the measures supported by President Barack Obama, who unveiled a package of gun safety proposals last week. But because of concerns among moderate Democrats it's seen as a heavy lift in Congress, with measures such as beefed-up background checks more likely to pass.
There's disagreement about the effectiveness of the original assault weapons ban.
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