Will They Ever Connect the Dots?

Sandy Levinson

After the criticism leveled at him last week, it is a pleasure to commend David Broder for his extremely interesting article in today's Washington Post on a forthcoming conference at the University of Oklahoma, called by former Sen. and current UO president David Boren, to explore the possibility of a "non-partisan" candidacy for the presidency by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The NYTimes catches up with the story in tomorrow's issue with an article titled "Bloomberg Moves Closer to Running for President." Broder's article is of greater intellectual interest, inasmuch as he discusses at greater length the ideological views of the various participants at the conference, who will apparently include former Senators John Danforth, Charles Robb, Gary Hart, and Sam Nunn, as well as Chuck Hagel, discussed in the Times story as a potential running mate for Bloomberg. According to Broder, "A letter from Nunn and Boren sent to those attending the Jan. 7 session said that 'our political system is, at the least, badly bent and many are concluding that it is broken at a time where America must lead boldly at home and abroad. Partisan polarization is preventing us from uniting to meet the challenges that we must face if we are to prevent further erosion in America's power of leadership and example.'" Their answer to this is a "national unity" ticket.

I know that I sound like a broken record, but I continue to find it both amazing and perplexing that such serious and dedicated men and women (such as former NJ Gov. and EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman) are willing to contemplate turning the 2008 presidential election topsy-turvy but not to make what to me, at least, is the stunningly obvious connection between the system, in all its "broken" or "badly bent" quality, and the Constitution that establishes the system.

Our system is so frustrating to so many people in part because of the phenomenon of divided government and, of course, the ability of the presidential veto to countermand majoritarian decisions of the House and Senate. (At a gathering this week in Baltimore, Marty Lederman pointed out to me the extremely interesting fact that the current use of the filibuster by Republicans in the Senate is, in some ways, irrelevant, because Bush could simply veto the objectionable legislation. So the interesting question, politically, is why Senate Republicans think it is in their interest to become "obstructionists" rather than acquiesce in the taking of votes for legislation that will then be vetoed (and upheld). The situation is structurally different from the past several years of Republican control, when Democratic filibusters were truly necessary to prevent passage (and then signing) of conservative legislation.)

I won't go through the whole litany of arguments that I (and University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato) have made about the desirability of thinking of substantial constitutional reform to take account of the "lessons of experience." Obviously, there are many readers of this blog who think that nothing in particular is wrong with the status quo. But Boren et al. are obviously not among this group. So I think it is fair to ask why, at the end of the day, their vision is limited to an almost certainly doomed effort by a "national-unity ticket."

It's not that one can't imagine Michael Bloomberg and Chuck Hagel getting some electoral votes, especially given our first-past-the-past system. But it seems absolutely unthinkable to me that there is a plausible scenario that gives such a ticket 271 such votes . (For the record, I note that I would be less skeptical of an independent candidacy led by Arnold Schwartenegger.) And, as we all know (or should know), a failure of any candidate to receive a majority of the electoral vote sends the election to the House of Representatives on a one-state/one-vote basis. I think it's fair to say that it's even more inconceivable that the members of the House, almost every single one of whom is a member of the Democratic or Republican parties, would have any sympathy at all for placing in office a wild-card president and vice-president who ran on a systematically anti-party ticket.

According to tomorrow's Times' article,

One concern among Mr. Bloomberg’s inner circle is whether a loss would label him a spoiler — “a rich Ralph Nader"— who cost a more viable candidate the presidency in a watershed political year. One person close to the mayor, who requested anonymity so as not to be seen discussing internal strategy, stressed that Mr. Bloomberg would run only if he believed he could win.

“He’s not going to do it to influence the debate,” the person said.

[UPDATE: Today's Boston Globe includes an op-ed, "Changing Our Direction," by former Senators William Cohen and Sam Nunn, that sets out the basic creed of the Oklahoma gathering. After setting out a litany of problems in contemporary America, they go on to say

While these and other challenges demand serious attention, our political process seems determined to engage in games of trivial pursuits....

Election campaigns are inevitably rough and tumble, but they must also be a time for vigorous national debate and discussion. They best serve the nation when the public and the candidates are exposed to new ideas and approaches. The national discussions of 2008 must better prepare our nation and our leadership than have the national discussions of this past year.

As citizens, each of us has a role to play in serving our country. Over the course of the next year, the two of us plan to help stimulate a national conversation on the direction our country must take in this turbulent age filled with both promise and peril. We intend to launch a series of public discussions, inviting leaders from throughout the country and from many walks of life to bring their experience, expertise, innovation, and energy to these dialogues.

We need to focus on seminal issues that those who seek to be our leaders must address: How do we restore our government's credibility and competence? How do we rebuild our physical and human capital so that we can face a dynamic world of change with confidence in our ability to compete? How do we promote energy security and reduce our vulnerabilities to the most unstable regions of the world? How do we operate in a complicated world where other nations will not always be "with or against us"? How do we restore America's international leadership role and renew the values for which we have been so long admired? How do we engage and use "smart power" that combines economic, diplomatic, and military strength to achieve national security and foreign policy goals? How do we encourage citizens of every age, race, and creed to act on the premise that we have not just inherited our wonderful country from our parents, but we have borrowed it from our children?

If as a nation we begin to ask, debate, and answer these questions and these challenges, we can renew our commitment to community, enable those we elect, and restore an exhilarating sense that, once again, we are all in this together.

Every issue they raise is worth discussing. But just imagine this were 1907 or, even more to the point, the decade of the teens, instead of 2007 (soon to be 2008). Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt were equally concerned about confronting the issues of the day, but one of those issues, for both, was the adequacy of our constitutional structures. Why, oh why, can these obviously dedicated, concerned, and experienced national leaders bring themselves even to suggest that they might find a single day in the next year to discuss whether the Constitution itself makes it more difficult to confront, let alone to resolve, the issues that they identify?

If I had even the slightest belief that they had actually thought, for even a moment, of whether the Constitution serves us well and had come to a thoughtful conclusion that the answer is yes, then I would disagree, but I would not be so discouraged. Put to one side the books recently published by myself or Prof. Sabato, or the books published earlier by Daniel Lazare or Robert Dahl. It would be a good start if one could be confident that they read the books published in the 1980s, at the time of the otherwise shamefully mindless bicentennial celebrations, by Washington Establishmentarian Lloyd Cutler and others that did raise extremely serious questions about the need for constitutional reform. Some of the proposals I agree with, others I don't. But the sad point is that even a consummate Washington insider like Cutler, joined by such distinguished academics as James Sundquist and Gerhard Casper, among others, got exactly nowhere in stimulating the conversation they desired.

So consider the following possibility: The only way to "restore our government's credibility and competence" is to engage in some fundamental constitutional reform. One can have credibility, for example, only if there is significant, real-time oversight of the Executive by an engaged Congress, and the one and only way to get that, so long as we continue to have a party system, is to put key committees (and subpoena power) in the hands of the opposition party--yes, this means that I would support putting the relevant committees in the hands of Republicans should we get the Democratic presidency I so yearn for next year. And perhaps we would get more competence if we switched from a presidential system to a parliamentary one, where it is usually (though not always) the case that prime ministers have had to demonstrate their competence as chancellors of the exchequer, defense ministers, or foreign ministers. But "competence" might also require giving legislators longer terms, one of the proposals favored by the Cutler group: they would have members of the House of Representatives elected for four-year terms; one version of such a proposal would have half running every two years, somewhat similar to the way we work the Senate. I don't know where I would come out on such a proposal--that's one of the reasons I want a convention--but it is surely relevant if one believes that a major force against "competence" is the necessity of every member of the House to begin planning for the next election, which will take place 22 months after taking the oath of office for the current term of Congress.

There are a number of things that are terrible about the Electoral College, but one of them surely is the incentive it generates for otherwise serious candidates to focus on "battleground" states and make shameless (and sometimes shameful) promises to key groups in such states, regardless of what the "national interest" might require. (I believe that our idiotic policy toward Cuba, the result of the the strategic importance of Cuban-Americans in Miami, is explicable only because of this reality. ) And so on......

It is clear that candidates actually running for office, including John Edwards, who constantly refers to our system as "broken," are unwilling to question our sacred Constitution. But the Oklahoma group is made up of elder statesmen/women who might be able to jumpstart the necessary conversation.]

[ONE MORE ADDENDUM: In my comment about trying to assure "competence" in governance, I forgot to mention my own hobbyhorse of actually holding presidents accountable (especially in their second term) by the threat of a vote of "no-confidence" that would result in his/her eviction from the Oval Office. This is not a "radical" suggestion; James Sundquist included it in his 1980s book. Why won't these worthies address the threat to America posed by an incompetent president, particularly in the realms of military and foreign policy?]

Posted 9:50 PM by Sandy Levinson [link]