How the Constitution structures the debt crisis

Sandy Levinson

There are two distinct ways in which one has to understand how the Constitution strucures the current crisis. One obviously involves our tricameral legislative system and the fact that all three branches of the legislature--i.e., the House, the Senate, and the President--have to agree in order to get any legislation at all. So, as senators and the President are apparently giddy about a compromise reached by the Gang of Six that, according to NPR, could actually get the support of over 60 senators (i.e., a filibuster-proof majority), there is still the House, and whether Eric Cantor and his Tea Party minions will indeed capitulate and accept even one cent of added revenue. In the alternative, the question may be whether John Boehner junks the pernicious "rule" adopted by Dennis Hastert by which he refused to bring any bill to the floor of the House that didn't have the support of a majority of the Republican caucus (even if, by stipulation, it had the support of a majority of the House in general, once one added Democratic votes to a minority of the Republican caucus).

But there is a second way in which the Constitutionis at the heart of this imbroglio. As Obama well realizes, a "grand compromise," however much it will make political liberals unhappy, will absolutely assure his re-election, probably with 55% of the popular vote. That would probably be true if the Republicans had a truly serious candidate running for the office. But, note well, all of the current candidates, including Mitt Romney, have basically opposed any of the necessary compromises to get a grand bargain. Will Romney engage in another flip flop? Republicans, including, of course, Mitch McConnell have been obsessed with making Obama a one-term president not simply because it's a pretty important office, but because the Constitution, with minor exceptions, gives the President a "winner-take-all" control over the executive branch. This is totally different from 48 of the 50 states, which have rejected the "unitary executive" by allowing people to elect governors and other executive officials from different political parties. And, of course, even if they're from the same party, they may be rivals.

So the question before House Republicans, especially, is whether they are willing to compromise and erase the lines that Eric Cantor and others have drawn in the sand and, even more to the point, whether they are in effect willing to make the greatest possible contribution to the Re-elect Barack Obama campaign.

So, if my analysis is correct, this is game, set, and match to Obama, unless, of course, the House Republicans do decide that to play the role of Samson and take the entire economy down, either because they really are principled--which is hard to believe re Cantor, who has voted for 11 debt increases--or believe, I think wrongly, that Obama will be more blamed than they for the collapse and the horrendous unemployment it will create. The grand bargain, of couse, also means shelving the idiotic Balanced Budget Amendment being advocated by House Republicans. The best explanation of its idiocy, incidentally, is a posting by the Washington Post's moderate (if not conservative) economics columnist Robert Samuelson.
Posted 5:46 PM by Sandy Levinson [link]