Both Mary and I are right

Sandy Levinson

I appreciate Mary Dudziak's thoughtful post on the legitimate disillusion with aspects of Barack Obama's presidency.  I think it is a disgrace, for example, that he so completely capitulated to the well-off complainers about relatively modest delays in air travel while he has remained basically silent about the insane sequester cuts that are affecting those who do not regularly engage in air travel.  Far better for the "sequester" to be considered on an "all-or-nothing" basis than allow Republicans and scared Democrats to cherry-pick those relatively few aspects of the sequester that impinge on those at the relative top of the class structure (including, I must confess, well-paid law professors like me who fly a lot).  I also think that it is fair to criticize Obama (or, for that matter, to praise him) for certain foreign policy decisions given the relative autonomy that American presidents may have in that domain, or in making certain kinds of military decisions. 

That being said, I continue to think that Maureen Dowd's criticism of Obama for failing to play sufficient hardball vis-a-vis the background-check bill is mistaken.  The President has far less practical power with regard to domestic legislation.  Would it really make sense, for example, for the President to threaten Mark Begich, whose re-election to the Senate is essential if Democrats are not to be rendered irrelevant after the 2014 election, because he is cautious about putting his re-election in jeopardy by voting for a bill that a) would, at best, be only marginally helpful in helping to reduce violence attached to guns; and b) would very likely not be passed by the House.  Critics are basically asking the President in effect to place Begich's re-election in jeopardy by asking (or imposing pressure on him) to engage in a "grand gesture" that would not only risk his re-electionbut also would probably not eventuate in actual legislation.  The reason for the latter is the bicameralism that is an important part of the Constitution.  Its purpose (and function) is to make it harder to pass legislation, which means, among other things, that a member of either house of Congress must calculate the actual odds that the other house will be receptive.  Jimmy Carter many years ago successfully put pressure on Democrats in the House to support some energy reforms that then went nowhere in the Senate, which, quite understandably, angered the House members who went out on a limb. 

As it happens, I support bicameralism in a polity as large as the US (or, for that matter, even Texas, though not, e.g., any state smaller than New Zealand, which functions just fine with one House of Representatives), though I despise the principle of equal representation in the Senate.  But we should be aware that even the best bicameral systems (far better than our own) may impose costs as well as benefits.  In any event, we should be able to combine both "personal" sorts of criticisms of the kind that Mary offered with the more "structural" ones that I emphasize.  It is altogether possible that if everyone were making structural arguments, I would feel compelled to point out that individuals and other contingencies are important as well, as Mary correctly suggests.  But, to put it mildly, I don't think there's an excessive emphasis on structural argument in our contemporary discourse. Just read every single one of the Times' or Washington Post's stable of columnists, of all political persuasions.  So until one of those worthies does indeed connect the dots, I will continue to complain about the partial nature of their often otherwise helpful analyses. 


Posted 12:49 AM by Sandy Levinson [link]