Richard Brookhiser speaks in one aphorism after another in this dialogue with Kathryn Jean Lopez about his new book about James Madison, "James Madison."So many books, so little time.
As for the article in National Review, we have this exchange about the place of politics in our civic life, speaking to author Brookhiser's designation of President James Madison as the "father of politics":
LOPEZ: Why is the “father of politics” more fitting?And that is the question for those who despise political parties. What is the alternative scenario, or scenarios, you envision?
BROOKHISER: Equally fitting. The Constitution is the rules; politics is the game. The alternatives to organized political contention are anarchy or sheep-like passivity.
Regards — Cliff
We could use a League metaphor:
ReplyDeleteIn Major League Baseball, Judge Landis bequeathed us a legally-certified monopolistic system whereby the "have's", aka the existing teams, (analagous to the D's and R's), have the corner on the game to the exclusion of everyone else, including the people paying to sit in the seats. Nobody from outside the clique gets in, and everybody inside the clique determines how the game is played. Don't like Designated Hitters? Too bad--the American League says that's what the game is now.
In English soccer, on the other hand, the Premier League is literally a meritocracy, whereby the poorest performing three teams are disinvited to the next annual competition, and three best performing and deserving teams are promoted from the "First Division", now known as the "Championship Division", to comprise the new order. The rules of the game, known as the "Laws of Soccer" are, unlike in Baseball and arguably American politics, actually controlled and kept sanctified by a body which is independent of the process.
Here in American politics, as with the Major League Baseball example, despite the seeming stability of our Constitution, the rules are rewritten every year (every month--heck, every day) to ensure that the prevailing parties suffer no competition from below or outside. They need sustained electoral hegemony, so our election administration subsidizes their primary processes and all but guarantees the only options for higher office are party apparatchiks. They need money, so now the Supremes they appoint agree that they can receive is from any source they please, including foreign owned and controlled corporations. They need to muzzle their detractors, so laws are crafted to banish nay-sayers to locations hundreds of yards away from their convocations, behind chain link fences, all to be enforced at the butt of a nightstick.
Our rules are constantly re-written and re-interpreted to benefit the insiders, without respect to what may have been intended by those who wrote what were supposed to be hard and fast rules. Supposing that dismantling this monopoly on power would result in "anarchy" or "sheep-like passivity" is to believe our process could become any less civil than the current sniping that causes the federal government to be at the brink of shutdown over every minor funding bill, and any less apathetic on the part of the electorate which votes these days in ever-dwindling numbers.
We have 18 candidates for 9 city council seats here in Lowell, and not a party political designation in sight. I find that to be at a vast advantage over the current selection process for the Presidency, whereby the tiny number of Republicans who vote will be anointing the single reasonable challenger to the office.
As for an alternative scenario, I would like to start with a paid party primary system to properly tax them for the benefit they receive. I would then like to continue with open and transparent nomination processes which guarantee placement on the ballot for any and all candidates who can raise the requisite number of electoral endorsements via petition prior to the election. Yes, we'll have to fix the media rules to ensure all candidates are covered fairly, since the money now controls both the party system as well as the media system that publicizes it, but as citizens we deserve nothing less.