Our Impotent Congress
What
exactly is the purpose of the separation of powers? Some two hundred
and twenty-seven odd years ago, it was the security deposit we set down
on republicanism. The division of authority in government, setting
branches against one another in a healthy tug of war, all while being
made to mind the inclination of the voter, was the safety valve of a
healthy republic. No I’m not talking about democracy, which is
really the overly lauded majoritarianism of rent-seekers and ideologues,
but instead I’m speaking to the necessary requirements of republicanism.
Republicanism is really the model for governmental efficiency, and the
optimal scheme for protecting and enlarging the sphere of liberty and
opportunity that all citizens can come to enjoy.
Congress
has an important part to play in this republic, especially considering
that the most direct outlet of republicanism is the expression of the
people’s general will through their representatives, and that this
representation is the only direct and legitimate method of checking the
power of bureaucratic rent-seekers and executive-branch abusers.
F.H.
Buckley, an academic from the law school at George Mason University,
the institution that has famously economized on costs while still hiring
luminaries such as Gordon Tullock and Nobel laureate James Buchanan, wrote a masterpiece titled The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America,
warning of the enlargement of both the far-reaching powers of the
administrative state and the aggrandizement of executive power. While
there have been more than enough book reviews of Buckley’s more recent
work, I use the book more as a commendable reference guide and
legally-minded review of the recent abuses and trends of the
anti-representative age.
What
are we to make of the dilemma that naturally presents itself when
considering, in rotation, a competent Congress and an incompetent
executive, which then gives way to an incompetent Congress and a
competent executive, and then more often than not, presents complete
incompetency in all venues? There is a tendency, which exists on both
the right and the left, to simply discard that inoperative side of the
partisan aisle more riddled with inefficiency than the other, and move
forward with the work that needs to be done. Ah, the wisdom of
technocrats. This is the reasoning behind Barack Obama’s efforts at
subverting the proper congressional channels. We see it not only in the
complete disregard for the letter of the very Affordable Care Act law
that the President proposed and passed, but also in terms of the
steadily increasing delegation of a branch’s proper authority to
bureaucracies, which allows things like the unconstitutional flooding of
borders with refugees (just or not, there are proper channels for
immigration policy.)
This
all means a lot in terms of what we can look forward to in potential
future leaders’ methods of governance. What is the most outrageous
example of bad, non-transparent government action? Quite clearly, it is
Hillary Clinton’s abuse of power, her storage and then erasure of emails
kept tucked away on a private server she had designed specifically for
the purpose of concealment, and then her refusal to turn over those
emails, the content of which may have provided clarity and insight into
the myriad cover-up scandals of the Obama administration.
Not
to come off as obnoxious, or to sound an alarm that others have rung
repetitively, but: Richard Nixon was chased out of office for doing
exactly the same thing. Concealment.
After
her server was purportedly wiped clean, Clinton’s lawyer, David
Kendall, announced with seeming indifference that none of the desired
emails would be accessible. This is just one more example of the
shackled impotence of a Congress romping around in a helpless confusion
that reminds one of a decapitated chicken. Whether they subpoena,
demand, harp and harangue, the end result is simply nothing. We know
nothing about Hillary Clinton’s servers. We know nothing about Benghazi.
People
say that House Republicans are nothing but hot air windbags. For the
most part (although often enough, for the wrong reasons) those people
are right.
Further
from the domestic sphere, we have the foreign policy arena. No
congressional approval of the Iran deal means, once again, no
involvement on Congress’s part. This is concerning a treaty addressing
the nuclear capacity of a terrorist state that is almost certain to
surreptitiously shuffle highly destructive arms into the hands of Shiite
religious maniacs. No voices heard, no objections registered. By the
way, media sound bites are not the same as legislative objections. The
opposition must be more fervent, more active, more serious about its
obligation to help prevent the calamities barreling towards us like
ballistic missiles.
Although
the voting public was supposedly outraged by the upper chamber’s letter
to Iran warning them of making a non-binding deal with President Obama,
Senator Tom Cotton did the right thing: he penned a note advising an
enemy state of the reality of the situation. Senator Cotton helped to
put Iran on notice, to let them know that any deal is reviewable, any
treaty amendable.
Any
missive advising the terror state of Iran that a final nuclear treaty
would be subject to review is evidently seen by Democrats as a Logan Act
violation worthy of being deemed treasonous. A legacy of
non-enforcement of the Logan Act aside, not to mention the untested
constitutionality of the act, I tend to agree with Jonah Goldberg, who wrote: “Obama is the commander in chief of the armed forces, not of the co-equal legislative branch.”
Why
might some citizens have been upset about congressional meddling?
Here’s one theory: the American populace tends towards ignorance and
instantly reacts to headlines. Democracy, the propaganda (yes, you heard
me) of the 20th and 21st centuries, is not the correct conduit for the exertion of a country’s best energies. Republicanism is, and that is how the country was initially designed.
A
majority of people in this country might want to voice their general
displeasure in any given matter. They might arouse themselves to a
violent clamor, demanding the avoidance of war, demanding that they
accrue benefits – gratis -- to their government-linked bank accounts,
repetitively citing the Fallacy of Democracy: that any thing is a
legitimate political goal if most people want it and vote on it. So, it
is easy to forget the difference between a majority vote and a truly
republican, philosophically democratic guiding political thought. Part
of the job of Congress is to remind the people that they have an
obligation to republicanism, and that Congress is their ground-level
enforcer for the promise of republican government.
Sometimes,
leaders have to tell the people what they should want. That is the job
of Congress, a job that they aren’t doing right now. History bears out
the necessity of strong leadership. That’s why we went to war for
independence despite the vast majority of colonists being
opposed to it, that’s why Jefferson took down the Barbary pirates and
completed the Louisiana Purchase. That’s the reason James Polk carried
us (jingoist that he was) across the plains from Atlantic to Pacific,
and that’s why Reagan took an economically stagnating country and
transformed it into a competition-loving collection of free-marketeers.
Even the supposedly liberal-leaning techno-cognoscenti of Google and
other “socially conscious” corporations like Starbucks are as
economically driven as the average Joe Schmoe.
Unfortunately,
people are now much more likely to show deference to the administrative
state, that unwieldy shadow bureau that has more direct bearing over
their life. They are more likely to cower before the IRS, which is the
actual police and government power that citizens must answer to on a
daily basis. Right now, the administrative federal government’s response
to congressional authority is more a matter of the abstract: they’ll
respond only when they really have to. Agency costs, you know.
The
willing relinquishment of authority is not the only byproduct of a
weakened Congress. There is also the degradation of the prestige that
used to give heft to the House and the Senate. Congress is mostly seen
as being a weak institution, a five-hundred-plus body of obstructionists
and weaklings, a parliament of whores and faools. Is this assessment
wrong? If Congress fails to check the power of a reckless executive,
then we shall know.
exactly is the purpose of the separation of powers? Some two hundred
and twenty-seven odd years ago, it was the security deposit we set down
on republicanism. The division of authority in government, setting
branches against one another in a healthy tug of war, all while being
made to mind the inclination of the voter, was the safety valve of a
healthy republic. No I’m not talking about democracy, which is
really the overly lauded majoritarianism of rent-seekers and ideologues,
but instead I’m speaking to the necessary requirements of republicanism.
Republicanism is really the model for governmental efficiency, and the
optimal scheme for protecting and enlarging the sphere of liberty and
opportunity that all citizens can come to enjoy.
Congress
has an important part to play in this republic, especially considering
that the most direct outlet of republicanism is the expression of the
people’s general will through their representatives, and that this
representation is the only direct and legitimate method of checking the
power of bureaucratic rent-seekers and executive-branch abusers.
F.H.
Buckley, an academic from the law school at George Mason University,
the institution that has famously economized on costs while still hiring
luminaries such as Gordon Tullock and Nobel laureate James Buchanan, wrote a masterpiece titled The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America,
warning of the enlargement of both the far-reaching powers of the
administrative state and the aggrandizement of executive power. While
there have been more than enough book reviews of Buckley’s more recent
work, I use the book more as a commendable reference guide and
legally-minded review of the recent abuses and trends of the
anti-representative age.
What
are we to make of the dilemma that naturally presents itself when
considering, in rotation, a competent Congress and an incompetent
executive, which then gives way to an incompetent Congress and a
competent executive, and then more often than not, presents complete
incompetency in all venues? There is a tendency, which exists on both
the right and the left, to simply discard that inoperative side of the
partisan aisle more riddled with inefficiency than the other, and move
forward with the work that needs to be done. Ah, the wisdom of
technocrats. This is the reasoning behind Barack Obama’s efforts at
subverting the proper congressional channels. We see it not only in the
complete disregard for the letter of the very Affordable Care Act law
that the President proposed and passed, but also in terms of the
steadily increasing delegation of a branch’s proper authority to
bureaucracies, which allows things like the unconstitutional flooding of
borders with refugees (just or not, there are proper channels for
immigration policy.)
This
all means a lot in terms of what we can look forward to in potential
future leaders’ methods of governance. What is the most outrageous
example of bad, non-transparent government action? Quite clearly, it is
Hillary Clinton’s abuse of power, her storage and then erasure of emails
kept tucked away on a private server she had designed specifically for
the purpose of concealment, and then her refusal to turn over those
emails, the content of which may have provided clarity and insight into
the myriad cover-up scandals of the Obama administration.
Not
to come off as obnoxious, or to sound an alarm that others have rung
repetitively, but: Richard Nixon was chased out of office for doing
exactly the same thing. Concealment.
After
her server was purportedly wiped clean, Clinton’s lawyer, David
Kendall, announced with seeming indifference that none of the desired
emails would be accessible. This is just one more example of the
shackled impotence of a Congress romping around in a helpless confusion
that reminds one of a decapitated chicken. Whether they subpoena,
demand, harp and harangue, the end result is simply nothing. We know
nothing about Hillary Clinton’s servers. We know nothing about Benghazi.
People
say that House Republicans are nothing but hot air windbags. For the
most part (although often enough, for the wrong reasons) those people
are right.
Further
from the domestic sphere, we have the foreign policy arena. No
congressional approval of the Iran deal means, once again, no
involvement on Congress’s part. This is concerning a treaty addressing
the nuclear capacity of a terrorist state that is almost certain to
surreptitiously shuffle highly destructive arms into the hands of Shiite
religious maniacs. No voices heard, no objections registered. By the
way, media sound bites are not the same as legislative objections. The
opposition must be more fervent, more active, more serious about its
obligation to help prevent the calamities barreling towards us like
ballistic missiles.
Although
the voting public was supposedly outraged by the upper chamber’s letter
to Iran warning them of making a non-binding deal with President Obama,
Senator Tom Cotton did the right thing: he penned a note advising an
enemy state of the reality of the situation. Senator Cotton helped to
put Iran on notice, to let them know that any deal is reviewable, any
treaty amendable.
Any
missive advising the terror state of Iran that a final nuclear treaty
would be subject to review is evidently seen by Democrats as a Logan Act
violation worthy of being deemed treasonous. A legacy of
non-enforcement of the Logan Act aside, not to mention the untested
constitutionality of the act, I tend to agree with Jonah Goldberg, who wrote: “Obama is the commander in chief of the armed forces, not of the co-equal legislative branch.”
Why
might some citizens have been upset about congressional meddling?
Here’s one theory: the American populace tends towards ignorance and
instantly reacts to headlines. Democracy, the propaganda (yes, you heard
me) of the 20th and 21st centuries, is not the correct conduit for the exertion of a country’s best energies. Republicanism is, and that is how the country was initially designed.
A
majority of people in this country might want to voice their general
displeasure in any given matter. They might arouse themselves to a
violent clamor, demanding the avoidance of war, demanding that they
accrue benefits – gratis -- to their government-linked bank accounts,
repetitively citing the Fallacy of Democracy: that any thing is a
legitimate political goal if most people want it and vote on it. So, it
is easy to forget the difference between a majority vote and a truly
republican, philosophically democratic guiding political thought. Part
of the job of Congress is to remind the people that they have an
obligation to republicanism, and that Congress is their ground-level
enforcer for the promise of republican government.
Sometimes,
leaders have to tell the people what they should want. That is the job
of Congress, a job that they aren’t doing right now. History bears out
the necessity of strong leadership. That’s why we went to war for
independence despite the vast majority of colonists being
opposed to it, that’s why Jefferson took down the Barbary pirates and
completed the Louisiana Purchase. That’s the reason James Polk carried
us (jingoist that he was) across the plains from Atlantic to Pacific,
and that’s why Reagan took an economically stagnating country and
transformed it into a competition-loving collection of free-marketeers.
Even the supposedly liberal-leaning techno-cognoscenti of Google and
other “socially conscious” corporations like Starbucks are as
economically driven as the average Joe Schmoe.
Unfortunately,
people are now much more likely to show deference to the administrative
state, that unwieldy shadow bureau that has more direct bearing over
their life. They are more likely to cower before the IRS, which is the
actual police and government power that citizens must answer to on a
daily basis. Right now, the administrative federal government’s response
to congressional authority is more a matter of the abstract: they’ll
respond only when they really have to. Agency costs, you know.
The
willing relinquishment of authority is not the only byproduct of a
weakened Congress. There is also the degradation of the prestige that
used to give heft to the House and the Senate. Congress is mostly seen
as being a weak institution, a five-hundred-plus body of obstructionists
and weaklings, a parliament of whores and faools. Is this assessment
wrong? If Congress fails to check the power of a reckless executive,
then we shall know.
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